Inside The Box: A Sad Day For MTI
The decision Thursday by the Manatee County Planning Commission to approve the siting of a new Mantatee Technical Institute campus on Caruso Road ignored not only the many neighbors who don't want it there but the reality that East Manatee has just a shadow of the need for the facility that exists over in the "crime box," the nine-and-a-half square mile zone where most of the people that need MTI now live.
In a recent essay "The Hope A Tire-Changer Has," we told you the story of a more or less typical murder in which a young man was killed and his killers were not caught. In writing it, we tried to put a human face on the need for the MTI facility on 34th St. West, close to where I live in El Conquistador.
For my wife, trying to learn English, MTI offered ESL classes that were superbly taught; for my daughter, who got her cosmetology education there, it was a path to a promising career. We wonder how important those issues will be for the folks from Lakewood Ranch and elsewhere in East Manatee whose children attend the best schools in the county, enjoy the most affluent lifestyle off the riverfront, and who probably hold out higher hopes for their children than mastering the intricacies of a jerry curl.
But with a 49 percent drop in new home sales, there is still a chance that the County Commission will take another look at the existing campus and its potential for a vast enhancement that the Caruso Road property could pay much of the cost for.
Taking that step would breathe new life into central Bradenton and restore a sense of balance in a county where everyone has a sneaking suspicion that the affluent side of town is sneaking away with the lion's share of local resources and commitments.
We urge the County Commission to correct the terrible error the Bradenton Herald made when it popularized the "crime box" with a big front-page splash, and to turn the tide of decay and abandonment the paper and Sheriff Charlie Wells have created with their ill-conceived and destructive "inside the box" thinking. Send the project back to the Planning Board and tell them to think "inside the box" for once.
In a recent essay "The Hope A Tire-Changer Has," we told you the story of a more or less typical murder in which a young man was killed and his killers were not caught. In writing it, we tried to put a human face on the need for the MTI facility on 34th St. West, close to where I live in El Conquistador.
For my wife, trying to learn English, MTI offered ESL classes that were superbly taught; for my daughter, who got her cosmetology education there, it was a path to a promising career. We wonder how important those issues will be for the folks from Lakewood Ranch and elsewhere in East Manatee whose children attend the best schools in the county, enjoy the most affluent lifestyle off the riverfront, and who probably hold out higher hopes for their children than mastering the intricacies of a jerry curl.
But with a 49 percent drop in new home sales, there is still a chance that the County Commission will take another look at the existing campus and its potential for a vast enhancement that the Caruso Road property could pay much of the cost for.
Taking that step would breathe new life into central Bradenton and restore a sense of balance in a county where everyone has a sneaking suspicion that the affluent side of town is sneaking away with the lion's share of local resources and commitments.
We urge the County Commission to correct the terrible error the Bradenton Herald made when it popularized the "crime box" with a big front-page splash, and to turn the tide of decay and abandonment the paper and Sheriff Charlie Wells have created with their ill-conceived and destructive "inside the box" thinking. Send the project back to the Planning Board and tell them to think "inside the box" for once.
posted by ...Joe Shea at 2:04 PM
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