© 2008 by Michael Swickard, Ph.D.
At the coffee shop the other day, someone asked why elected officials never tackle tough, long-term projects. A friend asked, “Who did these things?” He listed several projects that people are happy we have in our area.
“Gosh, I don’t know,” was the answer. “Exactly,” said my friend, “In each of these important projects some elected official put their political capital on the line to get them done. Now, no one remembers them and what they did. That is what many elected officials hate.”
I have to agree. Some public projects are long and arduous while others are relatively quick and easy. Which ones do most politicians clamor around? All but the most extraordinary want for themselves that their use of political capital results in getting the love of the community. Even more important, they want the Blue-Haired Ladies (BHL) in the front row of each meeting to leave them alone.
Extraordinary leaders ignore all of the above and sponsor projects that seem dubious to the general populous at first while the benefits are not easily seen. They suffer the slings and arrows of the media and popular opinion for years. Every meeting people stand weeping, “I have lived here all of my life and I have never been more depressed than when you decided to…” whatever the project. Those BHL can be murder, meeting after meeting for years.
Examples of good projects
There are several examples. As a columnist I have a sort of diary of the years as they pass. I have been writing for much of the last 30 years. One time the mayor of my town at that time came up with the idea, along with a couple of other people, that businesses could adopt a section of street median and make sure each one looked good. He was called everything but smart and handsome at the time, but now it is a very popular program. Does he get the community love for his foresight? No, but it does not matter to him.
Another example is a county commissioner who thought the county building was very picturesque but not appropriate for the 21st century since it was built in the 1930s and presented a huge problem complying with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
So swimming uphill, so to speak, against public opinion he almost single-handedly started the process of designing and building a new county complex. Today it is the pride of our community. And he did so with a budget that seems ridiculous for what the community got in quality. Does he get love today from the community, now that everyone can see that he did something very right and needed? No, he is out of office and instead the new county commissioners bask in that love.
Finally, there was Bud Davis, the President of the
Then as now, parking was a joke. I was working there when we all got a memo that the 160 best parking spaces on the campus, between the library and the administration building, were about to be taken from us. What were the spaces going to be used for? No, not a needed campus building, but good guess. They were taken so UNM could construct a duck pond.
People were beyond irate. They protested loudly, “We don’t need no stinking duck pond.”
Bud Davis just shrugged and kept after it. Every board meeting during citizen input he suffered the weeping of people who cried, “I have lived here all of my life and I have never been more depressed than when you decided to take those great parking spaces away from us, for what? A duck pond. Are you stupid or what?”
There was protest after protest, and I have a recording somewhere of a song titled “Bud Davis’s Duck Pond,” which was quite rude.
The important thing is if you wake up some morning and desire a real beating, all you have to do is go to UNM and suggest they bulldoze the duck pond and put in parking spaces. You will be pummeled to your heart’s content immediately.
Thanking leaders with long-term vision
Bud Davis lost his job as president of UNM over his vision because the value was not realized, in fact, could not be realized until someone stood on the bridge over the duck pond. Then the great feeling of the duck pond overwhelms you and you are happy someone thought of it. Importantly, if you go to UNM and randomly ask who thought of the duck pond, you’ll find that no one will remember Bud Davis except those who worked with him more than 30 years ago.
I thank Bud Davis for the duck pond, former Las Cruces Mayor David Steinborn and others for the median clean-up program and I especially thank former County Commissioner Paul Curry for what it took to have a great county center.
We need more leaders with a long-term vision and guts.
Swickard is a weekly columnist for this site. You can reach him at michael@swickard.com.