More Macon Issues: Service Delivery and more of what's wrong in Macon

I'm tremendously disappointed in Sam Hart. The man who I thought would champion greater reasoning within the chambers of the Bibb County Commission, the man would I expected to speed along this never ending debate about consolidation, the man who I thought surely recognized that those who live in the city are also represented by the county commissioners, this man has effectively decide to continue screwing the city taxpayers in the you know what. (And I am not referring to the usual orifice.)

Perhaps I am being unfair. After all, it's not as if he is on the County Commission by himself. I think, for me, I was hoping that Hart would really turn out to be the white knight he allowed himself to be portrayed during the elections.

Although, it is really interesting to see not just City Council standing together but standing together with the mayor?! Wow. It is the apocalypse? (Oh no, I forgot- C. Jack isn't in office anymore. My mistake.)

Why will the Commission not go ahead and settle the Service Delivery before the SPLOST? Why do they not seem to accept that those who live in the city also live in the county? And maybe those who live in the city DO NOT LIKE TO BE TAXED TWICE.

This is what I would really like to know: why do we keep screwing ourselves? It seems to me that what we need is very simple: less government. Less government, again, my opinion, would lead to more effective government. We have had several chances to lead to this. First would be to decrease the size of council. Yeah right, like any member of council would voluntarily give up their seat. (Again- unfair. I'm sure a couple of them would.) Perhaps if we made being on council an unpaid position, we would see this happen. After all, with as many budget cuts and furloughs and people losing their jobs you would think at least the members of council who HAVE a full time job would sacrifice their paycheck. And again, to be fair, some of them may have done so already. But I imagine such a thing would have been heavily covered by the paper. Correct me please if I am wrong.

Second: city and county consolidation. Yet AGAIN would we really see this happen? That would mean some people losing power. What I, and others, really think it comes down to is race. Yes I said it. For whatever reason we cannot seem to get over the race issue in this town. When is it going to happen? I can kind of understand how it started out that way... after all, the Civil Rights Movement was not really that long ago. People still remember it. So of course, when you have a group of people who have fought hard to gain rights- and power- then of course anything that may threaten that power being taken away would be seen by some as a threat. And they would fight hard to keep it from happening. Do I know for sure that is why Senator Brown wouldn't allow consolidation? No of course not, only he can say that. But from what I can recall, many things that he asked for were going to be given to him in exchange for this vote.

Third- The biggest problem,which seems to be at the core of everything, is the race issue here. I am so sick of this being a problem. It's going to take a few courageous people to reach across racial lines and attempt to understand someone different from themselves before change will happen. Actually, let me amend what I said: the biggest problem isn't just race but poverty.

I am calling upon each of us who is more privileged to actually help out those who are impoverished. The poor in our town affect each of us. We should not look to our government to help them but to ourselves.

Wow- I got going on a tangent. Was not my intent. But as everything else- one thing leads to another and another and so on.