It's always depressing to volunteer long hours on a citizen committee, only to end up feeling that it was a complete waste of time. Such was the case with the recently concluded Tour Bus Committee, which the Key West City Commission entrusted with crafting a tour bus plan for the narrow streets of Old Town. The group's stated mission was to balance the concerns of the residents impacted by tour bus traffic, the business people who profit from bus tours to Key West, and other business owners who fear that increased tour bus traffic will drive away other kinds of visitors.
But the effort was doomed from the start. The inflexible positions of the pro-and anti-tour bus sides became apparent when I suggested that we collect some hard data about tour bus traffic before making any recommendations. Gathering baseline information about the situation seemed like a logical place to start. But to my surprise, both factions opposed the idea outright, having already decided on their positions. Predictably, the committee became an all-or-nothing contest, with the numerically-superior tour bus team prevailing in the end.
But you can't really hold the committee members responsible for the failure. It was the City Commission that created the body and set it up to fail. The commissioners decided on the narrow composition of the members, making no arrangements for a mediator or real public participation. And just two of the commissioners bothered to show up for meetings to see the process for themselves.
The fiasco was just the latest example of the City Commission abdicating its responsibility to make informed decisions, opting instead to foist the job off on citizen committees or city staff. That way, if things go wrong further down the line, it's easy for the commissioners to point the finger elsewhere— as happened with the ugly Big Steel Building, the money-hemorrhaging Park `n Ride and the squandering of the city's last residential ROGO units.
The commissioners were elected to make informed decisions on the issues facing our community— not delegate the job to city staff or committees. The City Commission shouldn't make any hard-and-fast policy decisions based on the tour bus report or any other second-hand source. The citizens of Key West deserve commissioners who are informed about the issues they're voting on.