Struck A Nerve

It seems that the WayneWho staff struck a nerve when we said that raising taxes to beautify East U.S. 192 was a bad idea and should not be done under the false promises of economic development through amateur sports venues. While we have said our piece about the original reporting of the recommendations sought by the Osceola County Commission by its appointed committee, it seems that we need to comment on the defense strategy that is now in full swing by the chairman of the committee, Bob Whidden. It seems that the East 192 Enhancement Committee is now trying to explain and defend recommendations that make little sense at all. Mr. Whidden's defensive tone in an Orlando Sentinel article, and in a letter to the editor of the Osceola News-Gazette about a plan that is only supposed to be 'tentative' seemed kind of strange, so we figured we would do a little digging.

If you do a quick search on the old Google you will find that Mr. Whidden, of R.J. Whidden and Associations, appears quite a bit. Hits on articles about the 'do-over' city of Destiny, the county killing Development of Regional Impact (D.R.I.) known as Green Isle, and any of a number of other urban sprawl developments that have left our county in shambles, all appear with just a few mouse clicks. Each development that has enjoyed the consultive power of Mr. Whidden and his associates has been sold to our community as needed, an enhancement, or something that needed vision to understand. What we have been left with is a whole lot of nothing, especially jobs, which is exactly what the East 192 'Beauti-staycation' plan will be - nothing. We do not feel that Mr. Whidden deserves all the blame for the state of our community, but he was definitely one of the architects of what we are trying to clean up today.

Mr. Whidden is now trying to deny our original reports that the committee was focusing on items such as 'pretty light polls and whimsical landscaping even though in the original article he was noted as saying "A lack of landscaping and maintenance from some businesses has also resulted in blight." In other words, East 192 has a case of the uglies and the 192 Enhancement Committee wants to charge all of us to give the area an extreme makeover.

For those of us who actually drive 192 every day, the area between St. Cloud and Kissimmee looks a whole lot better than 192 between John Young and the Sam's Club before 535. The nice open areas of green space and grazing land dotted with community draws like the Osceola County Flea Market are not exactly what we would call blight. Yeah, it might not be Disney Village, but it's home. Maybe Mr. Whidden and County Commissioner Quinones believe that our home gives a negative impression of our community to the tourists who happen to stray to far off the map, but for most of us, we like it. We all wish that the people who drive on the road with us could speed up and at least obey the speed limit signs, or that the road would actually be widened, but that is just us dreaming.

As far as the argument about all of the closed businesses, we did a quick count from between Hoagland and 535 to compare to the area between Kissimmee and St. Cloud and we found that their are vastly more empty businesses in the area that has already gone through a 'Beauti-vacation' than in the area that has been, according to Mr. Whidden, totally neglected by the county. If the East 192 Enhancement Committee wants us to pay to make our area look as bad as the West 192, they are just plain crazy.

Mr. Whidden also tried to give more explanations on how his committee planned to have the residents of this community pay for his plan to clean up what he calls the 'Junk Drawer' of Osceola County. We are glad to see that he backed-up the information that we had about the county looking at a special taxing district to help pay for the project, but he also noted some other areas where local taxpayers would have to chip in. The committee had suggested, but was not going to be limited to, impact fee relief, target industry incentives, grants all of which are nothing more than government's attempt at subsidizing businesses by taking more money from taxpayers. Great Plan.

Please don't get us wrong. It would be nice to improve the appearance of the area, but the county and the taxpayers can not afford it. Looking at ways to spend more money while were are still in the process of firing people to balance our budget shows that there is a huge disconnect between the realities of our surroundings and the fantasy world that some want to live in. It is time we get real.

How about this. Just leave 192 alone. Why can we not just have a government that does its job instead of raising taxes to do things it ought not to be doing. Police, Fire and 'quality' roads are all we are asking for. Government could easily reduce our taxes if it put its focus on these areas. If it takes being neglected to keep a little green space and some of our money in our own pockets, we vote for being neglected. As far as being a 'Junk Drawer' of the community, we find that very insulting and we wish Mr. Whidden and his committee had a little bit more pride in our community.