Wisdom and Perspective

One of the unexpected benefits of starting this blog has been to hear from long-time friends who I haven’t spoken with in a while. I received a very thoughtful email from Carol Atkinson that provided tremendous wisdom and perspective about the airport relocation effort.

Carol, many of you will remember, served on the Airport Authority from 1988 until 1992 and then served for two terms as a Bay County Commissioner. She has provided tremendous leadership for this community, and she graciously has allowed me to share the email she sent me with readers of this blog.

I was on the Airport Authority from 1988 until the day I was elected to the County Commission in November 1992, and was Chairman the last 21⁄2 years of that term.

…For the three previous years, the Authority had been searching for a relocation site, knowing then that relocation was the key to economic growth in Bay County. Their search was intensive, and it was not fruitful.

One of the significant reasons there did not seem to be a future for a relocation project was that there were no available parcels for sale anywhere in the County. If you could put your hands on a 1985/1986 map of Bay County, you would be able to see that slightly under 50% of the non-developed property in the County was owned by large entities who did not sell land.

If someone had suggested that within 10 to 15 years that "no sell" philosophy of those entities would change, he or she would have been laughed out of town.

This community is blessed with a newly expanded water-treatment plant and a man-made source of clean drinking water at the Deerpoint Reservoir; a waste-to-energy facility which turns our garbage into fuel rather than into large, toxic landfills; and a modern waste-water treatment facility which will meet our growing needs for decades to come.

We take these things for granted -- but there are communities throughout the State whose current governing bodies never cease to lament the fact that their predecessors did not make the hard decisions it would have taken to leave their communities with these "blessings".

The relocation of the airport to better serve Bay County is but another in a long line of well-thought-out and hard decisions which were made for the continued economic growth of our County.

Wise words we should all keep in mind.