One of the more rewarding aspects of holding a statewide office is to visit schools across the state, especially to high schools where students are nearing the end of their 13-year incubation period as young scholars, ready to fly out of the classroom and land in college, the military or directly in the workplace.
It's often been said that in the course of a heated debate, the fewer words spoken the better. Especially when everyone wants to weigh in for as long as they can, fewer words, written or spoken, can have more impact. So, from my chair in the peanut gallery, I offer just five words of advice to those anguishing through the final process of hiring a director for the Camas-Washougal Economic Development Association.
In his state of the union address, President Obama stated he wants 80 percent of our electricity to come from "clean sources" by 2035. That is a tall order. Credit Suisse estimates it will take $750 billion in capital expenditures to supply just 20 percent of our nation's power demand from renewable sources. Needless to say, coming anywhere near the president's goal will require us to rethink our energy policy.
During the 2008 presidential campaign, candidate Barack Obama promised organized labor that he would support their agenda. Having failed to get labor's priorities through Congress, the Obama administration is seeking to achieve the same goal through regulation.
Just over a year ago when President Obama, then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Majority Leader Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., rammed Obamacare through Congress, no one really knew what was in the 2,700 pages of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (PPACA). But small business soon learned that it wasn't so.
Most school districts in the state of Washington collect voter-approved levy funds to fill the gap between what the state allocates for education and the actual cost of quality staff and programs for students. School taxes paid by property owners are based on two metrics, the fixed dollar amount set by the district and the total assessed value of all properties within the district.
For those of you who may be wondering why Concerned Citizens In Action has not been in the news lately, it's because we are doing our job. And many of our local government officials are doing theirs. We continue to attend most local city and port meetings, as well as occasional planning and local service agency meetings. We talk with the pubic who attend, listen to their concerns, and try to pass along this information to our elected officials. We also sit down and talk with those same officials, discussing our observations, providing input, and also listening to their plans, concerns, and visions.
The hardest thing an employer has to do is to call someone into the office and tell them the business isn't making enough money to keep them on. Handing a hard worker a pink slip is tough because often the boss knows the employees and their families --their kids go to school together or they attend the same church. It is a terrible choice, but one that must be made to save the business -- and the jobs of other employees. The anguish of having to lay someone off can haunt an employer. On the other end, the hardest thing a worker endures is coming home and telling their spouse and children they lost their job. Our family has been on both ends of this scenario.
I was encouraged to put together a list of resolutions for the City of Washougal in early 2010 and while the list was ambitious, I am happy to report we have substantially started or completed all but two items that were on that list. I anticipate the same success on the 2011 resolutions.
Over the next two years there are two major road projects being undertaken that will help position Washougal and Camas to better accommodate traffic and infrastructure needs for many decades to come.
