OUR VIEW: Volusia County residents, leaders must find a road back to trust

Over the past months, a full-court press for Volusia County's half-cent sales tax was met with a full-bore pushback from a surprisingly broad coalition of local residents who talked more about distrust and disenfranchisement than roads and water projects.

And for the first time in a long time, the naysayers won. And won decisively: The 10-point gap between the nos and the yeses makes it clear this has been coming on for a long time, and that it runs deep.

This was a big culture shock in a county where local government was, until recently, very much "of the people."

There were certainly controversies, including the always-simmering debate over driving on Volusia County beaches. But for the most part, local voters acknowledged that their local officials were well-intentioned people. They occasionally made mistakes, sometimes big ones -- but voters had confidence, for the most part, in their own ability to choose elected leaders who had the public's interests at heart, and vote out the ones who broke their promises.

When things went wrong, those same voters would make their views known -- and their elected officials took the heat. Meetings would sometimes stretch into the wee hours of the morning, but public officials didn't hide behind layers of bureaucracy. Government leaders didn't try to bury controversial decisions on consent agendas or hide reports that didn't support the direction they wanted.

They certainly didn't threaten critics with arrest, as happened twice in Deltona.

But things were also different on the other side of the dais. The blood sport of casting every move elected leaders made in the worst possible light -- that was not how people did business in Volusia County.

And despite the ugly narratives that are currently overwriting local history, this was never a sleepy backwater run by a cabal of good ol' boys whose only interest was self-serving. Volusia County has been Florida's 11th largest county for a long time, with a solid reputation for diverse, thoughtful leadership; our elected officials frequently found themselves heading the statewide boards they served on.

It has also been a wellspring of good ideas that spread statewide, even nationwide. This was the first county to vote to tax itself to buy and protect environmentally sensitive land. Florida Forever is directly modeled on Volusia Forever. This was one of the first counties in the nation to experiment with the public-private model of subsidized health insurance that came to be known as Florida Kidcare, and expanded into the national program known as Title XXI, the state Children's Health Insurance Program. Our longterm property appraiser Morgan Gilreath designed software now used to quickly assess damage in most natural disasters. Rails to trails, mobile spay-neuter clinics and watering restrictions: Good ideas flowed constantly, and were encouraged to flourish.

Sometime in the last 10 years, things started to change. And now here we are.

Walls have slammed down. A growing number of people are unwilling to trust anything -- anything -- local elected officials say or do. And many local officials are donig little to try to heal the breaches.

Which came first? The suspicious and deeply personal attacks? Or the equally offensive defense? It's impossible to say. But they are feeding on each other, and consuming good will and trust. Look back at that list of good things Volusia County accomplished. In today's atmosphere, many of them would be wilted under blasts of distrust and derision long before they could take root and grow.

There's no magic bullet here, no pretending that all we need to do is hug it out. But there's a lot at stake, including the county's economic future if it gains a reputation as a place that's too fractious and fractionalized to sort viable business opportunities from attempts to pick taxpayers' pockets. Nor does it need a reputation as a place where anything goes and careless over-development is rampant. A new emphasis on growth management seems to be emerging across many city governments along with the county. It should be nurtured, along with the ambition to attract the kind of technology-oriented businesses that can lift the economy and provide good jobs. This area is already starting to see green shoots of economic progress, but they are fragile.

Can Volusia County get back to the place where the words "good government" mean something, and where the residents have faith in their own ability choose the right leaders? We hope so.

About the sales tax

One thing is clear: It would be a big mistake to put the half-cent sales tax, or any other unsupported tax increase, back on the ballot any time soon.

We urge local leaders -- city and county alike -- to publicly take this option off the table.

That doesn't mean The News-Journal is refuting its own support of the tax. We still feel it will be very difficult to repair the county's crumbling infrastructure and protect its threatened environment without the revenue this tax would have brought in.

At this point, however, there's no foreseeable way a tax would pass, and every indication that bringing it up again would only do more damage to Volusia County's civic infrastructure. Respect the voters' choice and move on.

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