Philadelphia - May 2005

Way back in 2005, a dozen or so of us - people from Lake Worth - attended a conference on "Advancing Regional Equity." Our attendance at the symposium was funded by the CRA. Here are just some of the people that attended - you might recognize them. To trigger your collective memories or to introduce you to some of the concepts, I've included what turned out to be a copious set of notes on the topics covered. You can click the title for immediate access.

One of the major themes of the conference was the "Double or Triple Bottom Line." In the attached notes, this section begins where you see the highlighted yellow line. The basic concept is that when a business interest invests in a community, it has expectations of a profit. However, the community also has needs that must be addressed and it should also profit "socially" from that investment made by that business. This can be in the form of hiring preferences for local people, domestic partner benefits for employees, etc. Increasingly, the third bottom line is the environmental benefit - global to local - that is expected. This would relate to green building practices, use of native and drought tolerant landscaping materials, supportive actions encouraging mass transit, etc.

Well, guess what - you can't just have the second and third bottom lines without the first bottom line being satisfied. You first need the desire of a business interest to invest in your community and you need to allow for the expectation that investment will reap its rewards. If you don't, the other two never follow. Given the actions of the current members of the dais, I ask how are we ever going to get there? Again, the Policy of "No" raises its ugly head.

To think we attended the same conference but came back with such different interpretations of what was talked about - makes you wonder how open to new ideas some people are. If you have a moment or two, review my notes and you will see that Lake Worth would be an improved place if we had implemented some of these ideas instead of the Policy of "No."

The Policy of "No" will never achieve a worthwhile bottom line - but it will help take our city to the bottom.