Just what the %$#@! is community anyway?

Yep, another night of sleep lost pondering imponderables!

So yesterday I was engaged in a conversation with one of our city council members and a Lion's Club president.  Our conversation eventually came around to what Ferndale should be doing to improve our "downtown" area.  Which if you haven't been to Ferndale, WA consists of an area on both sides of Main Street roughly 4-5 blocks long.   The City of Ferndale may have a different definition but that is what I believe most Ferndalian's/Ferndaler's  would mean when they refer to downtown.

As we spoke, the LC Pres, revealed that she'd grown up in a small town in the Northeast and knew what a small town should look like.  "The churches are white and look a certain way" kinda stuck in my head.   The city council person noted that they received lots of comments about how ugly downtown was.  As we were standing and talking in the parking lot at the southeast corner of Main and 1st, I looked down the street and realized that I had no real opinion about the downtown. 

I've lived in Ferndale for almost 6 years now.  Downtown is really just bunch of buildings I drive past.  In the entire time I've lived here, I've been in less than half the buildings in the downtown area and most of those only a few times and only 3 or 4 more than a few times.  Simply put unless I am getting something to eat, I rarely have reason to go downtown. 

In the summer they hang flower baskets from the downtown lamp posts and around Christmas they put up some lighted snowflakes and such on them.  On flag days, the Kiwanis, line Main Street with American Flags.  The Ferndale Chamber of Commerce organizes an annual Street Festival in the middle of downtown.  Beyond that I can't think of much that happens downtown of any real note.

Anyway this whole conversation got me to thinking about just what is community and what does it really mean to me, because of late I've been explaining a lot of what I do as wanting to give back to my community. 

Historically, I grew up in suburbia.  The Piggly Wiggly was where we did most of our grocery shopping as I remember, then they put in a strip mall of sorts a few blocks away from home.  Mostly, we drove places to buy what we needed.  We didn't hang out and socialize when we shopped.

I lived most of my early years in homes my father built.  Our lives pretty much revolved around our house.  My dad's family was in and around West Virginia.  My extended family consisted mostly of my Mom's Mom, her brothers and their families.   I saw them on holiday's but not much beyond that. 

Our neighbors were generally friendly and helpful to each other but there again not really a lot of contact.  Family friends were spread all over the county so even the best of them were only seen infrequently.  It was kind of a treat to go visiting.

We weren't a religious family and I personally left the church at around age 12 when I discovered that their god and my god were not the same.

I guess what I am getting to here is that community wasn't really an experience for me as much as it is an idea that I have come to respect.  The thing is I am basically an introvert, meaning most of my attention and energy is directed to or derived from my inner life.  I often find myself not attending to what is going on beyond my own mind.   This doesn't mean that I don't need or care about others.  Though it does explain why I am sometimes clueless about them.

It is clear to me that community is something that I have been learning about for most of my life and yet am still struggling to understand and to know.  Sharing time in sweat lodges did a lot to bring me around to a better understanding or at least a better recognition of the importance of community. 

Community really has little to do with places or things.  It is all about relationships/interdependence.   I really don't care what the downtown looks like because it is not what makes a community viable to my mind.  What community means to me is how we regard each other, how we care for and treat each other.  I prefer a community where I feel safe and can openly be/share myself.  The community I want not only lets me be the best me I can be, it wants to help me do that!  And it wants that for every member of the community!

So the question remains how can we make Ferndale a better community?  What do you mean when you think of community?  What are you really looking for?  I for one would really like to hear what you have to say?

Why vote for Stacy Miller?

Why should you vote for Stacy Miller for Ferndale City Council? First a few facts:

• “About 13.3% of families and 16.8% of the (Ferndale) population were below the poverty line, including 24.2% of those under age 18 and 7.3% of those age 65 or over.” (Wikipedia)
• The web site NWGangs.com lists 18 gangs that it claims have a presence in Whatcom County. Ferndale is one of the cities where some of these gangs are said to be present.
• My discovery of a syringe on my own property tells me that there is drug abuse going on in my neighborhood.

These are just a few facts that indicate Ferndale is not the quaint, idyllic little community of yesteryear, if it was ever that. My travels in and about Ferndale reveal more than a few people walking around who appear afflicted with mental illness and/or are homeless. The late night/early morning inebriated tirades and domestic conflicts punching through my sleep fogged mind on hot summer nights from across the street further reinforce the knowledge that Ferndale is just another typical small American city.

The thing is I want Ferndale to be better than typical. Now we can stick our collective heads in the sand and pretend that these social issues will go away if we ignore them. They won’t.

Ferndale has a pretty active and motivated business community. In fact, the majority of our city council members seem to be heavily pro-business. Not a bad thing in and of itself. They seem to be pro public safety as well, judging by our new police station. While the water issues have ticked off a fair number of city residents, I for one believe that the council’s original intent was to save us all money. The hard water surprised them as much as anyone.

What I don’t see on the council though is someone whose primary interest is looking at the social issues confronting Ferndale. We’ve got people looking out for business, for public safety, and lord knows there are more than a couple fiscal conservatives there making sure that we get our money’s worth.

This is where I think Stacy Miller comes in. Stacy has a long history of service in  business, government, and the non-profit world. She is intimately aware of the costs and benefits of confronting and not confronting social issues. She is a realist. She knows that Ferndale doesn’t have the fiscal resources to support a social service bureaucracy. She also recognizes that ignoring these social issues will not make them go away.

So, what can Stacy do for us? She can seek ways for the city to work effectively and efficiently with non-profits and other governmental bodies to face the social issues confronting Ferndale. She can provide the leadership our community needs to make a better Ferndale. I urge you to vote for Stacy Miller for Ferndale City Council on November 5th.

I expect more from my local news source!

The Ferndale Record ran an article (10/9/2013) on the Ferndale City Council Forum sponsored by the Ferndale Chamber of Commerce.  As would be expected, it was not a verbatim account of what was said, therein lies a problem. The article leaves one with the impression that the candidates were all pretty much on a par. For me this was anything but the case.

What I witnessed  greatly influenced my assessment of candidate performance in the forum. Here are three examples. One candidate appeared so overwhelmed by his presence before the public as to be virtually incapable of putting together complete sentences. Another candidate, spoke in such blue sky academic political philosophical speak, that I found my self almost gasping for air. Yet another was glib enough to answer a question with “What he said”.

It generally goes without saying that local elections rarely generate the much public interest. This was evident in the rather limited turn out for the forum. The bulk of the audience appeared to be, I can only assume, high school civics students. In total, I doubt that there were fewer than 50 people in attendance , though I made no effort to count them, nor apparently did the Record reporter.

Given that there will likely be very few additional opportunities for the public to actually hear from most of the candidates, as well as the low attendance at the forum, it seems even more important that the Record coverage provide more than a sanitized selective summation of the candidates responses.

I don’t envy the reporters task in trying to report about this event. It is impractical to report every word spoken. Lay upon that the presumption that reporting only be factual and value neutral and you’ve got a real problem. In spite of those things, I believe that The Ferndale Record, should have more accurately reflected/characterized the performance of the candidates on the forum.

The performance of candidates in this forum contained real information that should be available to the public. The Ferndale Record has, I believe, a responsibility to the public to do some critical performance assessment. If it couldn’t include it in the article then an attendant editorial would have been appropriate.