Big.Small.All.: Rule by Few
Tomorrow (Oct. 25) there is a “community meeting” on the University of Illinois campus to discuss what “we” want the future to be for Champaign County. They have already developed a preliminary plan to indicate what concrete directions they will take. (I hope to liveblog this; we’ll see how that works out.)
First, this plan was developed with input from 681 people at their community dialogue meetings. As the county population is over 180,000, this is about 1/3rd of one percent of the total population represented at these meetings. The people in attendance are chosen by no one, accountable to no one, who speak for no one, yet the views of this minority group have determined the direction of Big.Small.All. More than one person has commented on the decided left-wing tilt of the group.
Some of the goals make it all but clear that this is a politically regressive group deciding they speak for the community and insisting they are representative so they should get their way. For instance, in their heading of “Supportive and Spirited County” there is no mention of religious institutions, the very lifeblood of almost every true supportive and spirited community. Most of the county is religious. Most of the religious institutions are in the county doing good work. To Big.Small.All they have no role to play.
The Big.Small.All plan has been touted as an economic development plan. However, the Champaign Chamber of Commerce has dropped out because of the anti-business policies and massive land regulation programs that Big.Small.All is contemplating.
Another proposal that has been missed is the attempt to extract money from the University of Illinois because the have tax exempt land. That’s right, Big.Small.All thinks that the University of Illinois should reimburse the county because they don’t pay property taxes. The proposal reads: “Calculate property tax loss to school districts in the county due to the University of Illinois and other institutional property holdings and negotiate an annual compensation plan.”
Let’s be clear on this point, Champaign County would be a spot on the map in the middle of no where without the University. The University brings in the bulk of people and businesses to Champaign-Urbana. University employees and graduate students make up no small part of the population of the county. All the money put into the economy by undergraduate students would be lost. In fact, the schools themselves benefit from the presence of the University with all the free work the Education Department does with Champaign Unit 4 schools (as well as other districts in the area) such as the Great Campus Project and all those student teachers they send out. We’ll skip past the absurdity of the concept that the problem with Champaign Unit 4 Schools is simply a matter of money.
In addition, Big.Small.All proposes universal health care for county residents, encouraging redevelopment of lands to be “more compact” (i.e. persuade home-owners to sell their homes and move into apartments I guess), wetlands preservation (think of the mosquitoes in those puddles), and regulating farm land (i.e. making sure no farmland gets redeveloped despite the complete absence of any real food shortage). Every transporation suggesting, including the ludicrous but perennial “light rail” system, is designed to eliminate personal vehicle use.
Lastly, despite the fact that the cost of living in Champaign County is surely below the median in the state, Big.Small.All wants to increase the median wage in the county. Somehow I doubt they’ll be taking the right approach to creating a living wage. Certainly taxing the largest economic body in the county (the University) won’t do much to increase wages because the state certainly won’t pick up that extra cost.
I’m going to go to the meeting tomorrow, but I suspect that it will confirm my suspicions that Big.Small.All, while a good idea, has fallen victim to grievance-based politics. Namely, only people with axes to grind tend to be the ones lobbying government, so the supporters of the status quo, even if a huge majority, tend not to be involved. I expect to find the typical far-left wing muckrakers who will pretend that Big.Small.All represents the will of the community and then insist on getting their way, despite the fact they represent even the fringe of this blue county.
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