COMMENTARY

“If you think the Indian River County Commission should reverse its recent decision not to participate in the Lagoon Council, write or call your county commissioner, or, better yet, attend the March 3, 9 a.m meeting of the Indian River County Commission and let your voice be heard.”

MARK SCHUMANN

Albert Einstein famously said, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” It is likely also true that we will not surmount the challenges facing our communities, if we continue to practice the same divisive politics out of which those problems arose.

In announcing his presidential candidacy in 2007, Barack Obama said what is crippling governance in America today is, “…our chronic avoidance of tough decisions, our preference for scoring cheap political point instead of rolling up our sleeves and building working consensus to tackle big problems.”

Smallness, pettiness and triviality is poisoning our politics, from Washington D.C, to statehouses, to school board and county commission chambers and city halls across America.

In Indian River County, for example, County Administrator Joe Baird can hardly keep himself from disparaging the City of Vero Beach and its staff. The County Commission Baird serves refuses to participate in regional planning, will not join in a new regional effort to save the Indian River Lagoon, and is attempting, through expensive legal and legislative initiates, to force the breakup Vero Beach’s municipal utility. Across the Lagoon, he Indian River Shores Town Council seems determined to sue a neighboring city (Vero Beach), even if the legal action costs taxpayers and electric ratepayers millions of dollars.

What is the motivation for all this divisiveness? It’s complicated, to be sure.  County Administrator Joe Baird seems to have his own resentments toward the City. Bob Solari, after a contentious single term on the Vero Beach City Council, has no use for City staff. Since his election to the County Commission, Solari has, from his perch at the County dais and from behind the scenes, worked to divide.  With regard to the Shores Town Council, the most generous thing that can be said about its willingness to squander millions of dollars of public money in an aggressive, ill-advised legal actions is that those five gentlemen seem unable to rise above the litigiousness that has become the American way.

Regional problems such as the Lagoon crisis will not be solved solved through singular initiatives. Sure, each city and county impacting the Lagoon must do its part, but those effort, if they are to be truly effective, must be integrated and coordinated.

The Indian River County Commission’s recent decision not to participate in the Indian River Lagoon Council is just the kind of small minded, petty politics that it choking the life out of our democratic process.  The public deserves better, and voters should demand more.  Instead of allowing County government to be hijacked by a small, aggressive and vocal minority that supports the politics of division, so-called majority needs to stand up and be heard.

If you think the Indian River County Commission should reverse its recent decision not to participate in the Lagoon Council, write or call your county commissioner, or, better yet, attend the March 3, 9 a.m meeting of the Indian River County Commission and let your voice be heard.