Comprehensive Plan or Prefabricated Rubber Stamp

Every good business makes plans. We do not disagree with the concept of planning. The City of Branson will be holding a comprehensive planning open house this Thursday. Many of us hope the City Council will actually listen and maybe even truly hear what the public has to say. It is possible. While all anecdotal evidence is quite to the contrary, there are still a few of us die hard optimists that hold out hope that our answers to the surveys will not be used against us in the near future. Unfortunately only time will tell.

After little or no debate the City of Branson decided to spend $175,000 with a Colorado firm that is known for this work. The contract is signed and the money is already spent, so that debate is now over and, wasteful or not, we are all going to have a comprehensive plan to either help form the future or to be used to direct us toward the future desired by a handful. The actual results, if anything more than repeatedly overused boiler plate, will be so loose in exactitudes that this administration will be able to “interpret the results” to their own desires.

This same maneuvering has taken place allover the country. The city bought and paid for a report that will be specifically designed to point the way down what ever path they want it to. Let’s just take one very simple example of a question:

One of the $175,000 questions is:

3. Which of the following makes you most proud of Branson?

Natural Beauty
History
Music/Entertainment Industry
Recreational Opportunities
Community Values
Small Town Feel
Business Environment
Family Orientation


Now if you look at each of these fantastic answers, you might assume that most people would or at least could check all of them. However, let’s look at just a few......

“Natural Beauty” I am sure many of you have heard the old saying that beauty in the eye of the beholder, well even in Branson, Missouri that is very much the case. Many love the hills and trees out in the county that stretches for miles as our visitors approach this little town in the Ozarks. Some see beauty in the lakes and other waterways that were built by man by flooding and killing some hundreds of thousands of acres of those trees. Some see absolute beauty in the neon and incandescent flashings along the short strip of highway in this wonderful place surrounded by all the trees and wild life. Some see the beauty in the natural talents displayed on stage in the big nasty buildings built on land cleared of all the trees. OK, I know a long stretch of the imagination, but these are only a few ways to interpret the fact that many of us who took the online or in person surveys and checked a box next to the words “Natural Beauty”. Knowing the history of nearly ALL government groups, I am willing to bet that the current administration will use my checkmark to further their own agenda.

“History”… What history? The history of The Presleys and Bald Knobbers and Boxcar Willie? Or that of a wonderful fictional book based on real lives of local people some 100 years ago. Or perhaps the “History” of entrepreneurial individualism with a splash of liaise faire attitude. Will an overwhelming percentage of checked boxes on this line in the questionnaire mean we will preserve 100 year old motels that are falling down in the name of “History”? Perhaps it will mean that we discourage “new” kinds of entertainment under the guise of preserving history. Most likely, it will mean different things over the near future. It might mean one thing on Tuesday and another on Thursday. That is the beauty of not being defined in the question.

“Community Values”…. This my friends is Branson newspeak for “BIG BROTHER” if there ever was one. In the name of “Community Values” we hear loud and clear that we don’t want “those type” businesses here. Or we already have enough of “that kind of business”. Values should be defined in the home and at your church, NOT at city hall. This City Hall not only wants to define “Values” but determine what is best for you. Our City administration has decided that they need to develop within their “Comprehensive Plan” what they determine to be our “Community Values” and has even gone so far as to include that in a question placed before the public. The content of those “Values” is not disclosed at this time. Those definitions can be developed in the future at a city council meetings. PLEASE, does that not scare anyone else!