Sustainability Or Subversive Commission?

Now that the City Council has given unanimous support for the Sustainability Commission it will be interesting to see who gets selected to sit on the twelve-member commission. The Mayor will select six of the members and another six will be selected by the City Council. What will be even more interesting to see is what role they play in local affairs once they become organized. Steve Howard, president of the Greater Bloomington Chamber of Commerce made some interesting observations in the May issue of Business Network. “What does “sustainability” mean?” Getting twelve people from various segments of the community to agree on the definition of sustainability could pose to be the group’s greatest challenge that is unless they load the Commission with all like-minded liberals. If they don’t reach across the isle and select at least six moderates the partisanship of the commission will render it totally useless with the exception of providing a scapegoat for denying our community growth and progress in the areas like economic development. Another extremely important point Mr. Howard brought up is “How can we measure sustainability?” Without some quantifiable method of measuring change how will they know they are effecting change? Without specific measurable goals a commission like this can be dangerous, as the group could exist solely to justify its own existence.

Sustain is derived from the Latin words sus, or under, and tenere, to hold, how appropriate in this case as our City Council tightens it’s hold on our community. It was reported that “While Bloomington is the first in Indiana with a formal sustainability initiative, many other municipalities are well into their efforts”, Dave Rollo, City Council Member offered San Francisco as one example. As a conservative Republican or even a Moderate Republican, San Francisco, one of the most liberal cities in the United States, is not exactly the kind of city I would prefer to emulate. Furthermore, the fact that local activist Lucille Bertuccio supports this project should be reason enough for even the moderate Democrats to be concerned. Piece by piece they’re managing to rip apart the very fabric that has held our community together by forcing their liberal social agenda on the city and rather than fighting people are simply giving up, moving away and in general, disengaging from the process which by the way, is exactly what the liberal extremists want.