Defining the Modern Community

What comes to mind when you think about community? The roads you drive on, the churches and schools family and friends attend, or the parks and stores you visit on weekends? Whatever your specific images, these elements form an interconnected web of people, structures, and organizations that offer a shared place and set of goals to build our lives.

[OCS: No! What comes to mind is the place where I live, learn, work, play, and worship. I rarely think of infrastructure because that is a given, something to be managed by a competent invisible government – which is rarely the case.]

But communities today look much different than they did even a few years ago. Today’s communities — and the organizations that govern them — are facing a tectonic shift caused by the pandemic as well as cultural and civil strife. As masks come off and many return to offices, local governments and community members are still adjusting to a new reality.

[OCS: Radical progressive communist democrat politics have flooded the nation with a hoard of illegal aliens bankrupting governments at all levels and draining critical community safety net sources at an alarming rate. Google “Cloward-Piven Strategy,” and you will find that this destruction is intended and planned – as a way to destroy the existing system and replace it with authoritarian socialism. Look at some major cities with their third-world ambiance of poverty, illiteracy, disease, crime, and decay.]

Modern leaders have two choices: wait to see how our communities settle after this shift or enact changes to create better solutions. This era provides a backdrop to adopt new goals, roles and strategies — to create a new definition of modern community. In this series, we’ll be looking at modern communities, elements they commonly share, the unprecedented challenges they face today and how local governments can use these opportunities to adopt lasting change and improvements.

[OCS: Most modern leaders are corrupt, governed by personal and political self-interests or the desires of special interests such as the big unions. They care little for the consent of the governed as they attempt to refashion an environment that suits their interests and ideology.]

HOW HAS THE ROLE OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT CHANGED?

For many local governments, disaster or business continuity planning worked as intended — though the suddenness of COVID-19 surges and closures and the length of the crisis meant many governments faced more than one challenge at a time.

[OCS: I cannot name any local community where a crisis does lead to a power grab, with emergency powers becoming permanent powers and where significant mistakes, including corruption, are ignored as “the fog of crisis.” Millions of dollars go missing or are transferred to special interests with no accountability and little recovery of illegal or ill-spent funds.] 

ELEMENTS OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT

Consider how these common elements of local communities have been affected by the pandemic and current events.

The school board

Schools, in their unique position at the nexus of families, government and business, have been profoundly affected by the pandemic and its concurrent crises. “The Great Resignation” has particularly touched schools, with the departure of teachers and reduced availability of substitutes, bus drivers, cafeteria workers and others.

[OCS: The truth is that schools are run for the benefit of the special interest unions and the vendors who supply overpriced goods and services to school systems. The teacher's unions dictated policies that kept the schools closed, while teachers continued to earn their salaries and enjoy their benefits. Only the children and their parents truly suffered.]

These challenges must be addressed by school board members to create a competitive hiring environment with limited budgets, as well as to find solutions for the underlying conflicts. Meanwhile, already-high demands for transparency have only been increased by streaming meetings and other efforts to make board deliberations accessible.

[OCS: Considering the overwhelming failure of the schools that indoctrinate, not educate, they are overfunded as they continue to graduate function illiterates that can’t even compete in their own community. Industrial arts programs were abandoned as women administrators and teachers could not appreciate non-academic pursuits or a manly work ethic. School boards treat parents as an unwanted impediment and when challenged scream about extremism and terrorism. Funny, when the board is comprised of radical extremists and social terrorists.]

Parks and recreation

Like our schools, parks and recreation departments have struggled with the loss of workers and often find it difficult to meet salary, benefits and flexibility expectations set by other employers. Youth participation in sports has also been on the decline even before the pandemic, according to a study by the Aspen Institute. Parks departments must justify their value to residents wary of tax increases and look for new ways to communicate their stewardship of budget dollars.

Transportation

Early in the pandemic, the first visible signs of change were deserted streets, often-idle trains and buses, and a general eeriness that came with reduced transportation use, especially in population-dense areas.

