Thu, Apr 13 2006

Resignation

We have more political resignations in the Watsonville area. Judy Doering-Nielsen resigned from the City Council this week. And on the heels of Superintendent Mary Ann Mays' resignation from the Pajaro Unified School District, Associate Superintendent Terry McHenry resigned his post. Each of these positions will be tough to fill, and the ongoing unrest in the area says a lot about the difficulties of leadership in a community expanding rapidly, and perhaps too rapidly, in many directions at once. Some conflict assures a sense of balance in power, but this much angry quitting and abandonment means there are some deep-seated problems that are not going to be fixed by plugging the holes with just anybody who wants to step up to the task. As we've seen with other areas of government, including that at state and federal levels, while the public cries out for fairness and equal treatment from elected and appointed officials, special interests still drive a lot of political action. And on a local level, people who can do so often just get out of the fray and move to greener pastures, both in their political service and in their change of home address. I'm meeting more and more people who plan to take their life's earnings and leave this area because of special interests taking a larger and larger share of community resources and demanding their rights, or at least what they perceive to be their rights. I hope the folks who are making all the demands learn to be resigned to the fact that they will most certainly be left holding a very large bill for their demands when much of the rest of the population abandons the area and leaves them with a very narrow tax base.

posted at: 18:37 | category: /Politics | link to this entry