What constitutes a win

We want to congratulate Performance Door and Hardware Inc. on their recent announcement that they were expanding their facility in Kissimmee and making it their corporate headquarters. Any company involved in the construction business who has the ability to expand right now is doing something right in our book.

At the same time, the press release on this expansion, seemingly issued by the county economic development department, notes that the expansion will bring 10 jobs to the area, and the company is expanding their building space by 8,000 square feet.

Frankly, economic development department, we need to see deals of this scale at least once a month. Every two weeks would be better. Once a month brings 120 jobs a year to the area. Every two weeks brings 260 a year. That’s about the job gain of that ‘big win,’ the Lowe’s distribution center, that still remains on the economic development department’s reference list, even after Lowe’s has experienced the rollercoaster of construction demand.

Obviously, if it takes years to close a big win, the numbers say more contacts must be made to increase the frequency of those deals. But the same is true if a big win has gone from 250 employees to 10 employees.

Squeezed out

Seemingly a lifetime ago, the City of Kissimmee hired Renaissance, a consulting group from Orlando, to develop a vision or strategy for 192/Vine St. through the city. The city commission adopted the final vision report, oh, about two years ago. One of the major sections of the vision was an educational district on the east side of the city, anchored by Valencia Community College and mixed use properties to serve students there.

Well, either no one told Osceola County, or the county commission wasn’t impressed by the plan or its progress. The Orlando Sentinel reports that the county commission has appointed a nine-person advisory committee to embark on two years of meetings to study ways to improve a 5-mile stretch of 192 from Michigan Avenue to the St. Cloud canal. Says the Sentinel “The goal is to create a plan to improve the area that includes Valencia Community College, Osceola Heritage Park and an interchange for Florida’s Turnpike.”

We suspect that one of the highly possible outcomes of this advisory committee might be to adopt another district similar to the 192 BeautiVacation corridor, perhaps leveraging the same support system and staff.

The City of Kissimmee needs to get the 192/Vine project into gear. If the city’s stretch of road is to be bookended on both sides by road districts with improved amenities, while the city’s stretch continues to look like 1960’s public works projects, we can only imagine what the additional negative impact on that area will be.

Or, perhaps the city should embrace the idea of regionalism and join this group, increasing the project focus from the end of the current BeautiVacation project all the way out to the turnpike.

Here Come The Hippies

This Wednesday the highly anticipated and controversial plans for the eco-sustainable city of Destiny will be unveiled at a luncheon at the Gaylord Palms. While the sales pitch on the Destiny web site does not promise "free-love", it does rekindle many socialist thoughts and ideas born on the hippie communes of the 60's. "One Planet, One Destiny", "More than a promise, It's a commitment to change the world", and "Living in Destiny can even cure your Lumbago" are just some of the promises that the developers of the project hope will not only get the project past the current residents of Osceola County, but start the "Green-Guilt" trek of hundreds of thousands of people they hope to bring into an area that is already suffering from the forgotten sales-pitches of the past. We hope the Osceola County Commissioners and the residents of our community will not blindly fall for the promises of a developers magic elixir.

The first thing to know about the Destiny Hippie Attraction is that much of the science they are relying on to justify an "eco-sustainable" commune is not proven. The science and studies behind such concepts as ethanol production have already been deemed as short term. Ethanol is only bridge fuel additive to help transition American away from fossil fuels. This means that the long term business model of ethanol production is not "sustainable". This past year we have also seen the toll that food and non-food crops used as fuel can have on the world's economy, so there are many leading scientists that are already calling for an end to the production of food and non-food crops destined for gas tanks. This leads the WayneWho staff to wonder if even the first promise of an energy producing community will ever even be a reality at the Destiny Commune? Part of their website also talks about the community being energy independent. Does that mean that KUA, Progress Energy, and/or Florida Light and Power will not have them on their grid to supply electric to the commune? We know that many of the old 60's communes did not use electricity, but many of the residents on them did not even bath. Are these the types of neighbors we can expect?

