Over in Milton, with a ‘development professional’ for a mayor and a city administrator who’s quitting for a job where he can spend more time with his family, there’s a new municipal development:
MILTON—A proposed restaurant and convenience store at the corner of Sunnyside Drive and Highway 59 is “somewhat monumental” in that it kicks off the development along the new Highway 26/59 corridor, Milton Mayor Brett Frazier said Tuesday.
Both retail stores are “internationally known and well respected,” City Administrator Jerry Schuetz said. The end users cannot be released yet due to confidentiality agreements.
The plan commission on Tuesday unanimously approved the project’s memorandum of understanding with the Department of Transportation and the conceptual site plan.
See, subscription req’d, Milton moves forward with development on Sunnyside Drive, Highway 59.
A few simple points:
1. Confidentiality. Milton’s Plan Commission and the DOT – government entities – approved a plan about businesses the identities of which are a secret from the very public that these government bodies are by law required to serve?
That would be funny, if it were not perverse.
2. Not worth the pulp. The Gazette and Milton Courier have, apparently, offered no legal challenge to a claim of confidentiality in these public actions.
The Courier‘s scarcely a legitimate paper, but the Gazette still has those (unfounded) pretensions.
If they’ll not fight confidentiality in secret deals like this though legal challenge, these papers aren’t worth the pulp.
This is one reason why print’s in decline.
These papers will have to keep selling assets and retrenching until there are no more assets to sell and no more cutbacks to be made.
3. The Grandiose. I’m sure the residents of Milton are thrilled that they’re in store for a “somewhat monumental” deal for “internationally known and well respected” stores.
Oh, brother.
To whom are these political gentlemen speaking? One would have to think very little of the people of Milton (or very much of oneself) to speak to them in this patronizing way.
This Milton story describes a situation where a mediocre few treat an entire community of adult men and women as though they were children.
Government and the press can – and should – be better than this.