EDITORIAL
As we head into 2021, let’s take a moment to consider what the goals and resolutions of our area should be. Our area has so much to offer. However, we talk with readers every day about issues and opportunities that face our area: from flooding and groundwater issues, to a rural brain drain, to attracting and retaining young people, creating jobs in our community, ensuring we have workforce housing, creating recreation and leisure opportunities, to properly and adequately fostering the arts and much, much more — all currently in the face of COVID-19.
This year has been very different indeed. We’ve had to adapt and change in some ways and in other ways we’ve had to cut back on our experiences, cut back on community events and social opportunities. Some changes are here to stay, some changes are a reflection of finding better ways to connect. But, in the interest of a thriving community and burgeoning social capital, we cannot let entropy take hold. We must promise ourselves that the events we cancelled this year will return when it is safe, bigger and better and more collaboratively than ever before. We must promise ourselves that we will look to one another and seek opportunities to come together to create new events and traditions, that we will fight entropy and strive for something better.
To that end, continuing our line of non-traditional editorials, we want to gather ideas that will bring our community together and build it up, ideas that start those conversations towards something bigger.
Below we have a couple opportunities listed to start those conversations. The first is more formal and starts out by asking our elected officials, and then our residents, for comprehensive solutions to problems facing our communities. The second is more informal and asks you to submit your standalone ideas to better our greater community, whatever they may be.
Please take a few minutes to shoot us an email, letter or call. Your solution, your idea, could positively change our community for so many and ensure it thrives into the future.
Thank you.
