A Vision for Enumclaw

I try to stay informed, up to date and educated about what's going on in my home town. Like many of you I don't make it to many city council meetings and only occasionally find time to watch the meeting via Internet. Let's face it life is hectic, busy and sometimes overwhelming. After all we have council members and committees to take care of all that as well as a mayor and city staff. At least that is what I would assume most of us think.

Well that's just not enough. It's up to us to know what's going on whether we like the people involved in city politics or not. I hear from so many people that they just don't want to get involved "it's the same old small town politics", "good old boys network" etc.... Enough is enough.

We do need to be involved, how else is the city administrators, council and committees going to know about our vision for growth. We don't have to agree with them and differing opinions can be down right irritating. Hey I'm in business cause I want to do things my way. I'd love nothing better than to write a letter or two and see my will be done. Unfortunately it's not that easy.

There needs to be a certain willingness to roll up the sleeves and get down to the unpleasant work of being uncomfortable going against the tide or current policies. Small towns are destroyed by lack of public involvement. Let's not allow that to happen to ours.

Perhaps my vision of a sustainable Enumclaw with CSA's, raw milk, agricultural education classes, animal husbandry and hitching post for horses right within our city limits is UTOPIAN and PolyAnna-ish. I don't care. That's the vision I have and in speaking with others the response seems to be favorable. Once the picture is painted it's fun to see the light go on in people's brains and hear comments such as "that's not a bad idea".

So why not go a step further and show up at some of the council meetings or maybe just right a note or two to the city council. The paper is always more than happy to publish letters and I'd love to help get word out about those bent on sustainability in our area.

Branding a community and drawing in tourism will only happen if we are able to create something different and at the same time realistic for our time and economy. Once that is accomplished, the marketing strategy is easy. We are a beautiful small town boasting close proximity to state and national recreational parks we also happen to have many of the few remaining dairy farms in King County. One of them located within our city limits.