Voters should choose progress Tuesday
Tuesday is a critical day in our city’s history. More appropriately, Tuesday is a critical day in our city’s future. Tuesday is the day when Demopolis citizens will go to their designated polling places and cast their votes for mayor and their respective city council people.
While this election is important simply because it is an election, the races take on added meaning given that tenuous state of our community. And, make no mistake, it is tenuous.
The economy has been down for some time. And while we keep hearing there never actually was a recession and that the recession is over and the recession is almost over, the truth is none of us really knows what happens from here.
As a community, we sit poised to move forward with the development of certain projects that could ultimately land us new industry. New industry means more jobs. More jobs mean more people. More people mean more tax dollars. More tax dollars mean better infrastructure. Better infrastructure means better quality of life.
Those are the issues in a nutshell. It boils down, quite simply, to one question. Where do we want to be as a community?
If we desire progress in the aforementioned direction, we must cast our votes in favor of leaders with unselfish, unhindered vision. At the very least, we have to cast our votes for the available individuals who are closest to that description.
The truth is that this election is about our future. And Tuesday must represent a vote for progress.
For far too long, our city has been hampered by petty politics. Decisions have been made or not made based on who is or is not in support of a given idea and not the idea itself.
Board members have been appointed based upon personal relationships rather than qualifications.
The buddy system of small town politics has hamstrung the city, wasted its taxpayers’ dollars and forced it to accept one ridiculous outcome after another.
That is what is at play here.
There are a number of issues that will be thrown about in the general rhetoric surrounding the races. But it is not black vs. white. It is not wrong vs. right. It is not the fire department vs. the police department. And it is not potholed streets vs. freshly paved roads. It is a matter of vision vs. shortsightedness.
As a community, we can no longer allow ourselves to be hindered by the childish bickering that leaves city business undone. We need leaders whose greatest interest is the good of the entire community, not just the one district, one neighborhood, one street or one individual.
Our city must demand leaders who stir us toward progress rather than those who merely stir the pot.
Four years from now, we will either look back on this election as the time that we took steps toward making ourselves better for the long haul or as the day we handed a blank check to selfish, nearsighted children who dress as men and talk as men but have yet to put away childish things.