Builder or Wrecker?

Former Indianapolis Mayor Bill Hudnut once shared a famous poem called Builder or Wrecker with me. I encourage you to look it up; it has a great message. At a high level, the writer asks which of these roles have I tried to play?

“Am I a builder who works with care, measuring life by rule and square? Am I shaping my work to a well-made plan, patiently doing the best I can? Or am I a wrecker who walks to town, content with the labor of tearing down?”

Have you been to a public meeting lately? The wreckers are getting louder while the builders quietly do their work.

Meetings are filled with wreckers, complainers, and activists who share their loud opinions and frequently criticize those who serve. Some are doing the same from their elected official posts. Get ready for a lot of conspiracy theories and second-guessing and little by way of meaningful suggestions that might affect change or improve outcomes. Second-guessing is their favorite or only strategy. Many want to burn down the house.

It’s open microphone night at public meetings. The public comment portion of meetings has been hijacked by a process that rewards those who complain loudly and share the most extreme accusations, hoping to generate a news story from the local media. Public meetings have lost decorum and have become more like a sporting event, full of cheers and boos. I encourage you to check out the circus in person or virtually.

Gone are the days of making a phone call, sending an email, or meeting to discuss a concern. What good would those things do? There wouldn’t be an audience. Instead, wouldn’t it be more fun to get a broader group riled up as the wreckers share their loud opinions or agendas? We need more builders!

We also need our public officials to be builders instead of wreckers. How they conduct their business matters, and how they communicate with their teams and the public makes a big difference. The rest of the world is watching. Many officials are after the same extreme sound bite that the public is, hoping it will garner a headline.

There is great distrust between our public, elected officials, and the appointed officials and staff that work in our local governments and school corporations. Instead of trusting the experts, most of whom have trained professionally for the positions they serve, we’re often listening to whoever yells loudest and letting whatever we read on Facebook drive policy.

Our elected officials must understand the importance of their relationship with the organization they serve. They can’t blur the lines between governance and operations. They must respect the system they were chosen to serve. They also have to figure out how to conduct their business openly and respectfully.

Why does all this matter? We battle to attract people, companies, and new investments daily to our region. 8,000 other communities want the same thing. We’ve had a little success in recent years primarily because we’ve been able to put the drama aside and focus on working together to grow the region. Instead of building on that success, the wreckers are taking us back to the days when the negativity and infighting landed us on the Newsweek Top 10 Dying Cities list. Let’s not go backward.

At the poem's end, the writer says, “O Lord, let my life and my labors be that which will build for eternity!” Let that be a thought for all of us; the future of our community depends on it. Be a builder!