Rob...your thoughts

I'm pretty sure I can't answer your query in the manner you wish because it would require more time than I care to spend on it at the moment, and I'm pretty sure it would require a mini-treatise on the workings of Mexican politics and public administration as well as certain social factors I am very reluctant to discuss publically. Suffice it to say that there are constraints and circles of power and influence that currently make serious planning and administrating Zihuatanejo for the common good a folly at best.

We have many wonderful laws that aren't enforced, and their simple enforcement backed by a functional justice system would make a world of difference in making Zihuatanejo a better place to live, work and play. Zoning, building, ecological and other important regulations and laws have been so poorly applied, not to mention that we have such poorly prepared people to enforce them, that many of our worst problems we currently face could have been easily controlled and managed if not avoided altogether.

A few obvious matters to me that should be priorities on our TO DO list would be to impose a building moratorium and get our house in order. Our infrastructure has long been outdated and not up to the task that will be required of it in the near future. We also need a plan for growth that reflects local culture and aspirations, not some result of a paid analysis by people who don't even live here. Zihuatanejo's elders had a vision that most of us were in agreement with, but now that most of those altruistic community leaders have passed on, electoral ambitions and influence peddling have undone much of their hard work and condemned us to a future much different than we envisioned for our community as recently as 10 years ago.

That vision was one of preserving our main attractions and allowing Zihuatanejo to grow naturally and be a place for locals to live while Ixtapa and outlying areas received most of the new tourist-related and urban development, since we've long known it would be a disaster to grow vertically. Our hillsides would remain undeveloped above the 70 meter elevation mark.

I won't even bother pretending a different system of government existed, or that city administrations had powers they don't have.

Personally, I would've liked to see the entire peninsula that makes up La Ropa, Las Gatas and Manzanillo mostly preserved as a natural park with the huerta especially preserved as well as the La Ropa lagoon. There actually used to be a community of locals at La Ropa, but it's been a long time since poor working local folks could afford to live there, and thus a community loses itself little by little, being eaten away by several cancers at once. But there are still folks like my wife, her friends and me that refuse to give up on Zihuatanejo and give it away to unscrupulous and greedy people with no love for the community.

That's all I can tolerate typing on this tiny keyboard of my micro-pc for the moment. But feel free to peruse my blogs and my Message Board Archives for more details.

I'm outta here.