La Conner Weekly News - Your independent hometown award-winning newspaper

“My dear. Christmas Day,” was Bob Cratchit’s reply to his loving wife Martha when she wanted to scold – pile on, in modern parlance – his boss, the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge. What good cheer is there for us in this weary world this Christmas week, whether or not we are Christians?

The ethics of any religion are grounded in peace on earth, good will to all. The Christian hymnals and our secular carols are full of joy to the world and glad tidings of comfort and joy.

Who wants to be Scrooge this last week of the year – or on any day? “Realistic” is a loaded term, assuming that others will see the logic of the realistic position of the one making the realistic case. This editorial will avoid claiming it is realistic.

Genuine hope is a better place to set anchor. Best to do that in the most local of harbors, the water closest to La Conner’s shores. There is the good news of people gathering and getting along throughout the year, from January’s Birds of Winter to May’s Guitar Festival, through the July 4th parade, Pioneer Picnic in August, the Halloween stampede down First Street, Art’s Alive in November, and the piling on on Santa, first at the Rotary’s Pancake Breakfast and then reprised for the boat parade. There is the boat parade itself, and the now annual traffic jam as 1,000 people seek to leave La Conner all at once.

The year saw the good news of the high school girls’ volleyball team winning the state championship and the better news of the school district’s teachers and board of directors providing probably the best gift of the year: a contract with a tremendous boost in pay, bringing teachers to parity with other school districts in the region.

Many people, more than once, wrote checks or had their credit cards swiped, inching all of us toward a new library while waiting for an institutional player to step in with significant, multi-hundreds of thousands of dollars savior contribution, without which, the library will not be built.

Thoughtful citizens throughout the county gave everyone in the county the gift of the opportunity to consider modernizing the county’s governance structure when the grassroots group Home Rule Skagit followed up its months of petition signature gathering with an educational election campaign to elect freeholders to create a county charter, a local constitution. Several greater La Conner residents were in the thick of that.

Our most local government is the board of directors for the school district and the Town’s council and mayor. All parties took on the important task of determining public expenditures, the school board first with allocating wage and benefit funds for staff contracts and more recently with putting a levy on the January ballot. Town Council did the hard job of following through on its commitment for a $50,000 annual allocation to the dike fund. We are fortunate to have responsible local elected officials.

If there is a lump of coal in the mix – make that three – coal goes to the county commissioners for declining to increase funds for the elections office, knowing as they do that the 2020 election is headed for a record voter turnout.

And citizen participation is, perhaps not the greatest gift of all, but a very fine present that is given to neighbor and self alike. Citizen involvement is the gift that keeps on giving. It never ends as long as you say yes to your community, your neighbors, friends, relatives and yourself, as long as you work toward making the world the place you want it to be right here in your chosen corner of the world, this safe harbor.

God bless us, everyone.