At Tuesday’s Board of Commissioners public meeting, Commissioner John Douglas made a motion to defund The Center for Community Preservation and Planning. Thank goodness there was no second, and this ill-conceived motion died.

Douglas led the charge in commission meetings to kill the funding for the 2050 Plan, which we believe first should have been given time to be modified. Yes, there was a lot of money spent on the Baseline Ordinances plan; but if we spend a lot of money on a product in our home that we couldn’t get a refund on, would we just throw it away or try to modify it?
The work The Center itself does is separate from the 2050 Plan, which it was a facilitator of. The information that has been provided to different county and city agencies during the last few years has proved to be very valuable in the recruitment activities of those agencies.

We suggest that if Douglas is so insistent on making sure that The Center doesn’t exist, that he come up with a plan on how the county is going to provide the information currently being provided by The Center to help attract new industry to our community.

Such a proposed plan should include a cost in manpower and resources. We are sure that establishing such a county agency would cost much more than what the BOC is providing to help keep The Center and its activities alive.