Port Charlotte Must Look to the Future
A recent
newspaper ad for a sign installer in Port Charlotte drew few
responses in 10 days. This was for a full-time installer, with
benefits at a good salary. The same company also placed an ad at the
same time for part-time clerical work, only a 30-hour a week, with no
benefits, at $6.50 an hour. That ad drew 52 responses.
Port
Charlotte has the highest per capita number of single female parents
in the state. Will there ever be enough employment to satisfy the
number of often well-trained office and clerical people who must work
one or two jobs just to make their rent or car payments? Not if the
current attitude of standing with our backs to the future continues
in Charlotte County. It is also difficult to compete with Lee,
Collier or Sarasota counties for craftsmen labor as long as those
areas pay a higher scale than Port Charlotte.
While
the social and economic factors that cause Charlotte County to have a
disproportionate number of single parents is an ongoing discussion,
the inability of the local economy to employ these people is an
indication of our limited economic diversity. For many of the
unemployed, their parents - and now their grandparents - are becoming
beacons of hope. People on retirement incomes, well beyond their
peak earning periods in their lives, now find their offspring can't
support their own families on wages paid here. They become not only
the new home, but often the prime financial support as well.
Grandparents
raising grandkids has become commonplace in Charlotte County.
Grandparents have become more than daytime babysitters while their
children are at work; they have now taken a mainstream role of
guardianship as well.
The opponents to economic
growth in Charlotte County would prefer to go back 10 or 15 years in
time. "Let everything take care of itself" was a common
attitude then, and it has resulted in the inability of Charlotte
County to maintain economic parity with the rest of Southwest
Florida.
The
Charlotte County Commission's duty is to all residents, including the
future ones. They are our children and our grandchildren. They will
live here long after we are gone. Courage often means doing what is
right for the future while the opportunity exists. We do have
courageous commissioners, now bombarded by vocal and often
overbearing opposition who want to return to the past - the past of
only basic retirement homes and no infrastructure to support them!
Commissioners are trying to do the right thing for Charlotte County
by ensuring that our children and our families have a chance for
employment and education today and tomorrow alike. Our future cannot
be shackled to our past.
Those who want a better
place to live in the future Charlotte County
should not stand silent while a vocal opposition minority tries to
drive the political bus. The road in Charlotte County can go backward
as well as forward. It depends on who is in the driver's seat.
George Mindling ©
2004
