2009 Year in Review

Editorial

Get involved! Ok. There is my rally cry for the week. Let me explain. There was a letter to the editor a few weeks ago that made several good points. Some I agreed with, some I did not. It made a critical statement about one of our city council members. I’ll start with saying that I don’t agree with everything that this city council member says or does. We have had conversations where I told her so, and the member respectfully disagreed with my position. Regardless of whether we share the same views on city matters, this person gets involved, and works very hard for the things she believes in for the city. I appreciate that. What disturbs me is when people have strong feelings about city matters or those who represent us in government, but they don’t get involved. Way less than half of our county population bothered to have their voice heard during the last election. We have local boards making appointments because there weren’t enough interested parties to fill all of the open positions.

Most meetings that I cover have very few people showing up to listen or give their input. How many of us have called our local representatives for the school board or the city council or the county board and let them know how we feel about a current topic? Not very many I bet. Don’t get me wrong. I hold a public office, and would hate to be taking calls every week telling me that I was wrong to feel this way or that. But that comes with the territory when you take the responsibility of a public office. And please don’t think that I don’t welcome input on subjects. But I have trouble being too critical of those who serve when I am not willing to, or if I don’t even make the effort to make my voice heard.

No. You won’t single handedly stop world hunger by trying to call our President. But local matters are an entirely different matter. I will also weigh in on the work session that the city council went on recently. I am about as fiscally conservative as they come. But when our council is making decisions on a $3.5 million baseball park, or multi million dollar infrastructure projects, I would hope that they could take some uninterrupted time to sit down together and discuss these things and come up with a game plan. $5,000 is a drop in the bucket for the monthly bills for the City. I too hope that the money was spent productively. I just don’t think that the one expenditure that we are talking about is one that I would be critical of. I would also hope that decisions about my water bill weren’t made in the short time that they have to discuss the issue during the every other week meeting.

So, how can you get involved? How can you make a difference? Take something that is important to you and find a way to make your voice heard. Volunteer. Run for a public position. Attend a meeting. Vote for goodness sake! I don’t buy that more than half of the registered voters didn’t have the time, or couldn’t make the time to cast a ballot. I don’t buy that no one has the time to attend one or two meetings a year to see what is going on or speak out about a topic. I don’t buy that most people cannot afford the time to pick up the phone and speak to their public representative about something that they feel strongly about. There are many levels of government to get involved in, including Townships, which many people are not even aware of. If I can inspire even a couple people to increase their level of involvement, then I haven’t wasted my time in front of the computer.

Well, after some really spotty spring weather, we are now seeing some pretty nice days. After a long, hard and sometimes miserable winter, the good weather can’t come soon enough. Enjoy! And have a great week.

by Ben Wolf, Guest Columnist
April 29, 2009