Editorial: Step up and give leaders your ideas

The Donley County AgriLife Extension Office held a community planning workshop last Tuesday evening, but it turns out the community wasn’t much interested in making plans.

Your editor showed up 30 minutes late (more on that in a moment), and that brought the total number of people at the event to… four.
Extension Agent Leonard Haynes was there along with Clarendon Interim Director of Tourism & Economic Development Jack King, city clerk and Chamber of Commerce board member Sharon Braddock, and myself (newspaper guy, CEDC secretary and Chamber president).
Mr. Haynes sent out about 80 personal invitations to the event, and it made the front page of the Enterprise twice. And then there were four of us.
Granted, it was a busy night. Clarendon ISD’s Gifted & Talented Showcase was the same night and started at the same time. (There we go with the editor being 30 minutes late.) But surely not everyone on the invitation list was at the GT program.
Maybe it was just a bad day or time, but when is a better day or time? That’s always an issue planning any community event. It always comes down to just picking a day, pulling the trigger, and hoping for the best. Mr. Haynes did due diligence to avoid any possible conflicts, and considering the GT program was going on, he thought he had a good date. And yet, there were four of us.
It’s been suggested that perhaps food would draw more people. Shoot a mile, free beer would probably help, too. But surely there are more than four people interested in the future of our community.
Perhaps things have changed from a decade ago when Mr. Haynes held his first such workshop and more than 40 people attended. Perhaps we’re busier now. Or perhaps – and this is the scary part – we’re a society that is now largely disengaged.
But again we come back to the four of us who were there. We didn’t plan the future for the rest of you. We waited around for another 30 minutes or so and then folded up the tent and went home. But we left knowing that the idea of getting input from the community is a worthy goal.
It may be that we need to go with an online survey of our citizens. What do you want and more importantly what do you think we truly need?  What are assets in your opinion and what our weaknesses? What do you think will make Clarendon and Donley County grow? And more importantly, how can we pay for the improvements you would like to see?
All these questions your civic leaders are interested in having answered, but you have to get involved and be part of the process. Join the debate, write a letter to the editor, come to a city council meeting, or call Jack King and tell him your thoughts.