Vision, versus the view from the deck

     Newspaper headlines that Carroll County's residential taxpayers bear the third heaviest burden in the state verify what some of us have been saying for years: It's time for homeowners to have some help paying the bills for the services they want, unless you like the idea of no discounts.
     Other counties, here and in other states, get discounts. They get a break on the costs of keeping kids out of portable buildings, and having practice and playing fields, and nice fine arts centers in the schools. They have some help for the parks and the trails and the senior citizen centers that get so much use. There is money for the emergency services that come out and pry us out of our vans and trucks and commuter zoomers when we pile into each other on the roads while texting or driving too fast.
     But here in Fortress Carroll, we go it alone. Other counties get some welcome revenues from their economic development, but here, we lag. Not for a lack of effort, nor for a lack of vision on the part of current elected leaders and assembled staff. It's our inconsistency that is doing us dirty.
     It seems that, as voters, we can't decide what we want. Do we want help with revenues from business and high-tech industry, or not? Or do we just want to cut all spending for the middle classes and let the sports and schools and the rest of it dry up so we can become a little island of West Virginia in the midst of the more progressive communities of central Maryland?
     Eight years ago, the message to me was clear: We want someone who will make the tough choices to bring light industry and business revenues to Carroll County. We want better communications choices, broadband, better utility infrastructure, more recreational and leisure options for an increasingly diverse spectrum of wants and needs. And we didn't want to have to pay for it with higher property taxes.
     So we invested in professional assessments which confirmed, yes indeed, that the county had been falling behind the rest of the state. The revenues from industrial and commercial sources were half that of our neighbors. The absence of an interstate, we decided, was little more than a convenient excuse.
      There were things we could do, so we set about doing them, not the least of which was developing a master plan that integrated jobs, homes, schools and community resources. It was labeled "Pathways," perhaps a fatal appellation in an area that is such a bastion of anti-progressive ideas. In Fortress Carroll, you can call it a road, or a Lane, or even an alley, but that "Pathways" stuff sounded kind of artsy, and artsy might be liberal, and liberal is a no-no. You can chop down all the trees and put in a housing development called ''shady woods," or pave over the farmland and build a hundred houses in a neighborhood called "the fields," but don't use those terms that sound like something from left of center. Or even center.
      Any time you have a review of a master plan, which is required by Maryland law every six years, you have the battle between the property rights people and the planning people. Planning people are portrayed as socialists; property rights people like to think of themselves as guardians of good ol' American constitutional rights. There will be war between the factions, every time.
      It so happens that in this county, the most organized anti-planning people are in the business of selling off farmland and creating a cash crop called housing. They really don't give too much thought to the needs created for schools and all the things that additional families require. It is not in their portfolio to provide remedies to crowded commuter routes (though they will vociferously object to commuter rails or mass transit because they don't want "those" people moving here, or coming up on the train to rape and pillage.
     And all they have to do to win over the public is convince you that you have a right to keep the view you have now from your back deck, even if you don't own the hills beyond. They sell the view, and kill the vision.
     Perhaps the opponents to plans and new employment zones simply believe they can keep the view forever. Perhaps they lack the ability to see that the changes will be gradual, and brick and glass two-story employment centers are going to help pay the bills. Perhaps they can be convinced that there will be no self-storage units there in five years if better planning is not put in place. Or more housing, as far as the eye can see.
     You can plan with a vision, and manage costs, or you can delay or deny the need for planning and zoning, and hope that the view stays as it is -- and that you can afford to enjoy it.
     Someone said that failing to plan is planning to fail.