A New Perspective: When divisiveness rules

I've spent the past few days talking with county commissioners and attending a few "Joe Public" meetings. The overriding topic of discussion at each event pertained to the difficulty they were having in getting local government to do what they want, versus fighting a staff-driven agenda.

During one citizen meeting, there were three county department representatives assembled to assist the group. Each of these department representatives were struggling with the proper way to assist the group — questioning county policy and how the system works.

County government has gotten so large that even its own personnel can't figure out what's going on. The right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing and no one knows the rules. Here we had government employees trying to help citizens navigate the county bureaucracy and being stonewalled by the same bureaucratic system. Planners often meet each other for the first time at these meetings.

Collier County government is that big. Three commissioners I spoke to this week expressed frustration with trying to get their agendas through the system. These are the people we elected to lead our government.

It was quite a revelation to see the bosses having less influence in the decision making process than the staff hired to carry out the bosses' orders. A common complaint from commissioners was that the staff's direction is totally opposite their own.

A majority of these commissioners are stating they don't like the way things are going, yet, they find themselves on the short end of the stick in getting something done about it.

Examples included library building designs, plans for park services, use of taxpayer monies, special taxing districts, and county studies being conducted in their districts.

County advisory board members also complained that unexplained cuts were made to their budget and their questions regarding the cuts are ignored.

It seems that divisiveness is the mode of operation for our current county government leadership. Divisiveness is noted at every level from top administrative heads to individual staff members on down to the citizens at the grass roots level. Everyone is fighting for their piece of the pie.

Is this approach intentional or the natural consequence of government growing too big, too quickly? If you think it's the latter, consider this — several commissioners I talked with complained they were given misinformation in an effort to intentionally divide the commission to accomplish staff directive.

Without a revolt from the citizens and assurance to our commissioners that it is okay to rock the boat to retake the ship, nothing is going to change.

Even if you can find a staff member who is trying diligently to assist citizen groups, any progress achieved stops when it goes to the next tier of management, where strong willed department heads are given free-rein with no oversight from the top.

When you question them, you get that patronizing "because I said so" approach to resolution. Going higher does no good and going to the highest level, our commissioners, is laughable because they aren't in charge.

If you are involved in the process of trying to get government to move, now is the time to take notes and help our elected officials become better leaders.

It's time to fix the broken window before the whole house is handed over to the government.