Home Upcoming Events An Open Letter Biography Logo Shirts and Stickers The State of the County Essays by Robert Connors The Challenges We Face Economic Development First Impressions Our Natural World Roadway Maintenance Mass Transit Water Issues Crime, Punishment, and Public Safety Straight Talk About Twisted Stuff Although in certain ways it may be unique, Polk County is not an unusual county. In fact, in many ways, it is average. Median in population, it is neither among the most urbanized, nor the most rural. Although it includes fast-growing urban areas, it also includes small towns of a few thousand people, and large expanses of agriculture. The problems we face in our communities are typical, in many ways, of those faced by cities all around the nation. Problems are, almost without fail, caused by people. And what people do, or do poorly, people can set to rights, or make better. This is the basic premise of these essays. That we, as citizens, can take control of our lives, reshape our communities, and make things better. While we will likely never approach a utopian state, we can leave behind a legacy of safe, clean communities for our children, grandchildren, and generations to follow. Let it be said of us that we recognized the challenges before us, and rose to meet them. Polk County has achieved a reputation, or more correctly, a set of reputations. Historically, it is a land of pioneers and achievers, of people who saw a wilderness, and made their lives and livelihoods from its forests, lakes, and streams. Economically, it has become a powerhouse, known as a source of powerful industry, of energy, of burgeoning agriculture, and the daily course of commerce which flows along its asphalt arteries. Politically, it is the well-head of leaders, men like Park Trammell, Spessard Holland, and Lawton Chiles, who have risen to the pinnacle of power in Tallahassee, and walked the halls of power in the United States Senate. Culturally, it is a diverse world, of glittering art galleries, symphonies, and gardens, as well as dusty back-road appalachias where citizens live in poverty. Our educational system strains to accommodate a growing population and increasing diversity in cultural background, language, and economic means. Polk County is sometimes used as an object of ridicule by media 'entertainers' in more urban areas nearby, who find it comforting to mask their own weaknesses by diverting attention to others problems. 'Progress' is a word much-abused for all the positive light it can cast on events which would otherwise be looked at with a jaundiced eye by many citizens. It is word of "spin doctors" and public-relations experts, eager to glean support from the public when public resources are being consumed for their clients' profit. Yet progress is what we all desire, though a thousand citizens would likely offer a thousand definitions of what progress actually is. The foundation of all social accomplishment is frank analysis of weakness, and forthright action to create strength. The purpose of this document is to address perceived problems, and suggest how real progress may be made toward correcting them. It is also intended to provoke critically-needed public debate of the issues. My own ideas have been shaped through hundreds of hours of discussion with other citizens, and continue to evolve. I particularly welcome responses and contrary opinions. Economic Development For several generations since its settlement, Polk County was dependent on very few economic strengths. Citrus, cattle ranching, and phosphate mining were financial pillars, with the result that many jobs were low paying, and often seasonal. Unemployment as recently as the mid-1980's spiked as high as 18% in the summer. Today Polk residents enjoy a much more diversified economy. Large numbers of manufacturing and clerical jobs have been created in recent years, resulting in rising per-capita incomes and improved quality of life. Much of the credit for the improved economy can be traced to the creation of the Central Florida Development Council during the mid 1980's. This group, funded as a joint public-private venture, has been successful in attracting employers from around the nation and the world. It has also boosted interest in international trade, with the result that land-locked Polk is now one of Florida's leading exporting counties. Polk has been blessed economically for other reasons as well, which appear to be largely happy accidents. We enjoy a strategic position in the center of Florida, with millions of people residing within a 100-mile radius. We enjoy nearly perfect weather. Our terrain is accommodating, and although parts are low and flood-prone, plenty of high, dry land is available. We have an adequate, and increasingly highly-educated, work force, with the talent and skills to perform advanced job functions. We have a relatively low cost of living, and a reasonable level of taxation. Because of our past success, Polk can now afford to be increasingly selective as to which industries to seek, and what incentives to offer to relocating businesses. At last we are in the enviable position of being able to seek only the best, 'raise the bar' of quality, and