I have an endorsement to make.
It doesn't have anything to do with who'll be moving into the White House come January. Doesn't even have anything to do with who's running for what in the large number of Clay County offices up for grabs this year, or even the potential Clay County Charter or State Constitution amendments.
I want to endorse a game. A computer game, its name is SimCity, but it might as well be called Virtual Growth Management. The game is to build a city from scratch. I've played it enough to realize that there are some game growth management factors that translate remarkably well into real-life.
The game will tell you, for example, that if you have too much development and too many people for the roads you've built, the population will be stuck in traffic. The recently-conducted Quality of Life survey conducted in Clay County will vouch for the validity of that computer simulation.
In SimCity, just like in Clay County, you'll discover that you're losing the game of growth management if tax revenue becomes too dependent on residential development.
It's just a game, so you obviously won't face the variety of factors a real local government faces. You won't have to figure out what to do with your city's stray dogs, or forced to deal with special-interest driven legislation from your state legislature.
But in playing SimCity, you will envision a plan to determine how and how fast your city grows and must be prepared to determine tax rates required to provide basic government services like meeting transportation needs, providing proper police and fire department coverage, education and hospital needs demanded by your vision. The basics of providing the needed amount of electricity, waste disposal and water are also required. In order to keep a healthy, happy, growing population, you'll need to provide some government-funded recreation and face other quality of life issues, too.
There are plenty of other examples, too, of how the computer game closely models the real-life decisions of growth management that have been our local development plan.
And without a few changes in the real-life way government is planning local growth, the computer thinks the next few years of Clay County growth means we're ultimately playing a losing strategy.
In SimCity, the key to success is how fast you build houses. You'll lose if you build homes so fast the population outgrows the government's ability to provide services and infrastructure without overburdening its current taxpayers. You can survive in the game, as Clay County government has survived, for awhile with that strategy - until existing residents can't afford to pay for all the existing services and the bonds required to build the roads, schools, police and fire departments that those current residents need.
Does that stage of the game sound familiar to Clay County residents?
Right now, we Clay County taxpayers have a School Board that says it needs to find billion dollars to build schools just for the houses that are already built or planned. We're expected to also pay our part in taxes and tolls to fund an Outer Beltway that, when completed, may create new jobs but definitely will create new homes and new citizens demanding more services. Plus, we'll soon be asked to borrow $90-some million to improve some other roads - and we're still stuck with Blanding and 17, already overburdened and declining conditions.
And the real-life strategy continues. Commit current taxpayers to watch their infrastructure and level of service decline as the costs rise, all the while also paying for new infrastructure and services to accommodate new rooftops and residents. It doesn't take a computer, just a ride around the county and some common sense, to show a real-life Clay County growth management change is needed.
This election year, there are so many local offices being contested that voters have extraordinary power to demand change. They can elect candidates who are ready to make changes, or they can elect folks who'll go along with the crowd and continue to support failing policies. Growth management isn't a game. It's real life and more of the same vision and strategy will eventually make losers out of everyone who lives in Clay County.
Michael S. Mann
michaelsmann@comcast.net [1]