Remember when Clark County neighbors could speak their minds, and live and let live?
Before the political parties accepted extremist views that divided our families and ended lifelong friendships, we used to just agree to disagree after a respectful debate.
We have suffered a lot from the wealthy and powerful people — who don’t even live here — who demanded local folks “align” to agendas some outsider cooked up. Those of us born and raised here remember why things changed, and what really matters to us — our traditions
and historic buildings that we still hold dear, that newcomers think are irrelevant because they just do not understand.
One of the last things we did that was bipartisan was decide we needed to change how our county was run when two men decided to run amok when we had three county commissioners. We created a charter, but it led to new problems with partisanism and power. So we tried
again, and found that now those elected had lost power over the staff to the point that things went even more extremely partisan.
The public wants just to have justice, fairness and not be forced into extremism in their own lives. We all want to get along and live and let live again, don’t we?
For this reason I want to offer you a chance to inject into the charter review process one voice of reason who will remain neutral and impartial when all the others are saying whatever their respective parties tell them to.
Cathie Garber earned my respect when she was involved in our elections department. As I volunteered as the deaf representative to the Clark County Joint Elections Advisory and Accessibility Committee, I never found her to be biased, partisan or demanding of volunteers to
conform their minds to an extreme ideology as other county advisory committees have done.
Cathie Garber has spoken to me about her decision to run for this unpaid temporary position with the hope that her many years of work reading the charter and the suggested changes, along with her voice of reason and impartiality, would lead us this time to create a version of the charter that will finally work for everyone who likewise has no hidden agenda.
Please remember to register to vote this November. And for Charter Review Commission District 2 Position 2, you really ought to think about voting for Cathie Garber. She’s one of us.
David Poland
Vancouver
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