Taking the Road Less Traveled
Maybe it really is time to do less with more

Early in my newsletter publishing days, I proudly positioned a front-page story on the then-new governor with this headline: “Governor promises to do less with more”!

Of course, what it should have said was “promises to do more with less.” As it was, the unintended new meaning was glaring, to say the least. Suffice to say that the phone was soon ringing off the hook – the first call coming from the governor’s press secretary.

To this day, when I want to use that phrase I still rehearse it in the correct order.

The phrase does still come up a lot. We see “doing more with less” being used frequently. Taxpayers demand more services but expect to pay a lot less for them. Thus, “no new taxes” has become the mantra of the day. But, at some point, we as citizens must pay the piper. There is only so much more you can do when there’s less to fund it.

Outside the political arena, people are questioning partisan politics and whether it even relates to their real lives. It seems that more and more people are seeking another avenue to make themselves heard – often referred to outside the two-party system as the “third way.”

There are some signs that Americans are awakening to a rebirth of political involvement. However, recent statistics tell us that the U.S. ranks 103rd out of 131 democracies in voter turnout and that fewer young people (ages 18-24) are engaging in partisan politics.

But if they are avoiding politics, those same young people report that they are nevertheless more engaged in community development activities. Meanwhile, the New York Times just launched the American Democracy Project in 172 colleges and universities to stoke the fires of civic engagement in youth.

But is it enough – and is it sustainable? Many have observed that the aftermath of September 11 saw a resurgence of interest in participating in the system, that on September 12 we were citizens once again. But most observers believe that feeling was lost soon thereafter.

Perhaps the answer lies in my faux pas. Maybe we should take the prescriptive and try “doing less with more.” I think the answer to the “third way” lies right under our noses and is far simpler than we might have believed possible.

At a recent gathering of the Frenchburg Chamber of Commerce, the room was packed for the city’s annual celebration of local accomplishments. A local truck repair shop won the best small business of the year award, and Boneal, a small entrepreneurial company with worldwide dealings, was named best overall business.

We learned that Boneal was a start-up turned into an employment center for 30 people, some of them engineers and technicians who saw Boneal as their opportunity to return home from, as someone put it, “the big cities of the congested East and West coasts.” Later, in a conversation with the mayor, I learned that growth was coming to the tiny town in the form of development at nearby Cave Run Lake. He noted that he was not seeking New York Manhattanites, but rather was trying to attract retirees from adjoining counties, such as Floyd and Pike, who might want a vacation/retirement home close to their hometowns.

Perhaps the mayor had learned the secret: You can succeed by focusing on what many of us might find to be “less” in a world that pays attention so much to bigness and celebrity. In other words, the aspects of community building are as basic and simple as what you learn in kindergarten. Look for the little things and build on those. Look yourself square in the mirror and know your gifts and limitations.

Frenchburg wasn’t about to be a haven for folks from the Big Apple. But it could do less – by appealing to the small town sensibilities of people in neighboring counties and making the town a destination/retirement spot for them.

The trick in the 21st century is to be involved and participate in the larger world in an effort to find your community’s niche and destiny. For smaller communities that apply a little ingenuity, doing less just might lead to living with more.

Sylvia L. Lovely is executive director and CEO of the Kentucky League of Cities.
editorial@lanereport.com

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