The Delta County Conservation District (July 25th, 2023): New Members, Park Economics, and Sparks Flying!

People love our parks
They can be a bigger
enhancement to summer
tourism.

The July 25th, 2023 Delta County Conservation District was an interesting meeting where obvious disagreements came forward in public light. You can read more from TV 6's article 'Fireworks fly at Delta Conservation District board meeting' where members of the board discussed $73K that was to be dispersed to a CEO of the conservation for employee bonuses (I think I understand that correctly). Some are saying that the money was already earned and others are saying that they want to review the payouts more before agreeing.

If you have been watching the Delta County Commissioner meetings for some time you will get a better understanding of the various actions that were in play that led to this sparks flying situation (public disagreement). First there were questions about the money, then there was active interest in the board because of those questions, and now there are new board members who want more information. The newcomers appear untrusting of some of the actions of seasoned members.

Most of the time when situations like this arise, it is best to take a deep breath and be very open to all of the information because it creates an opportunity to reduce the natural propensity to oppose an opposite perspective. Working with, if one feels they have a good point, often leads to opening up of new resolution avenues through greater understandings. i.e. filling in open gaps and finding common grounds. 

Information on the Delta County Conservation District (This looks like the official site.). They have a 5 board members according to the site. (I saw 7 at the table so they may not all be board members in the video.). 

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has some information on conflict resolution that seemed somewhat relevant to the situation 'Conflict Resolution in Public Participation' The article discusses transparency may be a contributing factor to some of the disagreement and divergent viewpoints. People don't know what they don't know so that is why they are arguing. Once everyone is confident of the basic facts some of those disagreements will dissipate. 

(If you want some more information on the value of parks you can read 'Parks and Recreation Contribute to the U.S. Economy')

Sometimes there may be logical reasons why there are gaps in information and other times its worth looking more into those gaps if there are still reasonable concerns/questions. Transparency helps to increase the quality of the communication between the two entities and lessen those gaps. Right now some member of the community have concerns.

Stay tuned.....

Yes I know that this isn't the video of the meeting. However, the article did get me to think about our own wonderful fireworks. We host different kinds of fireworks on and off YouTube 🙈