Times-News editorial: Secrecy fuels soccer complex fiasco

From Sunday's Times-News:

What began as a promising effort to bring a park and needed soccer fields to Flat Rock has degenerated into a fiasco because of secrecy by public officials and NIMBY (not in my backyard) hysteria.

Now county commissioners have tossed the hot potato decision to Flat Rock officials who, it turns out, have authority under village zoning to veto soccer fields. Village leaders are divided on whether the soccer fields would be a good thing. And though a deal could still be worked out, homeowners around the Highland Lake Golf Club, the proposed site for the park, have hired an attorney to fight against allowing soccer fields to be built there....

The snowballing series of community embarrassments in the soccer saga began, as things of this sort so often do, with public officials trying to do public business in secret.

Commissioners in August signed an option to purchase the Highland Lake Golf Club. But they didn’t inform the public of that fact, or that the Flat Rock location was even being considered for soccer fields, until mid-October, when the board voted 4-1 to buy the golf course for $1.15 million....

The very same board of commissioners of which he is a member. We have met the “they,” and they are us. Secrecy — not just by commissioners but also some Flat Rock officials — has fanned the flames of controversy and increased public distrust.

One problem with secretive, off-the-record discussions is there is no record of who said what.

Edney says that some Flat Rock officials have known about the county’s plans since as far back as spring and that he personally showed Mayor Bob Staton a draft of the site plan at a meeting in July. But on Oct. 19, the day commissioners voted to buy the Highland Lake property, Staton was surprised when commissioners voted to move forward with the purchase. He said the county’s announcement that it had signed a purchase agreement came before the full Flat Rock Village Council had a chance to discuss the plan....

Read it all--just remember, once the option agreement was signed on August 26, there was NO reason at all not to release the information then, NO reason at all to wait until October 19, and NO reason at all that only the soccer community was in the loop on this decision.