Changes Wanted?

I couldn't help but notice the front page of the Clarion yesterday with two big stories... 1. The economic development director being terminated, and b... the Senior Center needs more people to stay in business.

I want to take a moment and address both these stories today as I think they could be related. The Cambridge Economic Development board terminated the ED director. Now the ED director was just in the news in the McCook Gazette about a personal grant received to develop a new Eco-Retreat. Now I don't know much about the former ED director and her personal plans, but if they in fact made a difference to the termination of her, I think it was wrong based on the newspaper article. The Clarion story made it sound like there was more to the ED's termination than "job performance" since the board declined comment about the relevence of the Gazette story.

I read the story in the Gazette, and to me, it smacked of a vendetta by somebody. There has been absolutely nothing done wrong as near as I can tell from the newspaper account, but the way it was written makes it sound like somebody should be in jail already. One item mentioned and I know personally to be true, getting construction folks in a timely manner is very difficult in this area in my opinion. I'm waiting months for a steel building myself.

Now if the Gazette article was not a factor in the ED director termination, I will be happy to back off on my above comments. No matter what the Gazette article implied, the facts according to the same article in the Gazette are that the former ED director still has time to complete the project before problems start to arise for them. In my opinion, a sensational story out of nothing so far. It may indeed come to pass, but it just as easy may not.

Now... on to the Senior Center.

I'm not a Senior Center customer. If you know me, you know that eating is difficult, and trying to talk and eat is messy at best and impossible at worst. Still, I'm probably one of the few people in town with that excuse so what's yours for not getting into downtown now and then? Margie gets into the Senior Center on occasion, and she told me yesterday that the Senior Center has a new huge flat screen TV that nobody watches {??}

Why not try renaming the Senior Center to the Cambridge Recreation Center. Open it up for kids and adults to watch and play. Get a pool table maybe unless folks around here have the same feelings the Iowans did in "The Music Man". Sell soft drinks, popcorn, show football on the weekends or perhaps a movie night or nights. Sponsor dances? Host demonstrations? Come on you town folks, think outside the box.

The reason I put these two stories together is they both point to some problems experienced by a town that wants to do something, but seems unable to find it's way when it comes to changes. As I've mentioned on this blog before, perhaps the way the town is now, you don't want it to change, and I can respect that, but when you fire someone for "performance issues" but can't get the curbs on main street fixed, it makes me wonder what direction the town really wants to go and what development is really wanted around here. If the town can't even keep a small enterprise like the quite popular Senior Center open, how do you expect to attract other business and jobs?