By: Bryan

Bryan — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 04:08:19 +0000

The problem is that the money that public officials think they will receive from these projects never appears, but the expenses do. Not only do the developers not pay for necessary improvements, they often manage to get tax breaks “for job creation”, even though too many of the jobs go to people who should not be working in this country.

I don’t blame the workers, they wouldn’t willingly come to a place like Okaloosa County. It is the developers who actively recruit them, and bring them in to increase their profits.

Our biggest problem is evacuation in case of a major hurricane. There is only one decent North-South road, and it was clogged in 1995. The high density development in Destin had increased the number of people who will be trying to use that road to escape. It is madness.

By: Steve Bates

Steve Bates — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 02:07:44 +0000

From 1980 to 1988, I lived in a rent house in an old residential neighborhood perhaps two or three miles northeast of here. Three houses were cleared from the lots east of me and purchased for the construction of a residential high-rise. That construction was rejected only because the City of Houston decided there was no way on Dog’s green earth that the nearby sewer system could support that quantity of households. Eventually, pricey individual dwellings were built on those lots (and the one I was living on). That battle was won, and in a county as close to the flood plain as Harris, the outcome was sensible.

Today, a similar battle rages about two miles north of there, and it looks likely it will be lost. The high-rise will be built; the traffic in the neighborhood will be undogly compared to its current level; the water levels during floods… well, none of us want to think about those. Times have changed. It’s more than just the fact that “[t]he taxpayers are stuck with the bills”; the taxpayers are stuck also with the floodwaters, the traffic, the garbage disposal headaches, …

By the time many of these problems manifest themselves, the developers will have moved on to wreck other neighborhoods. And nothing anyone here can do… Dog knows it’s been campaigned against vigorously… can stop it. Growth is king; money rules… and the world has gone nuts.

Comments on: Helping Their Friends

By: Bryan

By: Steve Bates