I shook my head over the headlines, news and commentaries reporting that Lewis County Prosecutor Jonathan Meyer requested $5,000 from county taxpayers to help deputy prosecutors in his office pay for their suits.
Surely the prosecutor was joking, I thought. But he wasn’t. He did seek $5,000 for prosecutors to buy suits to look good in the courtroom.
Nevermind the fact that deputy prosecutors in Lewis County earn between $80,000 and $107,000 a year — that’s $6,653 to nearly $9,000 a month. It somehow made sense to ask the people who own property in Lewis County, where the median household income is $48,000, to purchase their suits.
In the private sector, it’s a given that employees must buy clothes suitable to wear to work. I can see paying for uniforms worn by sheriff’s deputies and jail workers, but suits for attorneys? Suits they can wear outside of work? Men’s Wearhouse, at the request of Chehalis businessman Mitch Townsend, ultimately donated suits to the office.
But why even present such a request?
We’re told it’s because we don’t want to lose our employees to Thurston County. Give me a break. I’m tired of hearing government leaders express worries about losing good employees to Olympia. They use that argument to justify raises, benefits, and … suits. But do the math.
Thurston County has more than three times as many residents as Lewis County (269,536 vs. 75,882). Its assessed value is more than four times Lewis County’s ($29.5 billion vs. $7.7 billion). Thurston County has more money to pay its employees higher salaries. (Of course, it also costs more to live in Thurston County.)
Smaller communities have always served as a training ground for workers who move on to bigger and better jobs elsewhere — unless they decide to stay for reasons other than money, such as quality of life or small-town camaraderie.
Many people continue working in Lewis County because they care more about the community than they do about money.
That’s also true in the private sector. Through the decades, The Chronicle has trained hundreds of reporters who have moved on to bigger newspapers or government public relations jobs in Olympia. In fact, my journalism instructor at the University of Washington, Bill Johnston, suggested we stay only a few years at smaller newspapers to advance our careers.
After working three years as a reporter at The Daily Chronicle in the 1980s, I moved to The Daily News in Longview and immediately earned $300 more a month (closer to $700 a month in today’s dollars). I debated accepting my husband’s marriage proposal because I knew it meant an end to that forward movement in my career, but one day as I sat stuck in traffic in Beaverton, Ore., I asked myself why I would want to do this every day. I didn’t.
Lewis County offers plenty of benefits you won’t find Thurston County — a lower cost of living, less traffic congestion, rural ambiance, etc. Unfortunately, Lewis County commissioners — with advice from Prosecutor Jonathan Meyer — yanked funding for one area where we far surpassed larger neighboring counties.
Yes, I’m talking about the senior centers. When I moved to Kelso, I read about the struggles of the lone senior center in Cowlitz County. I realized then that Lewis County excelled in providing a network of senior centers in Centralia, Winlock, Toledo, Morton and Packwood. They provided excellent meals, social interaction, and community gathering places for seasoned citizens — many on fixed incomes — who had supported the county’s budget as taxpayers for decades.
That was then.
Commissioners have decided in 2018 to cut the county’s $375,000 contribution to the public-private partnership, where seniors raised half of the operating costs for the centers. Now they’ll need to raise even more — oh, but now they can serve alcohol at fundraising events, so perhaps that’ll help.
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Julie McDonald, a personal historian from Toledo, may be reached at memoirs@chaptersoflife.com.
