It’s time for elected officials, healthcare groups to step up

I think almost everyone agrees that a process to control growth and support infrastructure and services to Sussex County must occur relatively quickly. Let me admit, I am an import to this area (my wife is not), and you could not drag me back to where I came from. I love this place!

However, the city I came from faced the same issue. They never met a developer they did not like. Eventually they came to understand the impacts of uncontrolled and unsupported finances of growth, and added an impact fee, per house, based on number of bedrooms to every new development. Growth continued in a planned and fiscally responsible manner. When it came time to deny certain areas of growth, they did so. When it was appropriate and the impact fees were included in the strategic growth plan, it worked to the citizen’s advantage. Look, I am not the outsider who came to Sussex County and says, “I want this place to be just like where I used to live.” That’s the very last thing that I want. What I am suggesting is that you cannot sustain what you have in this beautiful and welcoming place if you don’t take solid action with a long-term strategic development plan. The most dangerous words ever spoken have always been “because that’s the way it’s always been done around here.”

Great distraction by Sussex County Council in submitting a suggestion that two different taxation levels be applied to full-time and part-time residents. I say distraction because the issue really is not who lives here and when, it’s uncontrolled growth without any requirements or impact fees placed on developers. While I applaud their efforts to have a working group develop recommendations to control this growth, let’s just call it what it is. It’s not about part-time versus full-time residents; it’s a multi-functional approach. This includes holding developers accountable for support of infrastructure and services each time they build new properties with impact fees. Next, it’s about affordable housing for our workforce, and financially supporting services such as fire, EMS, police, highways, public utilities and public work projects. Finally, it’s about elected officials doing the sometimes-uncomfortable work of holding people responsible, and identifying what the main effort is and then implementing and evaluating plans and procedures to mitigate to the best of their ability the specific issue identified.

I recently read a commentary by the CEO of Beebe Healthcare regarding growth and affordable housing for healthcare workers. As a medical provider I understand this very well. Primary care, multiple specialties and emergency medicine require highly qualified providers and support staff to provide quality and timely care. This alone is not a reason to say, “build, build, build.” Beebe has plenty of cash, so consider this: perhaps Beebe should partner with the county, some builders and landowners to purchase and develop affordable housing for the workforce they so eloquently indicated are needed and put some cash on the table now and in the future to support this long-term project. Cash is king, and talk is cheap. Lots of retirees here require more medical support services of all kinds. It might have been helped if the state had the vision years ago to open a medical and dental school, but that’s for another day. But it clearly shows a lack of vision and planning. You cannot correct the past, but you can learn and not make the same mistakes. 

I have seen this before, and I know two things based on the history of watching this occur in my previous location. First, it always gets worse before it gets worse. Second, there is no housing and infrastructure magic fairy that will solve this issue. It requires a change in vision, action, and it requires hard decisions, even if you do have a connection at some level to the developers. It requires hard choices that are not self-serving but are focused on what elected officials are elected to undertake, support and do the work necessary for the citizens to live in a community that they love, support, and are not placed second to development. 

County council is responsible to the citizens of the county, not the developers nor themselves. Beebe (and every health conglomerate in the state) can help itself, its customers and its staff but cannot simply say we need this and then not act in a meaningful way to create affordable and accessible housing. It’s time to step up and undertake meaningful financial planning action to make this happen now, not five or 10 years from now. That is exactly why we find ourselves in our current situation. 

This entire effort takes strategic planning, financial evaluation and coordinated action, and investment in managing long-term growth and infrastructure. This will not occur by wishing it would occur, but with intelligent action, strategic plans that are then implemented, evaluated, adjusted and applied to the task for managing development and creating affordable housing for our workforce and managing development.

This is no longer a sleepy little county with corn fields and cows, much to some people’s chagrin. Times they are a changing!

Winston Churchill said: “To each there comes in their lifetime a special moment when they are figuratively tapped on the shoulder and offered the chance to do a very special thing, unique to them and fitted to their talents. What a tragedy if that moment finds them unprepared or unqualified for that which could have been their finest hour.”

What a shame if we find county and state elected officials, and our healthcare system, are unable to do that special thing now that they have been tapped on the shoulder.