COMMENTARY

MILT THOMAS

Home rule has become a rallying cry in recent years against federal intrusion, but it is just as applicable to special interests trying to gain influence over local elected officials. An excellent case in point is the last Sebastian City Council meeting, where attendees witnessed home rule in action.

To some old timers, Sebastian will always be the kid brother and sister to Vero Beach, but the reality is that the city of Sebastian is now the largest incorporated municipality in Indian River County and city officials plan to chart their own course for the future.

Down here in Vero over the past few years, a struggle has existed for the soul of our city between the people whose forbearers made it such a special place along with those who want to keep it that way, battling the will of transplants who want to either change its character to resemble the large cities they came from or minimize it as a needless duplication of county governance.

Some in the latter group also subscribe to a paranoid philosophy that somehow government is our enemy and every action is a tyrannical usurping of our individual freedoms. At one time, it was a philosophy confined to rural western states where survivalists thrived, armed and ready for the apocalyptic struggle sure to come. The common angry, white Christian makeup of those groups closely resembled the makeup of the Klu Klux Klan. With the election of a  black president, that apocalyptic philosophy spread like wildfire across the country, morphing into a tea party movement whose aim was to “take back our country.”

We here in Vero Beach have more or less taken that element in stride, but to see it in action up in Sebastian last Wednesday, only magnified to me the difference between what Vero was and is today. The red-shirted, acrimonious, anti-Seven50 activists, most of them from Vero, were determined to force Sebastian out of the Seven50 planning process. They had been successful at many other levels in Indian River County and along the Treasure Coast, dominating public forums and bullying elected officials into compliance.

So it must have been frustrating for them to encounter such resistance in laid back, rural Sebastian. The elected City Council is not dominated by good ol’ boys, but is as diverse politically as its population and have been known to disagree (they voted 3-2 in favor of a stronger fertilizer ordinance at that meeting).  But like siblings who argue with each other but stand together when outsiders threaten them, the City Council would not hear any of the arguments being presented by the red shirts. Individually, they may or may not agree with some of the points being made, but Sebastian, true to our American revolutionary roots, was not going to let some outside group, whether red shirts or redcoats, tell them how to run their lives.

So what if they want to take part in the Seven50 planning process. Maybe they simply want  to better understand the issues all of South Florida will be facing over the next half century – drinking water, traffic congestion, pollution, degrading our natural environment. If you think those are just big city problems, I remember a time when Ft Lauderdale was just a backwater town far from the city of Miami.

So to the citizens of Sebastian, I say do whatever it takes to keep your small town soul and don’t let anyone bully you into giving it up like we seem to be doing down here. Our beaches are still the best, but won’t be for long if we bury our heads in them.