We live on a small airport with a bunch of perpendicular taxiways on one side of the runway. That side especially reminds me a bit of one of these golf course communities.
About 20 years ago I heard two days ahead of a hearing that the nearby small town was planning on annexing the airport. Everyone said that it was a “done deal”. This made a lot of red flags go off in my head. In the case of a small town near a small airport this type of action typically spells the end of the airport.
I was able to get time off from work and made up a flyer. I took it around to every one of the 116 houses on the airport. I talked to someone at every house over the two days I had available before the hearing.
This resulted in a huge angry and vocal crowd showing up at the hearing. It truly was a circus that the city of Covington had no clue was going to take place. After an hour of one angry homeowner after another getting up to speak, the mayor finally asked if there was anyone present who wanted to be annexed by the City of Covington.
There were three, the presidents of the two home owner associations from housing developments nearby said that their neighborhoods wanted better police and fire protection and they thought that the annexation would help. The pièce de résistance was the 3rd speaker. He was from the developer who wanted to turn the entire valley next to the airport into low income section eight (government subsidized) apartments.
He had become very angry during what was suppose to be a "cakewalk" and he started calling us all a bunch of NIMBY’s (not in my back yard people) who hated low income people and progress. No one outside of the city's planning department had any idea of the real plan. None of us realized that they had already been buying up chunks of acreage for low prices in preparation for the annexation. Once this guy let the cat our of the bag even the presidents of the nearby homeowner’s associations reversed their positions.
The small city was being “required” (according to them) to add a bunch of low income, high density housing by the county and state. Instead of using eminent domain to throw a bunch of people out of their houses in the city to make room, they decided it would be much better to annex our area and put the projects and low income residents out where they wouldn't cause so much trouble.
In the 20 years since, Covington has turned into a mess of stores and low income apartments with a high percentage of the new residents being Muslims and other non-English speaking new arrivals. It is starting to look like "Hill Valley" after Biff got his hands on the sports almanac in Back to the Future Part II.
The Fred Meyers store that was the very best in the state 20 years ago has so much shoplifting now that when I was in the store talking to clerks a couple weeks ago... they just ignored it when minority teenagers were running out with bottles of booze under their arms. The door alarm went off and I asked if they needed to do anything about it. They said that no, it will go back off again automatically and it was against store policy to chase after them. I asked if they were going to call the police and they said that no, it happens so often that the police didn't like to be called.
So anyway back to your original point. You can really make a difference if you make contact with others. I do not think that even in this day of cell phones, the internet, and other forms of communication that there is a true substitute for face to face communication.
Great story and it shows how personal action makes all the difference.