We’re Losing Our Quality of Life

GUEST COLUMN

By Ramon Fernandez

Construction is not progress.

Destroy the woods and you destroy what Mother Earth has to offer. Continued and improperly managed construction puts our ecosystem out of balance and engenders the beautiful yet struggling wildlife.

High-density buildings are bad for families as well as unsightly; just look at Morrisville. Natural growth and expansion can be managed by the environment, but overdevelopment on steroids is hazardous to the health of all involved.

More is not always better.

What can distinguish a place is the people, the choices they make, and the quality of life they exemplify.

The Chapel Hill Town Council is not distinguishing itself from councils of any other towns that developers have identified as high-profit regions. Once all the over-development and rush to profit has taken place in all the wrong ways, in all the wrong areas, developers and their profits vanish as quickly as they appeared, leaving townspeople with a strained infrastructure, overcrowding, traffic, higher costs of living, a higher cost of doing business and more negatives than positives. That is not progress.

Chapel Hill is becoming no place special to live due to a severe lack of vision in what quality of life means.

Just because a million people may want to live in this area (for reasons that may not exist by the time they get here) it does not mean this area can successfully support that.

If you desire city life, live in a city — there are plenty to choose from. Please leave what is left of the country life we have alone.

All of this has been said may times in many ways.

Is the region demonstrating its reputation of higher education or just the same old same old? Perhaps it is time to stop electing people who focus on money and politics, red and blue, white and black and maybe, just maybe, we can discuss and base decisions on wisdom, principle, people, truth, liberty, dignity, health and happiness.

Living in a place where you can’t throw a stick without hitting a church, the faith is as invisible as a virus. Can you imagine living a life with honesty, true faith and true leadership?

Ramon Fernandez grew up in Chapel Hill where his father was a medical doctor and vice-president at Burroughs Welcome Foundation. He moved back here from Los Angeles, where he built a successful health and wellness business.