Interlocal Meltown

As many of our readers know, the WayneWho staff has frequently written articles that in one way or another favor economic developemnt in the Osceola County area. We believe that our community must find ways to create high paying jobs in a sensible, economical way to make this an area where our grandchildren will continue to live many years from now. The problem with this belief is that our local governments are basically run by people we would not trust selling cotton candy at the fair. At least not as a sales team where their only focus was selling said cotton candy. As individuals, maybe their would be some hope, but as a group or a team, there is no way we would trust them with our investment.

You may be wondering what this has to do with economic development, so we will explain our thoughts on this. Creating economic development is not as difficult as it sounds if you can put the right tools in place. There are basically three components you need to build and sustain a strong economy. First, you must have a good transportation infrastructure to move goods and people around. This means roads, public transportation, rail freight, shipping, air transport, and anything else that companies might need. Secondly, you need a community where people want to live. A community that is affordable and offers benefits to familes that live in it. Third, and most importantly, you need a highly skilled and in most cases with today's econonmy, you need highly educated people. So most would say the key to all economic development is how well our schools perform, not only to create an environment where people want to move here so their kids can go to a great school, but also because you need a highly trained workforce to do the jobs that create economic development.

Simple Right??

In a School Board Update e-mail sent from School Board Member Jay Wheeler, that as he disclaims it, is not an official message from the Osceola County School Board, he reports on a breakdown between governments on an interlocal agreement. Mr. Wheeler reports that "the Board tabled an interlocal agreement with the City of Kissimmee about the new school going in at the Sports Authority. The City has inserted language about the need for the school district to pay for an excessive number of police calls." We are not sure how the school board could be upset by this when they agreed to it when the highly debated school was approved not too long ago. Jay's arguement is that, "roughly 70% of these students reside in the city of Kissimmee" which is not true based upon the numbers reported by the campus that is operating right now by the Osceola County jail because the students there are troubled. These are the same students that will be moved to the Sports Authority school. The school board itself even reported on the possible problems that they have had at the current facility in the past and reluctantly agreed that the Sports Authority School could pose some issues where police calls would be necessary. Of course the City of Kissimmee believed the School Board would honor their side of the deal and approved the Sports Authority School for troubled youths. And now the battle rages on over what was really said and what was really agreed to.

Mr. Wheeler then goes on to attack the City of Kissimmee and reports that it is the children of the City of Kissimmee who pose the real problem in our schools because 70% of the kids that have to attend this school come from the city.

Maybe these folks just do not understand the concept of working together or at least the concept of honesty. If our school board and other local governments are going to continue to fight like this can we really change our economic course? How can we create a highly educated work force when we can't even finalize a deal on a school that should never have been built in the first place? And for all those candidates out there running on the false promise of economic development, what are you going to do about these types of situations? The answers to these questions may mean more to the future of our community than you will ever know.