THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, September 22, 1994 TAG: 9409210107
SECTION: SUFFOLK SUN PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
SOURCE: John Pruitt
LENGTH: Medium: 72 lines
Writing a column is akin to playing piano: You just never know when you might strike a chord.
Of course, there's also the risk of hitting sour notes. But, unlike in music-making, even that beats silence in the business of column writing.
That said, I'm pleased that last Thursday's column, ``Where are leaders for growing Suffolk?'', stimulated some people to call and offer their thoughts. A visitor, you may recall, had asked whether people in Suffolk gave a damn about anything, and that had put me to thinking about where we'd get a new wave of leaders.
Let me share a couple of their remarks. Consider them, and feel free to call with additional observations. First thing you know, we'll have so many good ideas on the table, we'll have the community thinking about the leadership/civic interest deficit and resolving to address it.
It's hard to lead when other people don't follow.
That's for sure, and it gets to the core of the problem: lack of interest. It's much more difficult to get regular citizens interested in municipal affairs generally than in issues affecting their neighborhoods specifically. They might appear in numbers at a City Council session addressing sewerage for a neighborhood yet show no such fervor for next year's operating budget, which affects them and every other resident of Suffolk.
Or, for an even more limited example, residents who live next door to Interstate 664 might make a strong pitch for sound barriers. Yet their fight somehow fails to ignite the passion of other area residents, who, because of the area's predicted growth, might someday encounter similar problems.
The challenge is to convince more people that the problems of, say, Whaleyville, are the problems of Suffolk. It should matter to Suffolk overall that Whaleyville has inadequate fire hydrants.
It should matter to all the people of Suffolk that some Holland residents have raw sewage boiling up from faulty septic tanks or that there may be inadequate planning to keep Virginia Route 10 from being transformed from a pleasing, rural highway to a commercial mishmash.
Part of the answer lies in ending our thinking as residents of all these little walled areas that together comprise Suffolk.
The merger of Nansemond and Suffolk took place long ago. The City Council, especially, must acknowledge that it's 1994, not 1964, and that Suffolk wants to be led into the future. That would go a long way in attracting followers to citizens who want to lead.
It's discouraging when nothing happens.
You go to meeting after meeting, sometimes asking for the same thing year after year, and you're no better off than before your first outing.
The argument is hard to counter. Indeed, it's easy to see how a citizen who's begged for sewerage, for instance, could despair when nary a pipe comes to his neighborhood.
It's not always easy to understand priorities, especially in a city with as many needs as Suffolk, but it's also unrealistic to expect immediate, costly solutions to long-term problems.
Sometimes, though, there's reward in persistence. For one thing, appearances before City Council and other municipal bodies remind of the problems - even if they don't get an immediate fix. It says to decision-makers: the problem isn't going away, and neither are we.
Delays don't diminish the role of leaders. In fact, they may help redefine it, rallying neighbors for hands-on involvement - perhaps in partnership with the city. It doesn't have to be either, or.
Identifying and training leaders to take Suffolk into the future must become a public priority. MEMO: Comment? Call 446-2494.
by CNB