We’ve met a lot of Great Camdenites. Almost all care about quality-of-life issues throughout the County.
So, it made us wonder why so many good people choose not to run for public office when they could be the ones making good decisions on public matters.
Cumberland Island Ranger teaches Camden families about Timucua Indians at the Woodbine Public Library.
Here’s what we heard when we asked competent, qualified folks why they chose not to run for public office:
“I don’t think I can change the entrenched 'good old boys' and special interests that run this place.”
“If you are not associated with the building or housing industry, they will work to elect your opponent.”
"If they can't fix the parks and the flooding, what makes them think they can run a spaceport? I can't work with folks that dumb."
"I don't get enough Tee time as it is."
"Those guys make some stupid decisions. I don't want to catch their stupid disease."
“I can afford the waste because I have plenty of money. Plus, it is still cheaper to live here than where I moved from.”
“My kids and I fish and hunt whenever we can. I work on the base. I don’t have the time to fix what some nitwits broke.”
“I don’t want to get involved with the types that run this place.”
"I'd love it if they built an airport here. I'm gonna win the lottery next week and buy an airplane!"
It seems that the bottom line is Camden’s leadership is in over their collective heads. It takes real experience and leadership talent to run a government with so many moving parts. Most problems do not come from the worker bees but from decisions made by slick-talking bosses and elected officials. It starts with officials hiring light-weights who might be nice people, but who have to learn on the job. Good candidates have noticed that extensive change is necessary but that the entrenched resistance to the needed change is staggering.
Experienced residents who could make better decisions simply don’t want the headaches.
For instance, it has been impossible for Commissioner Jim Goodman to find a second for his motion to surrender the worthless spaceport license to once and for all stop the bleeding of the tax revenue that the scandal has cost us. Four other commissioners are hiding something from citizens, or they're afraid to go against those who might profit from it. Or what?
Similarly, the Public Service Authority, whose Board of Directors includes elected officials and appointees from Camden County, and the cities of Saint Marys, Kingsland, and Woodbine, continues to have financial oversite problems and still lacks the required operating contract between the entities. And that’s after PSA management allowed millions to be stolen. It seems like the term "Accountability" means not quite enough to many officials.
County officials took a photo op to tell citizens that in their infinite wisdom, it would be wiser for citizens to drive farther for their families' basic public health care at a new, consolidated county facility -- next door to our hospital. That decision, like the decision to build an airport and a gun range, came when money in the form of grants was showered on them. Tell that to the citizens who will in the future have to find a way to get their sick kid to health care that is now 10 or 15 or more miles further from their homes. And NO, the millions wasted on the spaceport were not paid with grants. In their infinite wisdom, it all came from excess Camden County tax collections.
We’ve got a candidate who thinks the spaceport referendum, written using wording taken directly from the Georgia Constitution, was ‘confusing.’ Someone ought to tell that candidate that the Georgia Supreme Court thought the wording was just fine. And if the Constitutional law that upheld the referendum was wrong, why didn't our Georgia House District 180 Representative who is seeking reelection, attempt to change it at the legislature this session?
And we've got another candidate for office who believes State law, local and county ordinances, and the security concerns of Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay, don’t apply to him.
Camden County officials have demonstrated a lack of concern or outright inability to support volunteers needed to implement the $50,000 Best Friends TNVR Grant to humanely Trap, Neuter, and Vaccinate Camden's growing population of feral cats. Animal Control is a basic function of government decency and public health no matter how elected officials try to compartmentalize it.
And still yet another who thinks 3 minutes total is all the County Commissioners need to hear from the public on anything and everything. He acts like those twice-a-month, hour-long public meetings (the only place where a citizen can speak to all the commissioners at one time) are already taking up too much of his time.
We have another candidate who tells us, "The first thing I had to ask myself at the start was 'is District 180 going in the right direction?' And the more I pondered on this question, I then came to the conclusion that the current course that the district [Camden and South Glynn counties] is set on does not align with what it is necessary for it, and to change that we must TURN District 180 into the direction it needs." Brilliant! Except, he never tells us what is wrong with our 'direction,' or who is responsible for our misguided direction, or how his decades at NASA (see Note 1) helped him find the right direction. In fact, what direction would he suggest? We looked for a mention on his campaign website of his valued direction-finding as a Board Member of the Camden County Spaceport Authority, but nada.
The last thing we need are elected officials who know it all.
Submarine missiles are assembled at NSB Kings Bay from thousands of components from hundreds of suppliers from all over the US. Ask the candidate who wants your vote why more of those parts aren't made in Camden County?
We see it plain as day. Camden needs elected officials and top managers possessing demonstrated management experience coupled with a willingness to listen and learn from constituents other than special interests. It's been called "The Wisdom of Crowds." We recently spoke with a candidate who between himself and his wife has already knocked on 3,000 Camden County doors north to south to hear what citizens want their elected official to do. That is simply the hard work of collecting the Wisdom of Crowds, one household at a time.
The best elected official is one who absorbs the collective wisdom, then thinks for himself and discerns the best solution. Few such folk are willing to run for elected office which compels us to support those few exceptional candidates all the more.
(Note 1) NASA has had many great successes that make all Americans proud. Many older Americans witnessed that the first human steps on the moon belonged to an American. But NASA also has a checkered past, none more prominent than the fully preventable failure of the Space Shuttle Challenger that cost the lives of its entire crew. For a number of engineers and managers at solid rocket booster manufacturer Morton Thiokol (Camden's Thiokol explosion occurred almost 15 years to the day BEFORE the Challenger disaster) and within NASA, "the cause of the disaster had been identified more than a year before Challenger’s failed flight: the primary and secondary O-rings meant to prevent a leakage of hot gases were incapable of properly sealing the gaps between the booster joints in extremely cold weather." Source The O-ring was known to be sensitive to cold and could only work properly above 53 degrees. The temperature on the launch pad that morning was 36 degrees. Why did NASA launch at all? NASA knew they had a potentially catastrophic safety problem but no one in charge said "Stop This Show." The Challenger's crew was doomed because NASA launch managers succumbed to Herd Behavior which is when members of a group uncritically accept the group consensus (like lemmings off a cliff). Wisdom of the Crowd requires the decider to consume all points of view before making the CORRECT decision. The Wisdom of the Crowd offers a distributed, not a consensus, opinion. NASA had many managers afraid to go against the consensus. Does a similar condition exist in Camden's elected bodies? NASA's deadly accidents eventually made NASA so risk-averse that the United States has been unable to launch a manned moon mission for the past 51 years.
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