improve the quality of life for Polk's citizens. First Impressions Polk County is blessed with a beautiful, wooded landscape that is a delight to the eye. Rolling hills slope gently to meet clean lake shores, and country roads wind through scenic countryside that provides one of our strongest attractions for newcomers and visitors. Polk County's Commission is responsible for maintaining this resource, through the establishment Click image for larger view Lax codes allow eyesores to persist for years and enforcement of codes. It is a job that the Commission is failing to perform. Throughout Polk County, one can see examples of the lack of codes enforcement: dilapidated buildings are not only eyesores, they often pose threats to children or even travelers. Many stand along busy highways, and have remained in the same condition for ten years or more. County employees charged with enforcing the codes are typically short-handed, due to inadequate funding of the division. They are hampered even more by the lack of enforceable codes. Many times, the owners of these structures simply ignore the county's letters, and nothing is done. The image of carelessness and decay which emanates from these buildings is enhanced even further by the proliferation of billboards along our highways, and increasingly, secondary roads. In many areas up to half the existing signs are blank, yet new ones are being constructed as a hedge against future restrictions that never come. The county ordinance intended to limit the placement of these signs is hopelessly out of date, and enforcement is lax. Many existing billboards, unused for years, are slowly rotting away. While billboards may serve a purpose, increasing densities of signage is self-defeating, as the message becomes an annoying visual background 'noise'. Citizens and taxpayers have a right to travel roads they have paid for, without a constant bombardment of ugliness. It's time to determine the limits. Our Natural World Florida is a land shaped by 'growth' in a continuous form. For well over a century, Florida has grown in population, infrastructure, wealth, and most other human definitions. It has shrunk, however, when measure is taken of its wealth of fresh water, unspoiled lakes, fisheries, forests, wildlife, pristine beaches, clean air. The time has passed when we could say, without equivocation, that 'growth' is always good, and Florida's growth has no limits. Every generation has a particular challenge offered by the times in which it lives. Pioneer families saw vast forests and expansive wilderness, and were challenged to carve out roads and trails, to give names to places, and give their children a safer, more orderly world. They did their jobs so very well, that before we realized it, the challenge became slowing the juggernaut of road-carving and ordering before it became self-consuming. We live in a time when every change comes at a cost, a world, not of black-and-white, but of shades of gray. It is a time when we must weigh the impact of our own lives upon our natural world, and seek to tread more softly, for our collective weight continues to grow. One fact is undeniable, as plain as the nose on your face: natural areas have disappeared faster than anyone could have imagined. Defining what constitutes wilderness is difficult now, in a place that was virtually total wilderness only a hundred years ago. Polk County includes much of the ancient scrub of the Lake Wales Ridge, home to large numbers of extremely rare and endangered plants and animals. Because of this, we are de facto stewards of this bio-diversity, and the untold scientific values it holds. We cannot afford to fail in this responsibility. Polk County voters wisely understood this when they approved, by referendum, the creation of a program to carefully evaluate, appraise, and purchase select properties, to protect their "water, wildlife, and wilderness" resources. The Conservation Lands Acquisition Selection Advisory Committee (CLASAC) has moved carefully and deliberately to find the most valuable resources for the most reasonable costs. Every final purchase is negotiated and approved by the county commission. Will Rogers once advised us all to "invest in land. They're not making any more of it." He was exactly right. Polk County is fortunate to have a program designed to set aside the most pristine natural lands remaining in the county. Only forty years ago, there seemed no end to wild places around here. Now, the end is clearly in sight. Protecting our natural areas is one of the purest missions which government can undertake. Private enterprise can be motivated to build jails for profit, collect the trash, run the landfill, even build and operate toll roads. But nature doesn't pay rent, and if we can't save a bit of it collectively, I doubt that any will remain in the future. They say that urban man still requires nature, if only to visit, or just to know that it is there. The concept of a totally urbanized world, without wildness around the edges, is as frightening to some as Orwell's vision of a robotic populace and thought control. Every local government, be it city, county, or small town, should take up a bit of natural land to