(Saturday, October 24)

If your small town is anything like my small town, you will appreciate my frustration over seeing a good idea get muddled and muddied.

In my town of Bancroft, the town council is trying to move ahead with its Build Bancroft project — a good idea that, for seemingly petty reasons, has suddenly become so complicated that our once-pro mayor has even turned his back on it.

But it is hardly complicated.

A company well-known in government circles, and with a local connection, approached our town to do a revitalization plan.

It would work on getting the money and the grants — $3 million thus far — and, at the beginning, it was embraced with great enthusiasm . . . with committees struck, and public meetings being called, and high-fives all around.

Then the naysayers took over. Suddenly they didn't like the process. Suddenly they got suspicious, all which fills the bill of a small mind that no good deed ever going unpunished.
As a result , our council is now spatting with each other, and is mixing its metaphors with the same enthusiasm that it is losing its focus.

My advice? Chill out.

Let the game play itself out and, next April or May, when all the studies are in, then the decision can be made to go ahead with the plan, or modify it, or abandon it altogether.

Until then, everyone should just back off.