Vote for Schools
Go to Planning Meetings
Eat Your Spinach!
Here in the greater Dayton and Waitsburg metropolitan area, there are a million fun things to do. You can hunt and fish. You can go to the theater or the library. You can hike and bike and ski. You can visit museums and shops and eat a great meal. You can worship in one of many churches or walk the dog down a lovely tree-lined street. And you can just enjoy gardening and futzing around the house.
This is a great place to live and raise a family. But it didn't get that way just by accident. A lot of people have worked very hard over many years, in a lot of organizations, to make our area what it is. And the residents of our communities have always stepped up and supported the organizations and institutions we have. But more support is needed.
A school levy vote is coming in February for the Dayton School District. Its passage is vital for the continued improvement of the quality of education we offer kids here. Superintendent Stewart and all of the teachers and staff have worked very hard to raise academic standards. The results have been dramatic – Dayton's Middle and High Schools, along with Waitsburg High School, were among the top five percent in the state in improvement of WASL scores during this decade. The levy on the February ballot will replace one that is running out at the end of 2008. Even those of us without kids in the schools enjoy enormous benefits from a quality educational system. The schools deserve our support.
Columbia County has a new Planning Director who is committed to getting the public involved in finding a vision for the county's future growth. Over the next three months, Rich Hendricksen will be working with City of Dayton Planning Director, Trina Cole, to organize a series of "visioning sessions" to get input from city and county residents about what kinds of growth they want to encourage – or limit – and where. These meetings had not yet been scheduled as we went to press, but we encourage readers to check our web site, or other local papers, and mark those dates on your calendars, and go. We've attended a lot of planning meetings recently, and we've never once walked out of one and said "Oh man, that was fun!" But it is critical that community members support and take part in the planning process. If you wake up one day ten years from now and think "boy, I hate the way this place turned out," you won't be able to blame anybody else if you stayed away when the decisions were being made.
A new year always brings renewed optimism. That's when more people join gyms and more people eat vegetables. We all know that good health requires nutrition and exercise. It's true for communities too. Nutrition means financial support, and exercise means community involvement.
We encourage everyone to join us in supporting the school levy in February and to take a couple of evenings out of your life in the next few weeks to go to a community visioning session and share your thoughts about the future of our wonderful area. You won't be sorry!
Copyright (c) 2008, Blue Mountain News