The big problem we see with this project is that they are holding the Osceola County residents hostage with the promise of jobs that may or may not ever come. Our residents are being forced to swallow 250,000 more residents in hopes that one of us may have a shot at getting an imaginary job for imaginary companies that do not exist. The real trick is that the residents of Osceola County will never really have a shot at any of the jobs on the Destiny Commune if the true visions of the experiment are realized. To be "eco-sustainable", the socialist dream of every person has their place must be attained. Jobs that are created in Destiny, by the projects own definition, will be for those who live there. Hence the self-contained sustainable vision.

While the WayneWho staff has enjoyed discussing many of the good times we had in the 60's, we realize that the vision of those days are not ones that need to be revisited with taxpayers money. Just like the song says, "the sign said long-haired freaky people need not apply."

Twilight of Kissimmee Government?

“Also speaking during the forum were the remaining candidates for Kissimmee Commission seat 1...Due to time constraints, none of the last three candidates were asked any questions.” (Osceola News-Gazette, 9/20/08)

Leading up to the August city election, the news media could hardly be bothered to provide any coverage of the city candidates. This lethargy spilled right over to the 10% of registered voters, or about 5% of the city population, that could be bothered to go out and vote. Now, with one runoff election remaining, it appears that even the political junkies that would typically attend an event like the League of Women Voters forum can’t be bothered to care about asking questions of city political candidates. Instead, they tend to focus on issues like Destiny, a plot of land where no one currently lives, and at least according to some opinions, no one will live even after it is built out with new housing units.

And with all of this voter apathy, we are still amazed when the city commission spends all of their time on issues like lengthening severance packages (to ward off “commission zombies”), seeking empty awards (how’s that economic development marketing campaign going, commissioners?), and continuing to hope that some day the county will turn over the underutilized Beaumont complex for mixed-use development (oh, by the way, how’s the plan for the underutilized Hansel plant/city storage center coming?)

We surmise that the voter apathy over city issues is because the city commission’s focus and actions are no longer relevant to most of the residents of the city. While the campaign to combine various city and county departments or services appears to continue to have a hard time getting out of the starting gate, we think that, right now, if someone were to propose to combine city and county government, they might be surprised by the amount of support they might receive.

Already Gone

If there is anyone in Osceola County left who actually reads the Orlando Sentinel for more than just it's job listings, they might have come to notice that the coverage on Osceola County has almost ceased to exist. This has become more apparent over the past several months as the Orlando Sentinel has not only limited its coverage of Osceola County issues, but has also adopted the Osceola News-Gazette's business model of re-printing press releases from government agencies without fact-checking them first. While we think this is at least a more honorable model than the tabloid journalism that some "newspapers" like St. Cloud in the News have resorted to, it still may be the reason that their readership has plunged so badly.

Regardless of the reasons for the drop in readership, the WayneWho staff agrees that if the Orlando Sentinel is not going to cover Osceola County issues, then they should go ahead with plans to sell the 804 Emmett Street location. Our hope would be that a new owner would be able to use such a prime location in a way that would help to generate traffic into the downtown area. Another idea would be to make some of the whispers from around the county building come true and turn the Orlando Sentinel property into a parking garage instead of tearing down businesses that actually contribute to our community. If the county can force one of our favorite haunts like Susan's Courtside to move then why not pick a new target like the Orlando Sentinel, who claims to be a community partner, and leave the small businesses of our community alone. The Sentinel has better road frontage and putting a tall parking garage there might even add to the skyline that is now being created in the area.

While we will hate to see the Orlando Sentinel leave our area, we realize that just like the song says, they are probably "Already Gone" and have been for some time. As the economy gets tougher and small news areas like Osceola County lose their sales and advertising potential some things are just going to have to change. The Sentinel may have to follow the same path as publications such as El Nuevo Dia who has pulled out of the Central Florida area. The WayneWho staff misses the days of the Sentinel's honest and more complete coverage of Osceola County news, but we understand that it is time we say good-bye.

