We Should Strive to be 'Aspirational'

We Should Strive to be 'Aspirational'

The Manatee County superintendent of schools, Roger Dearing, complained to one of our sister papers, The East County Observer, recently: "Manatee County is going to be so overbuilt and under-serviced, it's not going to be a place to live."

Simultaneously, Manatee County commissioners appear determined to win voter approval of a new charter government that would put strict controls on growth. In Parrish, the Manatee commission and many residents are angling to adopt more growth restrictions because they want to preserve their rural lifestyle.

Sadly, the growth-restraining mentality of Sarasota and Sarasota County is fast infecting Manatee.

While public sentiment - especially in the daily editorials and among elected officials and wealthy elite - appears to embrace this anti-growth posture, author and futurist Joel Kotkin shows in the accompanying article how this strategy is an economic loser.

The United States' Euro-American cities, Kotkin recently wrote in The Weekly Standard magazine, are in decline because the established elite, environmentalists and public unions want protective and destructive policies like "inclusionary zoning" and "living wages."

Kotkin writes of Southwest Florida as one of the nation's "aspirational" places ... a dynamic, changing environment. We should heed what he says: Reject Euro-values, embrace the pursuit of happiness.

- Matt Walsh, Editor