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March 29, 2018
Changing ‘strong mayor’ might be good for cities, but needs public buy-in
Efforts are underway in Camas and Washougal to determine if the cities’ current “strong mayor” form of government is the best path to follow.
Efforts are underway in Camas and Washougal to determine if the cities’ current “strong mayor” form of government is the best path to follow.
On March 14, one month after a teenager armed with a semiautomatic weapon slaughtered 14 students and three adults inside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, thousands of students from more than 3,000 schools joined the youth-led National School Walkout and pushed for immediate and meaningful gun control.
The National School Walkout is happening as this paper goes to print, so we’ll kick off our March Cheers & Jeers with a giant CHEERS to all the students who participated in the 17-minute walkout to remember the Parkland, Florida school shooting victims and to push for sane gun control measures.
As the student-led #NeverAgain gun-control movement continues to build momentum — causing companies to sever public ties with the National Rifle Association and politicians to, hopefully, rethink their slavish support of the gun manufacturing lobby over the majority of Americans who support common sense gun control — we are reminded of another, pre-Internet movement that encouraged the world to “Never Forget.”
There was a question floating around the Twittersphere recently, which asked parents to chime in on what they might do if their teenager “disrespected a member of the U.S. Senate on television.”
Let’s remember their names: Alaina, Aaron, Alex, Alyssa, Cara, Carmen, Chris, Gina, Helena, Jaime, Joaquin, Luke, Martin, Meadow, Nicholas, Peter and Scott.
It’s so easy to focus on what individuals can do to prevent and prepare for a disaster, that we often miss the bigger picture — what are our elected leaders doing to minimize the impact of disasters like flooding, wildfires and earthquakes on our communities?
While no one doubts the good intentions of downtown Camas merchants concerned by a perceived spike in the number of homeless individuals sleeping and living in the city’s business core, we must agree with police and advocacy groups and caution against criminalizing the unhoused.
President Trump patted himself on the back for “ending the war on American energy” and “ending the war on beautiful clean coal” in West Virginia and Pennsylvania during his first State of the Union address this week.
It may be tough to swallow, especially if you grew up in an area like Camas-Washougal, where 20th century paper and woolen mills once dominated the local economy, but America is now firmly in her post-industrial era.