hold in our dwindling reserve. Otherwise, our descendants will think less of our own vision. When the developable land in the county, that is, the other 95+ percent, is used up, the most valued land in Polk County will be the little bit that is left in approximately its natural state. We can expect this to happen within the next 100 years, because we're already half-way there, and the pace is accelerating. The tough thing will be to imagine that little bit of natural land overrun with hikers, campers, hunters, bird-watchers, botanists, fishermen, wildlife biologists, and a hundred thousand tourists, just plain loving it to death. Roadway Maintenance About a decade ago, Polk County's political leaders decided to stop paying for roads from General Revenue. That is, they chose to spend the funds derived from a wide variety of sources, including property taxes, on other projects. New gas-tax authority, granted by the Florida legislature, they reasoned, would allow them to pay for roadway construction and maintenance solely from the proceeds of gas taxes. It was a politician's dream-come-true: a user-fee, purely and simply. The more you drive, the more you pay. A penny-a-gallon tax is worth about $1.5 million a year in Polk, and costs the average driver about six dollars a year. Despite, or perhaps because of, this blessed arrangement, roadway maintenance began to fall behind. Commissioners, despite their good intentions, couldn't bring themselves to levy more than a small part of the gas tax authorized by the legislature. Meanwhile, general revenues had been committed to redeeming bonds issued to pay for major capital projects, primarily buildings. Polk County still spends millions each year maintaining the infrastructure of transportation, yet every year it falls farther behind. Intersections become more clogged, potholes become more numerous, and take longer to be repaired, roadside weeds grow a bit taller before they are mowed. Now, we are approaching a true crisis. The backlog of deferred maintenance is threatening to overwhelm the system. Understanding how this will happen is simple. A new road consists of extensive work below the surface, extending several inches below the asphalt. This is the most expensive portion of our investment in roads. Fresh new asphalt acts much like a roof, protecting the supporting constructions of base and sub-base from the effects of water. These soft, porous materials, when wet, act much like a sponge, swelling and softening. Asphalt prevents this from happening. Eventually, though, as asphalt ages, it begins to crack and buckle. Tiny imperfections allow small amounts of water, which saturate small areas of the sub-base. The base settles, and cracks widen in an accelerating process. Eventually, the base swells or sinks, and the asphalt above breaks away. A pothole is formed, or the entire surface begins to break loose. Once water has caused enough damage to the road base, it becomes impossible to simply resurface it. The damaged base would reject the new asphalt, leading to quick deterioration. Instead, the base must be reconstructed. This requires removing all the surface asphalt, requiring a great increase in construction time, and a sharp increase in expense. Because of this reality, deferred maintenance of road surfaces comes at a potentially-huge cost. A deficit of ten million dollars in maintenance can quickly mushroom to twenty or twenty-five million when road bases begin to fail. One sufficiently-rainy season on a network of stressed roads can bring a county like Polk to its financial knees. Polk County is responsible for maintaining a network of over 1800 miles of roads. Of this, about 700 miles are paved roads, including multi-lane highways. Our roads are rated on a numerical scale of one to one hundred. New asphalt may receive a rating of 100. Heavy use or overweight vehicles can cause roads to deteriorate more rapidly. By the time a road reaches a rating of about 65, it is in danger of rapid disintegration due to water intrusion. Despite this reality, more than half our paved-road network has sub-standard ratings, and we continue to fall farther behind financially. Florida Counties are authorized to levy up to six optional cents per gallon. Polk County levies two. The last time a penny was added to the road fund was in 1992. No new moneys are being directed toward the problem, either from potential gas tax, or general revenue. Instead, it has been swept under the rug, where it grows like a poisonous fungus. The solution to this problem is obvious. The fairest way to pay for roads is to charge those who use them. Gas taxes are paid by not only by local residents, but by visitors, whether seasonal, or just passing through on regional highways. In fact, as much as thirty per cent of gas tax revenues are paid for by non-residents. There are many who would complain about gas taxes, but wouldn't balk at paying several dollars to take Florida's Turnpike, or any of a dozen other toll roads around the state. Those roads are fast, direct, and well-maintained. They can easily cost the equivalent of many months worth of gas tax for a single usage. If the roadway system is allowed to reach catastrophic