Our Beach for Miles and Miles, July 4, 2015

As usual on Wednesday mornings, I snuck a pre-dawn online peek at our weekly newspaper – too impatient to wait until we pick up the hard copy at the post office later today. It’s not that I’m a Chinook Observer junkie exactly… It’s just that in a small community like ours with a dynamite local newspaper, almost every story resonates in some way.

Today the top front-page-above-the-fold banner headline says: Takko: Use existing laws to control July 4^th bedlam with a sub-head that says: Citizens argue for more state enforcement personnel on beach. And why am I not surprised?

More Than One-Fourth Was From Our Beach

The headline refers to a second community meeting that was held last Thursday at the Ocean Park Fire Hall to discuss “Not a Ban, A Better Plan” – a meeting we didn’t go to mostly because we think a ban would be the ONLY plan that would work and, apparently, that discussion was not to be on this particular table. State Representative Dean Takko, D-Longview, as chairman for the Local Government Committee was invited to attend.

As far as I can tell from the newspaper article, the discussion at the Fire Hall followed predictable lines: the State says it’s up to the County; the County says there is no money to do anything about it and the State needs to step up. Stalemate.

Which part didn’t people understand?

I’ve heard the discussion before – not necessarily concerning the safety of citizens here on the Fourth of July, but certainly in regard to almost every plea for solving a problem in Pacific County, Washington State. There are always fingers pointing to another agency or another entity; the final, middle finger is raised with the response “no money”; the citizen ‘stake holders’ (isn’t that the new buzz word?) end up screwed.

I’m so tired of hearing the reasons we can’t do this or that. What we need are some good old-fashioned problem-solvers, some people that will take a stand, some voices raised in a “just do it” chorus. What is it about the northwest anyway? Why do we form committees ad nauseum and talk until the problem compounds beyond solution. (I’m thinking of the public transportation issues in Seattle and the Puget Sound region that have been going on for most of our lifetimes and have resulted in physical gridlock on a daily basis.)

But I digress. And for those who were born after most daily news was delivered in newspaper form, “above the fold” is the upper half of the of the front page where an important news story is often located so it will catch the eye even when the paper is folded in half. And a banner headline? Pretty much self-explanatory. It extends, like a banner, clear across the page.