Faced with the rather massive task of trimming more than $3.8 billion from the state budget, Tallahassee legislators are looking at increasingly onerous ways to reduce outlays.
It doesn’t take a genius to reason that important services are on the chopping block, services that will affect us all. And as Florida counties and municipalities are in much the same fix, local communities — such as Avalon Park and other East Orlando communities — are going to have to be even more creative if we want to provide for our families.
Abraham Lincoln once famously characterized democracy as government “for the people and by the people.” He might have been thinking about “community” instead.
Because by the people means preparing ourselves to volunteer at local schools, churches and community service programs from Big Brothers and Big Sisters to Meals on Wheels.
It means readying ourselves to organize and manage after-school sports and extracurricular programs if their funding gets reduced or eliminated. If we had to, we could take the Little League and Pop Warner models community-wide and provide everything from math, physics and Latin clubs to dance, theater and high school football.
It means playing a bigger role in family decisions to plant gardens, make compost and recycle. It means wiser choices about shopping, and it means riding a bicycle to the supermarket instead of driving the family car.
I’m not saying it’s going to be easy. But I’m confident that we have strong community foundations in East Orlando, strong family values and even stronger people. This is what it’s going to take if we are to maintain our quality of life in East Orlando.
In the past, I’ve written at length about “community.” We designed Avalon Park to facilitate strong community bonds. We sponsor, host and coordinate community events and provide facilities to help strengthen our community.
When you look around, we’re in better shape than many Central Floridians to weather whatever comes our way.
And when we compare our situation with the conditions people are facing in the Middle East, South America, India and other places, well, we have it pretty good.
That’s the real value of “community” in East Orlando.