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Editorials

May 12, 2022

Camas must do more to protect its established, ‘heritage’ trees

There are few issues that draw standing-room-only crowds to local city council meetings, but in the days before the COVID-19 pandemic put a damper on everything even remotely “crowded,” the Camas City Council used to pack the house when officials discussed protecting the city’s tree canopy.

February 17, 2022

Prematurely lifting mandates to ‘return to normal’ is wishful thinking

A number of Washington students — including hundreds of students who have protested K-12 mask mandates in Washougal, Ridgefield and Cowlitz County this month — are joining a growing list of people across the globe who are fed up with public health mitigations meant to slow the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19.

February 10, 2022

Camas code changes could prove costly

Perhaps influenced by the ire of community members who consider themselves part of the Dorothy Fox Safety Alliance — a group that has spent the better part of a year demonizing recovering addicts in a quest to prevent a substance abuse treatment center from operating near Dorothy Fox Elementary in Camas’ Prune Hill neighborhood — Camas Planning Commission members have eagerly embraced changes to the city’s code that will severely limit where drug rehabs and sober living homes can operate inside city limits.

February 3, 2022

‘More work to do’ as we celebrate Black History Month

Two months ago, a visiting basketball coach from Portland’s Benson Polytechnic High School — a former pastor, nonprofit leader, father and mentor to the members of his majority-BIPOC girls basketball team — asked Camas School District leaders to pay closer attention to racism and hostility within Camas schools.

December 23, 2021

Give health care ‘heroes’ a gift this holiday season: listen to their cries for help

The message coming from doctors and public health officials this week is loud and clear: The omicron variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 is an extremely contagious virus – second only to measles with cases doubling every two to three days – and is threatening to sink our already stressed-beyond-belief health care system.

December 9, 2021

It is past time to come together on gun control

Our nation’s political divide was on stark display this week, following yet another senseless school shooting — the deadliest school shooting in the U.S. since 2018 — that stole the lives of four Michigan teenagers and traumatized hundreds of other Oxford High students forced to “run, hide or fight” a 15-year-old attacker armed with a semi-automatic handgun his father had apparently bought for him just a few days before.