Soon after the election in 2016, Lewis County Commissioners Edna Fund and Gary Stamper said the county funding for public services would be cut under longtime Republican leadership — and it shows.
Lewis County generally, and especially in East Lewis County with precious little infrastructure available for young and old alike, has very little to brag about, let alone cut. After that announcement, there was a bit of protest from within our communities, but in the end, some of the cuts occurred, though funding was included for 2018 for the senior centers.
The drop of the senior centers was guised as a “shift” as a quasi-transition stage from all county (public) to a tax-exempt group that would “raise funds” to pick up where the tax base failed. Now, I read in the East County Journal pleas for funding donations — senior centers need YOU! We all know how that works.
Then I read the AmeriCorp will not be the wheels to the Morton Teen Center, and its fate may hinge on a similar strategy — less public service and maybe more private input. AmeriCorp was intended to give graduates or college students between a bachelor’s and master’s degree program access to work experience they need within their respective fields. AmeriCorp was intended to be a mutual benefit to both parties — students and communities. I don’t think it was intended to be used as the “rhyme or reason” for public services.
We need to invest in our communities, and in so doing we invest in ourselves. I see adults, many of whom are of the age who caused the problems, wanting to provide the solutions. If the young in our communities have little support in the community through a variety of safe, productive places to go, then the adults should not complain and blame the children after the fact when children get into trouble.
The young can see the double standards. The public sector — or US — is suffering just so more concentration of wealth can be placed in the hands of a relative few or for warped personal gains.
This is worse than “poor governance.” It is no governance at all. Thank goodness for public schools, libraries and the places to hike that are open still to “the public.”
Helen Nowlin
Glenoma
