The Similkameen News Leader
Editorial
May 27, 2008
WHINERS AND COMPLAINERS
There are days when just about all we hear in our office are complainers whining about something or other they don't like about our great little community.
It often amazes me that so much energy can be spent in pointing fingers and laying blame when the same amount of energy used to try to make a difference would be so much more constructive.
It's the time of year when just about anything our local elected officials do will be followed with some sort of negative scrutiny and the usual shrugging of one's shoulders and the "Well, what do you expect, it's an election year" comment - as if that really explains anything.
In five months we get to go to the polls and choose who we don't want to run our community. That seems to be the Canadian way to vote - you vote out who you dislike as opposed to voting in who you think would do a decent job.
Small town politics are even more of a gamble as there's always a handful of
'one issue' whiners and complainers who toss their hats in the ring with hopes of turning Princeton around and into the way they think it should be before the next election rolls around.
There's no doubt a few members of our current Town Council and I do not always see eye to eye. There's no doubt I wonder what they were thinking with this decision or that, but whether or not I agree with them, I respect them and their decisions as I can assure you most anything they do is with the same motive in mind: trying to make our community a better place to live.
That's a pretty tall order when you consider the amount of work and money needed to add infrastructure, promote the community or whatever else our Town Council chooses to do.
Sure, I question some of the most recent decisions, but sometimes we need to do things like celebrate our airport or clean up our town in order to truly appreciate what we already have here.
That's what I think is wrong with the whiners and complainers. They don't realize how lucky they are to have elected individuals making the decisions so the rest of us don't have to. If we don't like those decisions, we get our say every three years.
And there's many times in the history of our community we didn't do any better with our choices. Which makes me think it's a good thing we only get our say once every three years. Imagine the mess if we voted each year and voted only because we were emotionally charged and wanted to boot someone out for what we considered a stupid idea.
I like it the way it is.
Besides, each time I point a finger, three more are pointing right back at me and that's often enough to make me reconsider why I was pointing the finger in the first place.
Believe it or not, our Town Council is working for us. If you don't like their job, you can always take a run at it in November.
