Optimism, Vision, and Leadership! Oh My!

I know for a fact several members of the school board and the borough council are repeat readers and contributors to this blog, some openly, and some anonymously.

Here is a comment that was entered last evening that deserves its own posting. No one expects our elected leaders to be perfect. We just expect them to do what's right.

Some town in Virginia is going to be mighty lucky very soon. And the loss is all Morrisville's.

George Bolos has left a new comment on your post ""Pretend this meeting never happened"":

Peter,

I voted for you last year and I would support you for school board again! As you said a few days ago, we may not have always agreed with one another (although, I have come to better understand, appreciate and agree with most of your positions on the school)but we were able to communicate constructively and without animosity or hard feelings for one another's position. We both found that we did not have to rip each other's throats if we disagreed with each other's ideas. We talked, listened, evaluated and then decided if it made sense. As a community, all our leaders seem to know how to do is "slash and burn", crush each other and take no prisoners in the name of control and power. It's not working.

The responsibility for the governing and building of our community's future by both the school board and borough council has descended to what I consider to be an all-time low. Whatever happened to people with optimism, vision and most of all, leadership skills. Currently, we have very few leaders and mostly retreads from the past. It didn't work with them at the leadership helm then and it certainly is not working now. We do have a small nucleus of elected leaders to build from who are willing to work together, but overall I give most members on both boards a vote of no confidence. I am extremely upset to see what is happening to our borough schools and the lack of business development in our community. As long as we have people who bully, who proclaim to know what is in the best interest of our community, detracting from smart, steady growth, our community will be deprived of a business base and void of well-paying jobs. We will continue to lag behind the rest of the region, sooner or later falling into decay and becoming one large blighted borough; never to recover.

The problem is and has always been simple-It's not the teachers, the administrators, the students, our borough employees or the borough manager. It's the elected officials who were voted to represent the borough and the leadership left in charge to make these things happen! It's our lack of any semblance of a local economy or people with enough horse sense to make it happen. Borough Council has had the ultimate responsibility of generating the opportunities to bring in business and have failed miserably at this task, period! They have scared away most viable opportunities and are too stubborn to accept this responsibility. Without the needed tax base achieved by supporting our current business owners and developing a more vibrant, robust business community, both the borough and its school district will soon not exist.

The residents of Morrisville should evaluate the people who have been elected in these past elections. There are two options: If you are satisfied with the direction in which the borough is going, then simply keep the same people that currently hold leadership roles in place. If you have decided that you have had enough and want to start with some fresh faces and ideas, ones that better represent your vision, then find residents who will better represent your wishes and organize now!

Good luck and Godspeed!

-George

Comic Relief

The power of (dis)belief, illustrated by Non Sequitur.