With return-to-work underway for many, activity has returned — but it looks different. Transportation departments are dealing not only with new ridership patterns, but with the rise of new technologies such as driverless cars. Transit departments such as California’s Antelope Valley Transit Authority are implementing or considering alternative-energy vehicles as infrastructures shift to support hybrid and electric transportation options. These solutions require both forward thinking and careful budgeting.

[OCS: Political decisions using sketchy medical advice were the prima facie cause of the crippling lockdowns. There is no such thing as “forward thinking” and “careful budgeting” when politics trumps science and prudence.]

Zoning and city planning
Out of necessity or changing priorities, many citizens revisited how and where they live as a result of the pandemic. Trends in mixed-use development and urban issues around accessory dwelling units (ADUs) and other answers to density issues are changing the community horizon.

Zoning boards and urban planners must stay aware of changing trends in community management and how issues such as climate change, demographic shifts and housing costs affect community residents, business owners and employees.

[OCS: Unfortunately, the progressive communist democrats have taken control of our community planning systems. They institute a Soviet-era gray block housing project, force mass transit to limit individual freedoms, and sustain the elites with their NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) attitudes. Climate change is a money-sucking hoax that taxes and social policies cannot mitigate – the key is adaptation, not adoption. Demographic shifts are self-inflicted.]

Health department

In the last two years, civic health departments have played a large role in the understanding of COVID-19 risks, dissemination of information and formation of regulations and guidelines in how to address the disease.
Local health departments have had to manage understanding of changing guidance from federal and worldwide health entities and create recommendations that are appropriate for vastly different communities.

[OCS: This is pure, unadulterated bullshit. Health Departments have corrupted science in favor of political ideology and the usurpation of power. In fact, they are responsible for a large number of needless deaths with their refusal to accept empirical treatment protocols.] 

Public safety

The dovetail of COVID-19 with highly visible examples of civil unrest created a unique situation for local governments working to ensure residents that their communities were safe. In many towns and cities, police personnel were shifted to monitor stay-at-home orders, border patrol or other pandemic-related restrictions, while at the same time high-profile incidents inflamed already tense relationships with law enforcement.

[OCS: $2 BILLION in damages and lost lives are attributable to the progressive communist democrats who weaponized race to energize their base. The police were ordered to ignore their sworn duties and “stand down.” The Border Patrol was rendered ineffective by the progressive communist democrats. Police were vilified – with a number of political prosecutions leading to the imprisonment of innocent officers.]

City hall

City governments have been a first line of response to the pandemic, working with local health departments to implement appropriate responses to manage local infection and hospitalization rates. This role has required councilors, mayors and others to have accurate, consistent data about what is going on in their communities. Moreover, a surge in ransomware and other cyber crimes has targeted local governments at a high rate, leaving these entities, who often do not have the resources to adequately prevent or respond to these attacks.

[OCS: City governments are mostly corrupt, not prioritizing expenditures on public safety and the repair, replacement, and build-out of critical infrastructure. They spend obscene amounts of money on inadequate systems with little or no real bottom-up security as they solicit the advice of ignorant, politically-chosen stakeholders to guide designs. Should we spend more millions on ugly public art installations or virtualize our platforms for resistance to malware and failure?]

We’ll be taking a deeper dive into these in this series.

Misinformation. Trust for public officials must be earned, and local governments are finding that old methods of communication via email and untelevised meetings fall short when reassuring constituents that budget dollars are being spent wisely and voting outcomes reflect community values.

[OCS: The greatest sources of misinformation are government entities driven by personal and political self-interests.]

Inclusivity. One silver lining that came from the pandemic was the way communication changed — online meetings, consistent electronic messaging — created a more inclusive experience for many citizens. Local governments reported increased attendance at streamed meetings. Meanwhile, many communities are looking for ways to elevate voices of those who have been underrepresented both as the governed and the governing. 

[OCS: Both inclusivity and diversity are code words for politically-managed racism, affirmative action, and directed budget expenses. Most progressive communist democrats are elevating the voices of ill-informed individuals and illegal aliens over those of legal, law-abiding citizens and legal residents.]

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