The Gadfly is a series of letters offering commentary on local issues and published in the Warrensburg Gazette.

I see that various Warrensburg organizations have decided to get together to look into economic development issues. The primary organizations included the City, the Chamber, Main Street and the Warrensburg Area Economic Development Corporation. The City is, of course, tax-funded, and the other organizations all draw considerable support from the City.

From the news report, it appears that discussions were mostly generalities covering a wide spectrum of topics; it does not appear that any direction was established. So far, it kind of reminds me of the Vision 2010 exercise that the city went through a few years back, but without the wider public input requested then. (An aside - I wonder what happened to that vision, anyway - filed and forgotten?).

While it seems the select group did address economic development and infrastructure concerns, their “wish list” was much broader. For example, they seem to want chain restaurants; I guess local ones just aren’t good enough. However, tourism, was conspicuous by its absence. County zoning was also on someone’s wish list, a rather interesting proposition since the meeting was limited to city entities and county government was excluded. From some of the related “wish list” items, I wonder if “quality of life” is really Newspeak for more government control of how people live their lives and use their property.

Since this meeting was conducted by government organizations, I’m sure the detailed report & participant list will be available to all as required by the Sunshine Law. I’ll want to see it.