But don't worry kids, y'all didn't miss a thing because the county is still paying Mr. Bill Fruth of Policom a lot of money to tell y'all the exact same thing that we heard ten years ago about economic development in Indian River County. If fact, somebody stood up and told the entire room "Hey, I remember hearing the same thing ten years ago!"
There was a lovely package given out with a lot of dated, incomplete, but very impressive graphs and information (like the one that showed an increase in construction business, never mind that the latest figures were from 2006). The impressive folder had a picture of two men playing golf on the cover, because when y'all think of community leaders and job creation the first thing that comes to mind is, well, playing golf!
And such an important gathering of movers and shakers in the community and the entire Indian River County Commission would be covered by the local press right? Ok, let me check TCPalm again - Nope, nothin there.
And talk about Dodgertown? No, no, no, not allowed according to Joe Baird, who said that he preferred not to entertain any ideas regarding the use of the facility because he is still in the process of negotiating with baseball principles. What? Huh? Did we hear that right? Maybe we were still laughing from him telling everyone that he doesn't know why Russ Lemmon keeps writing about him because he's NEVER talked to Russ Lemmon.
Oh, the hilarity and high jinx of those community leaders! Hunnies if we didn't laugh we'd just cry. But Miss Vero is not all naysayin, because we have a little suggestion. How about revitalizing downtown? Shops, restaurants and a cute little historic citrus town that could easily be accessed by train. Yep, that's what we said...train.
http://forcechange.com/2008/11/29/florida-high-speed-rail-proposal-may-get-back-on-tracks/
Florida was built by trains and a new system over the existing rails makes sense, it's "green" and many new technologies will be used to update and expand the system. Why couldn't Vero Beach be the Florida home of new rail tech? Because of Mr. Obama's plan to stimulate the economy with the rebuilding of infrastructure, this could happen. Oh wait... maybe our Republican leaders didn't get that memo. Oh well...we'll get back to y'all in ten years and talk about what were going to do for jobs.
MWAH!
4 comments:
I was thinking I'd post something to Miss Vero's blog pretty soon, but I want to take the time to make it good. I don't want to rush it. I want to create a thoughtful post about the sort of things her readers are into - namely, plastics and libations. Of course, some of her readers are into other related polymers, but I can't be everything to everybody. I have to focus on one thing at a time.
Perhaps I should hire Mr Fruth to develop a plan for my future posting. I do love a good graph.
Interesting news! I hope they aren't going to wait ten years to get on the modern and green bandwagon. Because if they're stuck on the old ways of job creation they have another thing coming to them- and it isn't jobs.
The train is a great idea. It would open up a lot of possibilities for day trips. The old steam engines are pretty popular out west for slow scenic trips but I could see high speed rail working for us.
And I'd like to see the infrastructure for trains rebuilt across the whole country. Did you know if you want to take the train from Florida to New Mexico, you have to go all the way to DC, then to Chicago and down to New Mexico? There are a couple of other just as inane routes too but they all take 4 days as well. You may as well take the car.
I won't mention his name because he brings out wrath in those with liberal phobias but one guy said the Big 3 should "build only cars that are not primarily dependent on oil and, more importantly to build trains, buses, subways and light rail (a corresponding public works project across the country will build the rail lines and tracks). This will not only save jobs, but create millions of new ones."
If our economy gets going again, energy prices will rise again. And it will put us right back where we started. Our answer lies in green jobs in a green economy.
Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute explains how jobs are already being created and where more are needed here:
http://www.earthpolicy.org/Updates/2008/Update80.htm
Besides the money that Obama is talking about, there's already $125 million slated for the creation of green jobs. I don't think any has been handed out yet, unfortunately I lost track of what's holding it up.
Let me cast another vote for the train and investing a wee bit in the downtown area. It seems like such a great idea for our area and for Florida, that its incomprehensible to me that it just sits there on the drawing board year after year. Maybe we can trade some offshore drilling (on the gulf side of course :-)) for high-speed rail in our lifetime.
High speed rail, alas, will never happen in this area because of all the street crossings. Bad enough that the plodding freights keep wiping out idiots who try to sneak through closing crossing gates or stall on the tracks. You would not wish to risk this happening with a high-speed passenger train.
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