Untouchables

Commissioner Jerry Gemskie has wasted no time, now that he has won his second (and final, due to term limits) term as a city commissioner. His move to double the city manager’s severance pay shows that he intends to spend the term making sure it is as difficult as possible for any future commission to take any actions that run counter to Commissioner Gemskie’s All American vision of Kissimmee.

It was not for any market pressure or competitive reason that Commissioner Gemskie proposed the contract change. As he stated at the meeting, and was quoted in the Osceola News-Gazette, he did it to prevent a “rogue” future commission majority from taking any action against City Manager Mark Durbin by making it more expensive to do so. We surmise that in Jerry’s world, “rogue” refers to anyone who does not subscribe to his policies or beliefs.

Now, the “Fire Mark Durbin” message was such a loser in the 2006 election that it hardly came up in the 2008 election. But apparently Jerry’s keen sense of what is going on in the community has told him that just around the corner are “rogues” or perhaps “commission ninjas” waiting to pounce and throw Mark Durbin from the 5th floor observation deck.

We also note that the commission can only do simple math, doling out severance packages in 90-day increments. Perhaps they need to get back out to the real world, where corporations tend to give out severance packages based on the amount of time the individual was employed by the corporation. Even a package that contained 2 weeks of base, plus a week of severance for each year of service, would have totaled 22 weeks this year for Mr. Durbin, 4 weeks (1 month) less than the half-year package they just approved. But hey, it’s only funny money that they never intend for any “rogues” to spend, right Commissioners?

Vote them out when?

A recent “Ticked Off” column in the Orlando Sentinel contained a rather lengthy complaint from the wife of a retired Kissimmee firefighter. Without reprinting the entire entry, the writer was upset that her retired spouse did not receive an annual cost-of-living increase in his pension, while singling out the city manager for receiving annual raises. She went on to note that she was in the mood to vote out all of the elected officials who allowed this to happen.

While we sympathize with the position, especially in these trying economic times, we have to wonder: Has anyone told this person that the time to vote out those elected officials has passed? After all, the two incumbents running in this year’s city election were re-elected last week. The other two potential incumbents won’t be up for re-election for two years. The only city seat that this person will be able to cast a ballot on at any time in the near future is the runoff for Seat 1, in which there is no incumbent in the election.

Based on the dismal turnout for the recent city election, we wonder how many citizens are out there who are going to be rather disappointed when they show up at the polls on election day in November, only to find out that less than 10% of the city’s voters, and less than 5% of the city’s population, have already made the decision for them.

Survey Says!

The 2008 Access Osceola viewer survey is making the rounds as the City of Kissimmee tries to make a determination on whether or not the broadcast wing of city government should continue or be cut. Like so many other cable stations, Access Osceola is feeling the affects of the bad economy on its advertisers and has been forced to cut back on its slate of shows.

Some examples of the cuts are evident in a new season of episodes that have remained unchanged for years. The long running 'gov-com' currently known as the City of Kissimmee Commission Meeting is being scaled back due to budget cuts and will now be called "Three Men and a Mayor." The basic plot of the show will stay the same, but many of the familiar faces will no longer be on the show. Comedy will ensue as Commissioner Gemskie and Commissioner Irizarry fight to be noticed over the zany antics of Mayor Swan while the city manager tries to keep control. Another show that has made the cut is "School Board Members Can Dance?" with only a couple of new celebrity judges. School Board Member Jay Wheeler will continue for another season as the impatient and feisty dance instructor whose nasty comments make the show a must-see event.

We would like to make sure all of our readers take a moment to visit the City of Kissimmee website to take the Access Osceola viewer survey for themselves. The 'gov-com' you save may be your favorite, so make sure you vote.