Sign promoting the Magnolia Springs housing development (just down the street from the Citizens Fire Company).
Editor’s note from the Observer’s April 2022 print issue
Doing more with less is a phrase that you hear often in Jefferson County. It’s what we heard from fans of the Shepherd University football team when they were marveling at the expansive (and expensive) facilities of the team’s playoff opponents. It’s what we hear from staff in the school system, who are figuring out a way every day to keep the buses running and the classrooms open. And it’s how the director of the county’s Emergency Services Agency described the local Emergency Medical Services (EMS) system — “The people in the field make it happen. We figure out the equipment and personnel that’s available, and respond to take care of the patients.”
But doing more with less doesn’t mean that we should be rushing to take shortcuts — on safety, on service quality, on planning for the future (ours and our children’s). We may not be able to afford the “Cadillac” version of everything, but we do need to be honest about what locally-provided services cost and fair to those who provide them. We’d be poorer if the county government and schools spent with abandon, but we’d be poorer still without the teachers, firefighters, police officers, and others who show up every day to take care of our children, our parents, our neighbors — and who also live here as our neighbors, our parents, our children.
Like a family we may squabble, but we also need to work together and tackle these problems, listening to the advice of experts, but also listening to the expertise of experience right here at home.
By Steve Pearson