By: New2Enid

New2Enid — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 15:16:19 +0000

I am confused. What are our goals in continuing on with this course? If the goal is to bring in new high paying jobs, we are WAY off course. Cars in yards? Painting houses in neighborhoods where some parents worry about putting fod on the table at a regular interval?? These issues are irrelevant, in the contet of: At the end of the day, our goal is to create a community of the 21st Century. The Commissioners need to schedule a meeting and launch a web site that encourages REAL ideas that will bring Enid from the depths economic dispair to the fore front society. Our cash cow has died, painting the barn won’t fix that. Your response to this comment should spark ideas, not thrash about at my liberal forthcomings, real, modern ideas presented here would begin to signal to our commissioners, mayor and city manager that we, as it’s constituency, want REAL SOLUTIONS. Sit back in your chair and think about these parameters (1) What industries are out there that are location irrelevant, i.e. Call centers, technical consultation, software development, engineering research and development 21st century health care (2) what does Enid already have that could be easily expanded i.e. railroads, grain elevators, Advance, 2 hospitals, an Atwood’s distribution center. Ask these places, what can Enid do for you that will allow you to expand. This would include tax incentives, cost sharing, small businessincubators that would pair experienced business leaders with those who have good ideas but little experience in implementing.(3) Infrastructure. The Randolph idea was awesome, but lets pick a street that makes sense. Infrastructure includes the tools of the 21st Century including Regional WiFi, Fiber optics, leisure activities like concerts in the park during the busiest seasons, not the hottest. People need a reason to come here other than being free from the worry that the neighbor might have too many cars in the driveway. Enid needs to look forward and not back, people with pride will become the citizens you are forcing them to become through this humiliating legislative agenda. Instead of thinking of various laws, pick up the phone and ask Cisco, “what can Enid do to get you to build a call center here?” Call Integris and offer a tax incentive that would allow Bass to become NW Oklahoma’s Level one trauma Center. Instead of critical patients flying out, critical patients would be brought here. Forward ideas are what are required. Making Enid the East Berlin of NW Oklahoma only makes young professionals such as myself and my wife look for new jobs elsewhere. The disdain for the left behind core of Enid’s population that these ordinances promote is so incredibly counter productive. If you want clean-up, then make clean-up a rallying cry, not a yoke. Criner and Benson should march out and become the public face of the Effort. We don’t feel like we are in this with you, we feel like we are the problem. Homes sell when they can be bought, without a job, painting it just makes it desirable, not attainable. City officials, it’s time you stopped blaming your constituency for the problems in this community and starting asking what can we do to rebuild this town. Paint and and old cars might be a symptom, but it’s the easy one. Looking like your working isn’t the same thing as working. The disease is a failed industrial base that resulted in a 25 year decline in wage earners. Symptoms are the outward sign of disease. Only treating the symptom, moves you no more closer to a cure than doing nothing. So, ask yourself what can we,as a community, do to target our disease that is our Industrial decline, what can we entice new high paying jobs to come to Enid, jobs that will eventually add up to the losses in industry we, as a community, encountered in the 80’s? Is this a town, or is this pergatory? Will painting your house help you get a promotion at work, will it halp advance move into new markets, will it bring skilled new surgeons trained in the latest techniques to our clinics and hospitals, will it fill our outdated office buildings with new tenenants wrought with 21s Century ideas? This is the real feet to the fire issues, not parked cars, not forcing the hand to mouth residents of Enid to put on a brave face they can’t afford in the first place. Government is and was in place to serve the needs of it’s citizens. Not just the current ones, but also those in the future. A citizenry perpetuates it’s government; so, it must be curious to wonder, at our current pace, what does that future look like? The answer, well that all depends on those who act. Will it be you? and if it is, what will you do?

By: Ed Pogue

Ed Pogue — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 00:37:24 +0000

Hey Lee, you should send these comments to the Enid Paper. I think you said it very well. John Criner, Bob Berry, and “Commander” Benson need to read this.

Comments on: Street Cars of Desire

By: New2Enid

By: Ed Pogue