If it ain't broke, break it.

The Town of Surfside is still a nice enough place to live. It encapsulates why people move to South Florida. Essentially they do so on the promise of a lifestyle paved with affordable luxury.

Folk mostly just want to be left alone behind a thick curtain of ficus, a fragile fortress of illusion.

All is fine so long as the maintenance is kept up, so long as our elected leaders look out for our collective best interest, take care of the people's business.

The mandate is status quo, out with the old and in with the new. This means mortgaging the family farm while ignoring fiscal responsibility, disregarding the urgency of frugality.

Concurrently Surfside is now hawked up to its sand dunes in capital improvement costs for the promise a cleaner care-free future, an indeterminate tomorrow that will never arrive for whomever is here later. Those who follow will bear the burden of their own version of progress, i guarantee it.

We today are in the throws of tearing up our otherwise quite streets and replacing all the water and waste systems to the tune of millions and counting. We are using miles of cheap plastic tubing that has a life expectancy of 30 years. Funny when discussing budget approval,no one mentioned externalized costs such as car wash compensation or diminished lung capacity due to yucky air quality in an otherwise really clean place.

Bottom line is we now live in a dirty slow world of diversions, detours, rubble, delays and dust. yet in fairness to the planners the elaborate infrastructure upgrade operation is proceeding marvelously according to neighbors who embrace progress for the sake of a betterment, whatever that means.

Enough said of compliance and complacency. Finally, be sure if you park here, it is no more than 12 inches from the curb or else...

Irony has its signs.

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