Growing Pains

I live in a very rural area.  So rural that our County Councilmen have trouble reading tributes, perhaps written by others, at meetings honoring their citizens.  These Councilmen are educated, they just cannot read out loud...that includes at least three of the five officials.  Two of our Councilmen own liquor stores.  This is the path to political leadership in this county.   A few retired professionals from a more intellectual arena ran for office, but the big words they used frightened the voters, I guess.  This good-old boy majority leadership selection means our county struggles.

As I mentioned in a prior post, I lost my current doctor because she found working in this county too difficult.  They did not support medical service development and she had to send her patients out of county for specialized treatment.  She said five other doctors are thinking of following her.  We are limited in our selection already!

A recent meeting of various groups on "smart growth" for my state resulted in this news report:

"In the spring of 2006, a self-proclaimed “unholy alliance” of developers, environmentalists, civic and academic leaders staged a series of reality checks around the state during conferences designed to stare future growth in the face.  The leaders gave each table of eight to 10 participants piles of colored Legos representing their likely share of the 1.5 million new residents projected to swell the state’s population from 5.5 million to 7 million by 2030. It would mean adding more than half a million new homes.  On a map of their region, each table had to place all of that new growth...
The idea was not to discourage growth. This state, like most states, avidly courts economic expansion, more jobs, more people. The Reality Check conference organizers hoped to promote “smart growth,” or to place as many Legos as possible around places where growth was planned and roads and sewers already existed, thus protecting farms, forests and undeveloped Bay shorelines.
It was nonetheless a sobering exercise as Legos piled higher and existing towns began looking like little Manhattans. You could hear sighs and mutterings: “The traffic’s already hell there” or “my pile fell over…there goes the countryside.”  An Eastern Shore contingent built a paper boat and set their Legos sailing toward a coastal city, which has been losing population since the 1950s.  It was a good laugh — maybe a good idea — but the directive was firm: Growth is coming your way and you must accommodate it."

But at my County's table, a County commissioner, Ms. C, chose to differ. She swept a bunch of Legos off the map and into her purse. And it was not an exercise like barging people across the Bay to a coastal city.

This is what our County leaders do.  Respond with unrealistic solutions or ignore growth issues it seems.  Our County is long and thin and no more than 4 miles from tidewater in most directions.  Therefore our growth impacts the rivers and oceans.  Yet, if we have no growth, it means our county dies---well, goes into a coma.  And to give the good-old-boys their due, I realize what a difficult problem they have.

This week I was talking to my neighbor as we planned a dinner out with them before they leave for Florida for the winter.  We have lots of fried seafood places down here, but in the last few years several new and more delicious venues have emerged.   This County's population has double the median household income of the U.S. and one could hope that would support this growth.

The conversation went like this:

"How about The Basil Basket?"
"Nope, closing next week due to owners divorcing."
"OK....Lets go to the Lime Pie Tree."
"That place has had to close due to the foundation crumbling on the water side.  Don't know if it is a permanent close or not."
"Gee.  That leaves the Brasserie."
"Well, we better get in next week, because they are also closing for good very soon."
"Oh dear.  I heard yesterday that the Chinese restaurant is also closing."

I am well aware that the restaurant business is very difficult and most restaurants close within a few years...but all of our new ones are closing! 

And then, last month as we drove by the rock quarry on the other side of the river and just across the county line we saw this:

Some people say this other county is growing too fast and others wish our county was as progressive.  We got curious and drove down off the main road to see if we could find out what was going on with this new development:

Much closer and nicer than the old movie place we go to.  This even has reclining wide seats...I wonder if it will succeed?  I did notice that their ticket kiosks did not have the technology for chip cards, so someone wasn't paying attention.  I also noticed the impermeable surface of the largest parking lot I have seen in a while!