Late Loving News of the Week
I know I am late in posting news for the week of February 22. I have honestly been struggling with what to write. I gathered information for a story about Hunter Morris, Loving High School Student Council President, and the work he and the rest of the Student Council have been doing to lend a hand to local folks who need help with clean up after the winter storms. Hunter and the rest certainly deserve the communities gratitude and praise.
But, I can’t help thinking that we grown ups owe them more than that. We owe them an apology. For maintaining a status quo that relies so excessively on the youthful labor and goodwill of our children to make right the sins of their elders.
Hunter, along with his classmates, have stepped into a void created by our illogical insistence on demonizing and starving government at all levels to the point that it can no longer offer the stability and emergency assistance necessary for the safety and well being of ourselves and our community. Storm clean up ought rightly be the job of the Oakley county government, not the high school student council, yet we find ourselves understaffed and under equipped because our collective goal has been to pay as little in taxes as possible. Our county commissioners were all elected based on promises to cut county revenue and “free the tax payers to spend their own money however they see fit.”
But, now that a few more county maintenance employees armed with a few more waste removal trucks would all a quicker and more equitable effort, we find ourselves relying on the strong backs, social media expertise and generous hearts of our children to make things right.
Do not misunderstand me. It does these young people good to work hard for the benefit of their community, and they continue to do so with good humor and grace. I watched Hunter Morris, Jacorey Tillis, Jack Paloski, Isiah Higgins, and Carlos Sanchez spend all of last Saturday morning removing a huge pine tree that had fallen across Emily Bate’s driveway so that contractors could get in to repair her roof. It was work that needed doing and the boys did it cheerfully. Across town Katie Baxter, Henry Ball, Meghan Cousins and George Cuevas manned the phones at Lewis Brothers and delivered gallons and gallons of water to homes down county that still have no running water due to burst pipes and other damage.
The kids are better than all right. It is the rest of us that need to examine our reflexive anti-government voting habits. County government is all of us. It is our mechanism for collective action. We ought rely on it not the goodness of your youth when the going gets tough.
-Cassie Bourn Loving Star Herald
