Thus far the study has been professional and timely, but end driven. It appears intent to grease the skids to wider roads that accommodate heavier traffic at greater speeds. Its assumptions are biased toward personal freedom, material wealth and economic development, and against personal responsibility, spiritual well-being and community development. The very questions of the road's purpose and need dangle like an incomplete sentence. It is sad commentary on our politics that we permit a public process that presumes an end result while it avoids meaningful dialogue with those who would suffer its indignity.
Justice grants such power only to the people on the ground.
The opportunity in the moment lies not in dividing ourselves for or against the proposed roadway, but in the possibility that we might join together, the better to ask who we are and why we are here. The county planning process is intended to create just such an opportunity for people, ideas and information to come together. It invites the community to become something greater than the sum of its parts as it offers area residents a substantive alternative to standard political fare. By taking such an initiative, the community seeks to fulfill a responsibility that it otherwise abdicates. County land use plans are notorious for becoming dusty shelf ornaments.