condition, even the full six-cent gas-tax option would be insufficient to correct the problem. The burden would be shifted directly onto the General Fund, where the options for increasing revenue would be to levy new sales taxes, or raise property taxes. Either action would effectively shift the road-maintenance burden back to the general fund. This would also have the effect of forcing county residents, rather than all users, to pay the bill. If in fact a sales tax is to be levied, it should be utilized for new infrastructure, not maintenance. We have many miles of residential clay streets. Sales tax could be used to begin paving these roads. Maintaining existing roads is a job for the users of those roads, regardless of where they live. Adding the additional neccessary pennies of gas tax for road maintenance is the courageous, and intelligent, thing to do. Mass Transit Every urbanizing area in the United States, sooner or later, begins to struggle with the concept of public transportation. Cities mean lots of citizens, including those unable to transport themselves, whether due to physical or financial limitations. Employees seeking work need ways to get to the job site. Employers often discover the advantage of bringing workers to manufacturing jobs, rather than moving the infrastructure. Roadways begin to clog, forcing transportation planners to find alternative ways to move larger numbers of people using the same amount of right-of-way. Eventually, buses and trains become the obvious partial solutions to the transportation impasse. The debate is not typically over the form, but rather the timing and division of costs. When does the need for a service become so pressing that it can no longer be denied? Is it worth operating a bus if only a few passengers take advantage of it? How much should government be willing to spend to subsidize the service, and how much should riders be expected to pay? Public officials tend to underestimate public support for mass transit. Tens of thousands of citizens who would never expect to use mass transit still support it, for a wide variety of reasons. They may have family members who are unable to drive for reasons of age, or physical or mental disability. They may be retailers who would like to attract more shoppers to their shopping districts. They may be employers dependent upon a labor source remote from the place of employment. They may be real-estate developers eager to launch urban-renewal projects in neighborhoods near transportation connections like train stations. Every form of transportation we enjoy is subsidized in some fashion through public dollars. Our neighborhood streets, connector roads, and highways are typically build and maintained solely from tax dollars. Our airports are almost exclusively government-owned, and subsidized by local, state, and Federal tax dollars. Amtrak receives a significant, though dwindling, subsidy from the Federal government. If all these modes are supported by tax dollars, why then should we not subsidize local mass-transit? The benefits to any urban or urbanizing area are significant: mass transit provides a tremendous public service to citizens who are "transportation-disadvantaged." It provides a clear signal to prospective employers that local government is serious about serving the community, and will be a player in filling their need for workers. It helps improve property values by making retail business locations more accessible to shoppers. Water Issues Water is the lifeblood of Florida, both its strength and its weakness.The proverbial Fountain of Youth lured the first explorers here. Trade through many seaports sped our exploration and settlement. Steamships once plied our inland waterways, and vacationers came here 150 years ago to explore our crystal springs, the largest in the world. Today, our wealth of ground water is threatened, both in quantity and quality. Yet on the surface, thousands of citizens are impacted by repeated flooding. What has gone so terribly wrong? In the boom years of the 1920's Florida became notorious as a land of fast-talking swindlers willing to sell swampland to the unsuspecting. Artesian wells in Polk and around the state bled the rich limestone aquifers, until saltwater began to intrude along the coasts, and from deep underground, poisoning wells. For most of the years since the United States took control of Florida from Spain, water has been seen as the enemy. Only drain the water, citizens were told, and the Everglades will become rich farmland. They never suspected that the rich muck would quickly burn away in the wind and sun. Only ditch the Kissimmee River, we were told, and flooding in Central Florida will become a thing of the past. Today we have learned the folly of past efforts, and are slowly beginning to correct past wrongs. The Kissimmee Ditch poured billions of gallons of nutrient-rich, oxygen poor water into Lake Okeechobee, destroying rich fishing. The Everglades has been seriously damaged by urban and agricultural runoff. Polk County has been seriously impacted by past fallacies, but, unfortunately, many lessons go unlearned. Ditches intended to drain 'overflowed lands' only moved heavy rains elsewhere, causing