Social services are suffering locally, and things probably aren’t going to get better anytime soon. Someone in charge is finally trying to do something about it, but from all indications, it’ll be a while before those in need can expect to see improvements. At County Commission chair Jennifer Roberts’ suggestion, members of the Commission, City Council and School Board met yesterday, along with the mayors of two towns, to talk about coordinating services and cutting out overlap among agencies, in order to save money and help those in need more quickly.
That’s the good news. The bad news is that the needed cooperation will apparently happen at government’s usual glacial pace. You can tell, because Commissioner Dan Murrey is already calling the whole thing “a long-term process, not a short-term negotiation” (translation: “there are so many potential turf wars involved, this could take years”). According to the Observer’s Eric Frazier, even some of the folks who help those in need, such as Maria Hanlin of Mecklenburg Ministries and Willie Ratchfod of the Community Relations Committee, are urging officials to take three to six months — just for the fact-finding phase. And there are already grumblings from some officials that the whole thing is so-o-o complicated, and it won’t be easy, blah blah blah. I’m betting, though, that it would be easier to streamline services than it would be to, say, sleep under a bridge because local honchos couldn’t get it together to coordinate help for the homeless.
Anyone remember the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest? Remember the scene where Jack Nicholson’s character points out to one of the patients that, “See these people? These are real people”? Maybe someone needs to remind local officials that they’re not just talking about an abstract problem and they should focus on those they’re supposed to be working for. It’s a crisis, folks, and people are hurting. At the very least, can’t the honchos ratchet up the usual pace of change around here a few notches?
This article appears in Best of Charlotte 2009.
