No more Lip Service to Social Justice

As a follow up to yesterday's post, today I'd like to address the issue of social justice and political decision-making.

As I've reflected on the whole transfer station question, I've become more and more convinced of several key points:

A. The County erred by not conducting a thorough search for a transfer station site.

B. There should have been a clear set of criteria.

C. The criteria should have included social and environmental justice.

I'm committed to insisting that social justice be a criterion in all future county decision-making processes. Should it be the only criteria? No. Should history, past experience, and justice be factored into a decision? Yes.

In short, I think the critics are right when they point out that there was a failure to weigh social justice as an important community value. Had there been a true set of criteria for a search, and had a thorough search been conducted, I believe social justice would have been one of the criteria. But we'll never know because there wasn't...

But we can make sure we do better in the future.