Just asking: questions

Dear Editor,

I have so many questions in my mind, please help me get some answers, I still feel quite blind. 1. How is it that the waterline three miles out of town, became the responsibility of the town to maintain? 2. How is it that the town’s new library was prioritized ahead of the missing section of the dike? 3. Why is it that the creative new dike design by a local lifelong farmer has not been significantly covered in these pages?

Some questions are outside of your purview to know, this I can understand. Some questions are rather esoteric, like, 4. Why is it that Milo Moore and his excellent plans to “Rebuild the Once Great Salmon Runs of the Swinomish Channel”, seem to be buried beneath the sands of time? 5. Why is it that difficult for our town council to say, maybe we should invite the community to come forward with creative ways to finance our growing liabilities.

Who knows, maybe there’s some other smart people in our fair town. Maybe we should hire someone like Charles Marohn, author of “Strong Towns,” to come out and give us and outsider’s opinion of our situation. As an engineer and planner, he might bring some clarity to the muddy waters of our monetary shortcomings.

6. We should be eligible for some of the economic recovery money shouldn’t we?

7. What are we doing to keep the tourists coming and spending money? Yeah, whether we like them or not, they help us pay our bills.

8. They walk two streets in town; can’t we scatter some of them to other venues of entertainment and education? We are a town known for its creative artists, some were sculptors, carvers, painters, dancers, writers, architects, chefs, inventors and boat builders, the artists of Tulip Farming and a whole lot of others.

Yeah, aren’t we all artists in our own right?

Sincerely,

Glen S. Johnson

Skagit Valley