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Gas prices call for creative action

By GREG HAMILTON
Published April 30, 2006

Everyone is incensed, and rightly so, at the outrageously high gas prices coming at a time when the oil companies are smugly reporting multibillion-dollar profits and obscene compensation packages for their big bosses.

Keep in mind that these profits are what the companies are forced to report after using up all of the accounting legerdemain at their disposal to hide their windfall. Just imagine how much loot is really pouring into their pockets.

Everyone also, it seems, has a solution, from re-enacting windfall profits taxes to calls for opening up pristine parts of Alaska and Florida's coastline to more drilling.

The White House's suggested fix, rolling back just a bit of the $8-billion in tax breaks they pushed to give the oil industry last year (even as top oil execs said they did not need the help), and moving to further weaken environmental standards, is typically ham-handed and short-sighted.

Congressional leadership isn't any better, doing all that they can to block any realistic moves to hold their puppeteers accountable.

Since all of this mess eventually rolls downhill to those of us toiling in the real world, the working men and women in Citrus County can expect more of the same: Higher gas prices that suck away more of our weekly paychecks, making it that much harder to take care of our families.

The chances are nil that anyone in a position of authority will come to the aid of the beleaguered middle class or fixed-income retirees and try to level the playing field even a little bit. It will take a taxpayer revolt, and working parents are way too busy trying to earn a living to storm the Bastille.

Where does that leave us?

Simply put: We're just about where we were when the hurricanes slapped us around in recent years, trying to cope with brutal circumstances beyond our control.

And, just as then, the only realistic solution is to fend for ourselves. We cannot afford to stand around and wait for so-called higher authorities to help; we're on no one's radar screen.

So, what do we do?

Citrus County does not lend itself to many practical transportation alternatives. The only subways around here sell sandwiches, not high-speed rides across town. Our county-operated buses are cute and affordable, and largely bereft of riders.

We are a sprawling county, not a community of walking-distance neighborhoods. Running out to the grocery store for most people means a trip of several miles. Commuting to jobs burns up gallons and gallons of gas. Hauling kids around the county for sports and school activities means taking out a second mortgage.

Since we can't shrink the county, what can we do?

We have to be creative, and practical.

Businesses should allow flexible work hours so that employees can coordinate their daily trips. They should allow employees to work at home, when possible. In this information age, many people can do their jobs on their home computers, which often are better and faster than the ones at work.

We all should be in the market for higher-mileage, alternative-fuel vehicles to replace the behemoths we now pilot (I'm as guilty as anyone).

Before long, the foreign car makers will have some worthy products on the market. If you are waiting for the U.S. auto industry to take the lead, you will be sadly disappointed. Their big innovation? A baby Hummer, kind of like a slightly smaller brontosaurus.

We should insist that local government agencies, from the sheriff to the county to the school system, think twice, and then think again, before buying any more of these gas-guzzlers. Drive by the parking lot of the county office building in Lecanto and you'll think you are at a dealership specializing in gleaming white pickup trucks. Do we really need so many monster trucks?

While they're at it, the agency chiefs should call for an immediate cutback of employee travel, say 10 percent for starters. Or make it 20 percent. It won't be long before offices figure out a way to combine trips, to alert each other when someone is heading from Inverness to Lecanto or Crystal River, and can carry some extra parcels or people.

Such streamlining has to happen, in our personal lives as well as in the public sector. During the hurricane crisis, we all found ways to adapt. We have to do so again.

There will be griping. Superintendent Sandra "Sam" Himmel caught all sorts of flak at the beginning of the school year when she realigned school starting times and bus routes to cut transportation costs and to make the operation more efficient.

But it was the right thing to do. Some families complained, but they found a way to adjust.

County government must put public transportation on its radar screen. In their list of the top 23 goals, not one county commissioner included improving mass transit. Only one political candidate in recent memory, Inverness City Council member Bill Sheen, has even mentioned this important issue.

Granted, it may not be economically feasible at this point to pursue a countywide bus system. But get back to me when gas is $5 a gallon, say in August, and see if a regularly scheduled bus service is really so far-fetched an idea.

The point is, this problem affects all of us, and we must answer it with creativity, common-sense and logic. With good ol' American know-how. Because if we don't address it ourselves, if we wait for the political prostitutes in Washington to do it for us, we are dooming ourselves to failure.

Then, shame on us.

[Last modified April 30, 2006, 00:58:16]