Comments for Commish emails portend panel’s direction at http://www.theind.com , comment 1 to 5 out of 5 comments http://www.theind.com Sun, 19 May 2013 03:22:20 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://www.theind.com/news/indreporter/7119-commish-emails-portend-panels-direction#comment-11505 Cajun, I bet we differ on the level of and role of regulations. How bare is too much to bear? Basically on planning, I don't think the market has unfettered mastery and wisdom to meet and satisfy all needs in society. Some needs just aren't economic or profitable. Some situations develop into a status-quo that doesn't necessarily make the best sense, but, we keep doing what we've always done until we're told not to, or when we come together to address problems, such as: resource use, poorly un-designed cities, pollution, no space for landfills, problems with homelessness and mental disease, alcoholism. Some of those problems can be managed by non-profit charities and not-for-profit business concerns, funding can be raised privately, but probably needs a government backstop to ensure year-to-year stability in funding. We obviously need a strong regulator in the financial arena, nationally, to keep the markets fair, and a willingness in the elected bodies to be independent of financially vested interests who would influence them, ensuring the regulator is weakened, allowing "too big to fail" to concentrate and rise. Anyone that operates in the mom-and-pop world encounters the problems of competition at an unequal level. We just turn our people into workers for faceless others rather than independent community proprietors and entrepreneurs. I don't see how depopulating communities of their bourgeoisie does us any good. Let's end this ramble for now. Bare bones doesn't work for me, and it's hard to miss what you have til it's gone. I think that's the situation we're all presented with. Also, the US Government was created in a simpler time, with less globalization, to govern a country with 95% fewer people we now have. Expecting it to keep up with, be sufficient to the task of, and more closely representative of the electorate is a huge task. There's a lot of power sitting in 535 chairs, and especially, in 41 of those chairs. 41 out of 300+ Million. - Unempirical Observer Tue, 19 Oct 2010 17:55:54 +0100 http://www.theind.com/news/indreporter/7119-commish-emails-portend-panels-direction#comment-11471 Observer -- " I find most people want a balance in one basket of decentralized governance along with a strong and fair regulator to referee the ball-field, ensuring all are playing by the rules and enforcing regulations, like law and order, pollution" That's it!! That's right what government should be, and not one damn thing more. I don't know about the "planning" part, but I'm right there with everything else. If government would just enforce the laws, strictly and fairly, equally.....enforce some very bare set of regulations.....and stay out of everything else, we'd all be MUCH richer, freer, and happier. - ragin_cajun Mon, 18 Oct 2010 17:02:07 +0100 http://www.theind.com/news/indreporter/7119-commish-emails-portend-panels-direction#comment-11463 I agree with Ragin_Cajun on this one. Let's consolidate fully. I would offer though that we could have some form of volunteer representative community councils for each of the smaller towns, and even sectors of Lafayette the City, and unincorporated areas of the Parish, so as to provide that level of localized direction of planning, services, direction of resources, accountability and responsiveness that we know we all want. This happened in Bolivia after the existing power structure collapsed, and it has worked I am told with some success. Generally I find most people want a balance in one basket of decentralized governance along with a strong and fair regulator to referee the ball-field, ensuring all are playing by the rules and enforcing regulations, like law and order, pollution and a certain level of planning, much as even the pentagon does, to anticipate needs in our economy and security. These fields really all go together. Also, we could and should still explore the option of hiring a "non-partisan" manager of government rather than worrying about where the elected leader comes from. The manager could be hired from out of town/(parish) entirely. Still, if any cities are left with room to expand, and want to do so in conflict with each other, and the planning for orderly expansion of infrastructure is left lacking, then conflicts within the government and the governments (or councils in this instance) will result, and it's going to be difficult for the council's manager or the elected president to referree these disputes much less be a neutral party. Does the unincorporated area have a greater interest in preserving it's tax base and block the City of Lafayette from expanding, and if that situation arises, how does the City-Parish Mayor-President stand on the issue? It's more cut and dry if it's Parish and City versus small town, but obviously this all gets murky pretty fast. Let's just abolish all the fiefdoms and unify the tax base and distribute it according to the need (as long as the needy aren't wasteful ruralized-suburbanites hogging all that concrete) No more bedroom communities. They lack commercial and industrial tax base, and they couldn't pay for their own residential infrastructure needs anyway. - Unempirical Observer Mon, 18 Oct 2010 15:11:51 +0100 http://www.theind.com/news/indreporter/7119-commish-emails-portend-panels-direction#comment-11454 Man, if the other towns would go for it, I think total consolidation is definitely the way to go. One tax base, one tax rate for everybody whether you live in town or the parish, one council and one administration. do away with lafayette police and have just one big sheriff's department, too. - ragin_cajun Mon, 18 Oct 2010 14:07:18 +0100 http://www.theind.com/news/indreporter/7119-commish-emails-portend-panels-direction#comment-11446 I vote we consolidated the entire parish including the small towns. Or, succeed from Louisiana. - Norma Desmond Mon, 18 Oct 2010 12:58:08 +0100