Planning for the future is a good thing. Let’s hire a consultant, pay him a chunk of money, set up a citizen committee, organize four community walk-arounds and three public hearings, and then ignore everything he says.
Sound crazy? That’s what Southeast Washington appears to be doing after a comprehensive plan for the future was presented last week in Walla Walla (see U-B article). Community members attending the meeting seemed to turn a cold shoulder to nearly every new proposal.
Among the ideas discussed, what about consolidating the city governments of College Place and Walla Walla with the county? Or maybe we’re all just happy with myriad elections, the fights over library funding and water rights, the endless negotiations, the bidding wars for big-box stores that have come to characterize this community.
Or what about some sort of planning for development zones that might begin to tie our commercial areas together? Nope. Guess we’re all too happy with stores popping up wherever.
The best outcome of a comprehensive plan is the discussion that is taking place and will continue over the next months. But what if we started from the premise that not every new idea is a bad one?