Well, it has officially begun. The big shindig at the convention center to kick off the public “BUY IN” of the Comprehensive Plan was last evening and to the uninformed, it was a nice Kumbiya moment. If you can read between the proverbial lines however, the stage was neatly set for a future that will include governmental interference in nearly every part of your day to day life as well as in insurmountable increase in the cost of any land development or expansion of our local economy. These game show antics that allowed the public to answer “BIG” questions was the second step in the power grab.
Some of the activities and questions might be more appropriately reworded as follows. “Place a red dot on the picture of a property that you consider bad.” OR “Place a blue dot on the “green” space you think should be preserved regardless of who might own this property and any of their rights.” OR “Push 1 if you think we need to save our green/open space or 2 if you think we should clear cut all trees and blacktop everything.”
We were asked to choose 3 of the following or “only 1” of another list of answers and the answers that were so blatantly ambiguous that no matter what the majority or “consensus” is it can be manipulated and distorted to justify unconscionable governmental movements. Simply put, the City of Branson just started the fast hand shuffle in a 3 Card Monty scam and the citizens never saw the ace get buried in a coat pocket. The fix is in. This ultra liberal environmental fringe group will deliver exactly what they were hired to deliver. A boilerplate, babble filled report with results of their weeks of surveys and “Buy In” meetings all interpreted, skewed, and manipulated to give one alderman his connecting trail consensus, another his “we don’t need no more XYZ” and “we don’t want that kind of business here at all” consensus, and yet another alderman will be granted the right to demand that property owners no longer have the right to develop their own property.
What is lost is the minor tidbits of how these new consensus items will come to be. Land owners will be forced to GIVE easements or deeded land to the city for biking and walking trails so they can be connected to existing and other new ones. Moratoriums or freezes will be placed on special use permits or rezoning requests in an attempt to accommodate the consensus that we already have enough of XYZ type businesses here, after all that is what we learned in the Comprehensive planning process. And the ultimate land grab will be made in the name of a natural beauty. A green belt around the city will be mandated. The problem is the City won’t have to buy those lands that they want to make the green belt. Interestingly enough, every place this has been done before has an increase in the property values near the green belt. See, it seems the old “supply and demand” gets a bit out of whack when government artificially removes a portion of the supply. Now historically, in other cities where this phenomenon occurred, some of the more powerful people with the money to do it would buy or they might even already own property inside the greenbelt and some just outside the greenbelt. Those “Lucky” individuals nearly always end up making a nice healthy profit.
2 comments:
This is the close to the sales process.
The pitch has been issued repeatedly and even more behind closed doors.
My compliments on your blog, and on the billboard. Sounds like Branson politics are no better than other cities we operate in - try doing cell tower properties and you can feel our pain!
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