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Emphasize ‘gentle’

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It’s surprising given the thunderous march of developers into a county that was, up until about 20 years ago, archetypal rural America, but growth snuck in the side door of Dallas County.

The county’s awkward assimilation of urban development shows up in various ways – from county officials’ failure to sufficiently budget for the November general election, a blunder that left voters standing in long lines at the polls, to a splintered appeal for federal airport funding to a silly spat in a Waukee City Council meeting over a car dealer’s reference to “the Waukee side of West Des Moines.” More recently, the fractured vision for the future in Dallas County is threatening passage of the 1 percent “Destiny” sales tax, an initiative that has the power to change the cultural landscape in Greater Des Moines for the better while at the same time limiting property tax growth.

We support the regional sales tax. We also support 2007 Greater Des Moines Partnership Chair Jim Cownie’s call for “gentle regionalism” to get the referendum passed.

But among some vocal Dallas County residents, good and decent people with fierce allegiance to their way of life, the development behind a sales tax windfall isn’t seen so much as a vehicle giving them the fiscal flexibility to do more as it is an intruder pressuring their schools, highways and other infrastructure and cannibalizing their business districts. They feel justified in gathering the spoils of Jordan Creek Town Center and related development and applying the sales tax revenues to their own development initiatives.

As the Destiny campaign gets under way, it’s important to understand that position. Dallas County is still homespun enough that gaining voters’ confidence and support won’t be accomplished through slogans and advertising campaigns alone. A different strategy is needed.

Iowans already know how it should work. Intricate networks of citizens committed to changing the status quo spring up every four years to winnow the field of presidential candidates. Why not apply the same grassroots political power to the Destiny campaign and sell the proposal door to door, coffee club to coffee club, neighbor to neighbor? Only when strangers with divergent interests get to know one another can consensus emerge.

That’s the “gentle” in gentle regionalism.

editor@bpcdm.com

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