serious flooding downstream. Yet ditching continues today, on a massive scale, without the oversight of a master plan. "Just get it off my property," people say, unmindful of the consequences. Polk County seen from the air is a maze of narrow dark lines, where ditches slash across the landscape without apparent reason. When ditches are constructed in haphazard fashion, water which once would have remained in shallow ponds and puddles, on pastures and fields, begins to gather in ever-larger bodies. These flooding consequences require even bigger ditches, to move the water somewhere else. Add the ever-growing amount of surface covered by asphalt, and the problem grows to titanic proportions. Shortly after I was first elected to the County Commission, I attended a workshop in which an engineer, hired by the county, presented a proposal to cure flooding in a particular flood way. This was a small neighborhood of homes permitted by the county in an area which had historically flooded every ten years or so. Of course, before there were homes there, no one cared about the water, and the cows would move to higher ground until the water had passed. Now, with perhaps 15 homes, the area had become a problem. Preliminary estimate for the cost of a cure: $1.5 million dollars. In addition to the cost of constructing the cure, would be maintenance costs. Forever. It would also flood a considerable area of dry land downstream, where the water would be diverted. Which, of course, would be someone else's problem to fix. I took a long look at what they were proposing, and brought out my calculator. I quickly discovered that all the existing homes and vacant lots could be purchased for less than the cost of the project. That is, the land could be returned to its natural state, and left, permanently. Today's apparent temporary wealth of water at the surface belies a decades-long trend of ever-lowering ground water levels. Pumping for municipal supplies, agricultural irrigation, and mining are the biggest users. In areas where lakes are directly connected to the aquifer, lake levels plunged throughout the 60's, 70's, and 80's. Recent rains which brought flooding in many parts of Florida have failed to re-fill lakes along the Lake Wales Ridge. Most remain several feet below their historic levels. In time, the heavy rains will cease, and lakes will again drop. The real solution to Polk's two, different, water problems lies not in more ditches, but in a systems-wide overview of where water begins its course, and where it goes on its way to lakes, the underground aquifer, or the sea. Florida's natural terrain gave us our original wealth of pure ground water. Wetland areas collected and held rain, so that it could be absorbed into the aquifer. Today, many of these areas have been drained by ditches, leading to incredible flooding of downstream areas. What we need now is a master plan. The need for every ditch should be thoroughly checked. Engineers should be utilized to develop system-wide flood models, which can be tested with and without sets of ditches. The cost of restoring certain wetland areas to their natural functions by filling unneeded ditches would certainly be less than the cost of flooding downstream, or other conceivable cures. It would also help to guarantee us all a future supply of good ground water. Planning for the future is hard to do, to turn an expression, when you're up to your chin in swamp water. It takes a while for government to catch on that the best place for swamp water is back in the swamp, not joining all the rest of the rainfall in the ditch. Crime, Punishment, and Public Safety Like many counties around the nation, Polk County has spent ever-increasing amounts of money in response to rising crime rates. About fifty cents of every 'discretionary' dollar in the county budget goes to the operations of the county sheriff's office, including jail operations. Jail over-crowding has been an ongoing problem for Polk, just as it has for many other counties. The rising crime rates and 'get tough' laws of the 1980's created a problem that has yet to subside. In 1992, Polk County authorized a study of the situation, and received a series of recommendations from experts. A primary observation was that much of our over-crowding was caused by the incarceration of non-violent offenders who pose no threat to the public. For example, a person who fails to pay child support, or pay timely. In many cases, they are jailed. Often, this exacerbates a problem. By jailing a person who is behind in child support, that person often loses their job. In many cases employment is for low hourly wages. The result is that the offender is left in worse financial condition, and has less hope of catching up. Six weeks in jail, at taxpayer's expense, is a poor solution. Outside experts suggested a host of potential alternatives to this situation, including work-release programs which allowed the offender to continue working days, while reporting to a detention camp each night after work, expanded community-service programs, and 'electronic detention,' wherein an offender wears an electronic cuff, and is confined to their home except during working hours, and an