Thursday, February 09, 2006

PEDCo and Pilots and Planning, Oh My!

Lessons learned in development?

The Pueblo Chieftain trumpets Finalizing Plans for Air Force Pilot School.

That’s interesting news. Especially, as the article reports, 

In Pueblo, the city’s decision to join the bidding was never reported publicly. Economic development leaders now say they think the quiet approach was another of the keys to the city’s winning bid.

I suppose this was, at least in part, due to the interesting results of the failed PEDCO effort to attract a Wal-Mart distribution center to Pueblo West, last year. All the public discussion would seem to have driven Wal-Mart away. So now, it appears, that the City Fathers feel they need to negotiate deals ‘in the proverbial dark’, without the benefit of public input.

It’s not that I’m opposed to the US Air Force. Cripes, I was raised in the Strategic Air Command (SAC). I did the Cuban thing at Offutt “ground zero” AFB. Looking Glass’ midnight engine run-up sang my lullabye, for cry’n out loud.

What concerns me is that the City Fathers feel they can’t trust the honest opinions of the citizens who elected them. At least that is what I preceive of this sudden announcement after secret negotiations.

And this from Mr. Marvin Stein,

“The only noise military leaders like is the sound of soldiers at work”?

That’s rather indicative of a sense of paranoia I think unbecoming of someone supposedly working in the best interests of the community. I’m a military leader, retired. That statement is totally bogus. It gives little credit to the military and even less to public representatives who believe it. Not to mention newspapers that accept it. It gives the impression that the military is NOT under the control of civilian authorities, if you read it in a particularly ‘dark’ manner.

THIS is not, in my honest opinion, the way to do business; especially that conducted by a government. It smacks of closet agreements and under-the-table exchanges. This is not a precedent that should be established and accepted by the people who live here. It may have worked out THIS time, but there is another time to come where it could be VERY bad. That’s why open negotiations are best. They help preclude anything going horribly awry.