By Tom Ryan, Kansas City Star Reader Advisory Panel

People are seeing their dreams dashed in many ways. The resources are not there right now to bring visions into reality. Beginning at the personal level to the community, we realize our dreams may not be resourced this year.

COMBAT may have to engage in peacekeeping. The Green Impact Zone may have to weather a chilling un-weatherized winter. You need a job.

This dynamic extends around the Metro area to varying degrees. Soon we’ll be reading about the dramatic budget cuts at the State levels in Kansas and Missouri. Soon we’ll read the details of all the pending grants log-jammed in Washington to acquire that stimulus money we’ve read about. Then we’ll read about all the grants that should have been written months ago, for programs that will go into the column labeled lost opportunities.

Citizens are beginning to see that there are a myriad of uncoordinated, un-resourced programs intending to use public funds, locally. It’s becoming clear that despite the need for coordinated efficiency and leadership, we see too many similar programs. Private foundations certainly have a great role, but the public’s foundation deserves leadership. Given the complex geography and complex government structures, state and county lines, the resourcing cannot happen, or even happen fast enough.

While local governments may wish to collaborate, too many factors stand in the way to allow for rapid, aggressive, and efficient development planning and operations. We need not blame ourselves...it’s the nature of who we are and where we live and the borders we border, our zones and districts.

We have an enormous capacity to dream. But now the resources are scarce or non-existent. Once we considered new taxes as they affected our property tax and take-home pay. Now, many of us have neither a home nor a job. Right now, this talk of new taxes, or continued taxes for programs for targeted communities away from our mailbox just seems harder to affirm.

Our capacity and tenacity to dream will become stronger now, as we shall see. Hard times have a way of pushing us out of desperation with that innate human ability to make hope a muscle.

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