Squeaky wheels

Posted by Mark Chapman on June 10th, 2010 at 1:24 pm

Those who shout the loud­est get the most attention.

It’s been that way for as far back as I remem­ber, which, some days, could mean about 15 min­utes ago.

Unfor­tu­nately, due to the state of our media and our soci­ety today, the major­ity is in dan­ger of hav­ing the agenda con­trolled by the shout­ing minor­ity. Rather than report­ing facts and real­ity, much of the media sim­ply reports on the yelling and scream­ing and name-calling.

You see it every­where. Power block vot­ers with bulk-dial pro­grams con­trol the win­ners and losers on Amer­i­can Idol, which breath­lessly touts the num­ber of votes it receives each week. But those 34 mil­lion votes may be com­ing from 20 mil­lion peo­ple, and the crazed power vot­ers seem to break toward adolescent-girl fan­tasy hearthrobs rather than those with the most talent.

The recent nation­wide pri­maries are another exam­ple. All we’ve been hear­ing from the media and from cer­tain seg­ments of the ampli­fied pop­u­lace is that incum­bents are fin­ished. And it isn’t just the cable news chan­nels any­more. The major news­pa­pers seem to have bought into the sto­ry­line. Anti-incumbent fever was sup­posed to chase sev­eral well-known politi­cians out of office Tues­day. But almost all the incum­bents won. It will be inter­est­ing to see if that trend holds in November.

Anti-incumbent rage? It is real It is out there. And the rage against some is quite jus­ti­fied. But it seems that, lurk­ing under the sur­face, there is a silent major­ity that can, when it chooses, make itself heard.

And that brings us to the cur­rent local hot potato: Placida Road.

Let me say up front, I have no dog in this fight. I don’t live on or off  Placida Road. I don’t work there. I drive Placida once or twice a week. I patron­ize some busi­nesses along Placida. But I have no prob­lem with the road as is, and I can see how it would need to be wider in the future if all those vacant con­dos became unva­cant. If.

I will say that I cringed when I saw the round­about plans, because, with the excep­tion of the proposed-but-not-planned round­about at West Dear­born Street and Old Engle­wood Road, I really have no use for them.

But I digress.

Groups of unhappy, anti-project res­i­dents have been mak­ing their feel­ings known in no uncer­tain terms to the Char­lotte County Com­mis­sion­ers. They don’t want the four-lane high­way, or the reten­tion ponds, or the side­walks, or the light­ing, or the round­abouts, or the fancy lighting.

But those groups — one wield­ing a peti­tion with 466 sig­na­tures — have caused com­mis­sion­ers to step back and rethink their posi­tions, not to men­tion their careers. If, indeed, those 466 peo­ple are the tip of the ice­berg, then the com­mis­sion­ers want no part of forc­ing their will, even if that will is based on hard data.

But Chair­man Bob Starr indi­cated Tues­day that e-mails to the com­mis­sion are run­ning in favor of the project. Com­bin­ing those e-mails with the pre­vi­ous group anti-project efforts, he is see­ing about a 50/50 split, he said at the Tues­day com­mis­sion meeting.

So is it pos­si­ble that what we have here is a very vocal minor­ity shout­ing “No!” to the project while a silent major­ity sit back and think, “well, that will be nice when it’s done.” ?

Starr has mailed out a one-question sur­vey ask­ing if res­i­dents want the road widened. Period. All the other things — the reten­tion ponds, the light­ing, the side­walks, the round­abouts (already cast aside) — can be nego­ti­ated, changed or dumped, he said. At its base, this is about tak­ing the money that has been granted to the county and widen­ing Placida Road.

Starr said he believes the major­ity wants the road widened and sees the value in doing it now, when the money is avail­able from the fed­eral stim­u­lus pro­gram. It will only be more expen­sive in the future, he says.

But he also said that, should the “nays” out­weigh the “yeas” when the sur­vey comes back, he will vote to pull the plug on the project and take the money else­where in the county, pos­si­bly to Burntt Store, although Comms­sioner Robert Skid­more says he will fight to keep the money in West County.

Again, I have no stake in this. Engle­wood Edge has no offi­cial or even unof­fi­cial posi­tion on this.

But it will be inter­est­ing to see if there is a silent major­ity out there that Starr’s sur­vey can moti­vate to come for­ward, or if the com­mis­sion­ers sim­ply mis­judged the pub­lic will on this one.

Much like last Tuesday’s Demo­c­ra­tic Sen­ate  pri­maries in Ken­tucky and Nevada — and the last three Amer­i­can Idol sea­sons — this one may be too close to call.

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One response to “Squeaky wheels”

1. RogerJ

   6 / 10 / 2010
   11:19 pm

   Our money should be going to some­thing use­ful! Where will the funds come from to com­plete this project? Stim­u­lus Pack­age? I’ve only heard bits and pieces about this silli­ness, so I really have no clue…

   If this money is already avail­able, I’d like to see it used for youth and parks, or some­thing that actu­ally has value. But that’s me!

   Right now, places like the Sports Com­plex need to close their doors at 8pm, because of money. Pri­or­i­ties truly con­fuse me…

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