Editorial: It's time to start creating Palm Beach County's tomorrow
Now, maybe, we can focus on doing what needs to be done and not on whether Team D or R is winning . With campaign fever at last at a lull, local and state lawmakers should take advantage of this downtime to put their backs into bipartisan solutions to the persistent challenges that face us.
The Palm Beach Post Editorial Board has opined on those issues here repeatedly but they never seem to go away: homeowners insurance costs, a dearth of affordable and workforce housing, climate resilience, gun safety, and on the list goes. The only alternatives to problem-solving are crisis and calamity. So let's get on with it.
In some cases, action on one front could ease the pain on another. If we addressed the threat of a changing climate and encouraged stronger construction standards and enforcement, for instance, that would ease the pressure on insurance premiums.
In other cases, the wrong solution to one problem could aggravate another. Robust but unchecked growth could provide needed jobs and housing but cause miserable traffic without also addressing infrastructure.
We're fortunate in Palm Beach County, for example, to live in a metro environment that has a smaller population and a more manageable feel than the counties to our south. We just haven't filled out yet.
But it's coming.
A 70-mile car ride up I-95 from Coral Gables to West Palm Beach, for example, should take, or, used to take, an hour. These days it can take two hours, even if one sets out at what used to be the dark, deserted time of 6:30 a.m. So much for express lanes.
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And when one off-ramps from I-95 onto Okeechobee Boulevard toward downtown, the paving of paradise is clear to see: cranes, construction sites, 25- and 30-story apartments, hotels and offices rising where two- and three- and five-story buildings used to be. What will I-95 and other feeder roads look like as the years go by? And barring an unexpected increase in construction loan rates, there'll be no halt in development, as there's still not enough housing to meet demand from workers, retirees and other residents, never mind affordable housing.
Meanwhile, there's an obvious immediate need to bolster transit options, and to provide land use changes and monetary incentives for infill housing that allows shorter commutes. But that requires municipal and county officials to push harder in that direction and for state lawmakers to help finance it. These kinds of solutions have been talked about for years, and acted upon on a small scale but we never seem to get ahead of the game. Well, it's time to get serious about growth management.
And growth management is just a simple, visible example of the work crying out to be done. Many social issues are less apparent to those not directly impacted by them but are equally in need of redress: mental health programs to help a far greater and more varied population than existing programs are designed to handle; and programs to help the homeless. Environmental preservation, land conservation and sea level rise resilience also strike some as more regulatory nuisances than quality-of-life essentials.
Can't we see this brief political pause as a moment to wrest progress from years of inertia? With elections over, let's unite to set time-specific solutions and get to work on achieving them. Let's take advantage of the idealism of our newest elected officials and of the promises of our most experienced to accelerate positive change.
We take great pride in our democratic elections. So let's put them to use. Visualize a place just a few years ahead, where these problems that have plagued us for so long are gone.
Unlike the counties to our south, Palm Beach remains an unfinished canvas. That gives us the opportunity to paint a masterpiece, or at least to create a place that those who follow will be as fortunate to call home as we are.