officer of the court confirms that they work daily. Of course, in each of these examples, violators would still be jailed, but many would comply with the rules, and avoid incarceration. Jail overcrowding would be lessened. Polk's commissioners largely ignored these approaches, and have now entered into a contract with a private jail operator, who will build a large facility on a rather low site west of Frostproof. Polk County will pay an increasing daily rate for the privileged of putting prisoners there. Straight Talk About Twisted Stuff I consider myself very conservative or, perhaps, frugal is a better word, when it comes to taxes. I don't mind paying them so much, it's the waste of the money that really gets to me. During my first term on the County Commission, I probably drove a few administration staff members to distraction by grumbling about the amount of electricity wasted in county facilities. When your electric bill is measured by tens of thousands of dollars a month, I figured there was lots of room for improvement. Every night the county-run high-rise office buildings would be ablaze with light, and no one seemed to take offense. The term "conservative" is about as over-used as a word can get. No one knows what it means any more. It's like that old expression "tax-and-spend-liberal." It was dreamed up as a bit of political mud, and it worked. Trouble was, the people who were calling themselves "conservative" were just as good, if not better, at wasting money, they just wasted it on different stuff. It took the public about twenty years to figure that out. It seems that if the political grist-mills can keep about a twenty-year lead on the average voter, things will never change. Being frugal with tax dollars isn't the reserved domain of one party or the other, or any particular philosophy. It just needs to be pointed out to elected officials, again and again, what waste is, and how it affects us. It's not a tough concept. Every dollar that is wasted could have been used to further their favorite cause or pet project, and could probably have done a lot more good used that way. Most elected officials' pet projects are really pretty good ideas. Most of the candidates running for office are not bad people, and they really do want to do good things. They just haven't figured out how to do it well, yet. That takes time. I come by my frugality honestly. I learned it from my father. If I left a room without turning off the lights, he let me hear about it. After all, he had to pay the bill. I have walked into a small county building one July that could have passed as a meat locker. They had the windows open at the time. When I questioned them about what was up, I was told they were "airing out the room." I bet they didn't do that at home. Did you ever notice how many government vehicles you see speeding? Especially law enforcement types. Fuel efficiency plummets at higher speed, not to mention the higher rate of costly "accidents" which occur. I personally think it would be an improvement if speeding government employees had their driving privileges suspended for a week, or longer on second offense. I bet they would all slow down, and compliance by the public would rise dramatically, too. It's hard to convince yourself not to 'fudge' a bit on the speed limit when the police speed by on their way to lunch. It helps to have a firm grasp of the cost of things when you set out to try to change government. A typical traffic control sign costs well over a hundred dollars, usually without even factoring in the overhead of the sign shop, or benefits for the employees who cut it, painted it, installed the pole and sign, or the traffic engineer who decided it was needed in the first place. Polk County has over 40,000 signs. They had to pay over $100,000 to a consultant to have them counted, because nobody had been keeping track of where they were, or what they said, so they couldn't tell if one was missing. I know a man who complains quite loudly about the taxes he is forced to pay. He grew up in this county, and comes from a fairly well-to-do family. When he was about 15, he considered it great recreation to go out at night with his friends, and spray paint graffiti on road signs and buildings. He had a stop sign and a couple of railroad crossing signs hanging in his bedroom. When he got older, his parents bought him a .22 rifle, which he used to shoot holes in speed limit signs. Now he owns quite a bit of farm land, and a very nice home in town. I figure when he gets to be about 95 or so, he might just catch up to his fair share of taxes, compared to the average person around here. I always question the whiners. Please read my open letter to the voters of Polk County Biographical Information on Robert Connors Upcoming events -- Volunteer meetings, campaign appearances, voter petition drive, and much more Logo Shirts and Stickers -- Sharp sport shirts, clever campaign tees, and great stickers Voter Survey and information sheet Visit the Polk Democratic Party web site Send email to Robert Connors Visit at www.polk-county.com A comprehensive guide to area resources Paid political advertisement, paid for and approved by Robert Connors campaign fund.