Hall on North Fork Road
To the editor,
This is in response to Joe Franchini's letter to the editor asking the commissioner candidates what their position was on the North Fork Road. First of all, thank you for asking the question, it deserves an answer.
Interestingly, Rick Hanners, editor of the Whitefish Pilot and previous editor at our hometown Hungry Horse News, sent me a copy of an article he wrote on my last campaign six years ago and I stated in the article that, "I am completely in favor of paving the North Fork as far as Camas Creek despite claims that the grizzly bear would be impacted by pavement." I still feel strongly about that and I believe that Columbia Falls can benefit as the Gateway to Glacier.
Before my term of office, the previous commissioners redirected the money set aside for paving the North Fork to the Big Mountain Road. Currently, I am working closely with the North Fork Road Coalition for Health and Safety (NFRCHS) to bring all government parties to the table May 21, from 1 to 4 p.m., in the conference room of Freedom Bank. I am hopeful we can come away from that meeting with a solid plan for dust mitigation or paving of the North Fork Road to the Camas Creek entrance to Glacier Park.
Also, on June 9 at 1 p.m. at the Commissioners' meeting room, 800 South Main, we are having a report from Dr. Holian and Dr. Ward of the University of Montana department of Environmental Health Sciences briefing the commissioners and other county officials on the result of the North Fork Road dust studies conducted last summer.
All this has been said to respond to Mr. Francini's questions of the candidates' position. If there is a way to protect the air quality for Glacier Park and the health safety and welfare of county citizens then I am available to do my part. I look forward to the other two candidates' response to this important issue.
Gary D. Hall
Flathead County Commissioner
Say 'no' to HH Villages
To the editor,
I've lived in other parts of the country where developments were planned and built and they created unsightly urban sprawl. Too many people in one place creates traffic problems and other big city problems.
I call myself an environmentalist and I don't want to see a housing development put up here. All it'll create is problems for people in Hungry Horse and the Canyon. I moved up here eight years ago to get away from the problems that developments create. After all, the area where they want to build Hungry Horse Villages is an area of scenic beauty. I frequently walk and ride in that area. I say to the planning board, vote "no" on the development.
We people of the Canyon have seen what development has done to other areas of the Flathead Valley. We need limits on development in the Valley or uncontrolled development will ruin what makes this area so special.
Hungry Horse is Hungry Horse! Not Whitefish or Bigfork! Say "no" to Hungry Horse Villages!
Ralph Wilkerson
Hungry Horse
West Glacier Elementary touted for excellence
To the editor,
We applaud all of the letters touting the excellent educational opportunities and fine people administering West Glacier Elementary School. My husband and I really appreciate the close proximity and easy access we have to our granddaughter with this gem of a rural school. The multi-grade classes provide the chance for our little one to be both a mentor to younger students and to learn from her older peers. Combining this type of learning with an extremely low student/teacher ratio has produced startling maturity, empathy and academic excellence in our granddaughter. The juggling act that must be performed by the school's staff of five in order to produce these results is truly amazing.
Being retired and on a fixed income, we also appreciate the creativity and "can do" attitude of the staff in getting the most out of the dollars our taxes provide. To think our granddaughter receives such a great education with the lowest levied mills in the county makes me proud to be a West Glacier resident. Our thanks go out to all those who make this little community school the best it can be.
Bette and Scott Brown
West Glacier
Nolan support voiced
To the editor,
It's nice to see the unanimous and well-deserved support for West Glacier school board chairman, Gerry Nolan. School issues are inevitably controversial, often pitting neighbor against neighbor in a fishbowl of open meetings and public participation. The contentious nature of public schools is highly correlated to the central reason for their existence, which is our children. A community-s dreams and aspirations ride on its youth and emotions run high as a result.
As board chairman, I believe Gerry has been so effective because he has no children in the school and therefore brings no hidden agenda or emotional motivation to the position. He is serving because he has a deep-seated belief in community service. His 30-plus years working in education provide the hands-on experience we need in West Glacier, and his advanced educational degrees give him the latest theoretical ideas to keep our school going into the future.
I will be voting for Gerry Nolan as a write-in candidate for the two-year term as West Glacier School Board trustee on May 6 because he is the best candidate for the position. We in West Glacier are very lucky to have his talents to draw upon.
Nancy Hildebrandt
West Glacier
Help repeal NAU, NAFTA
To the editor,
This may be a little difficult for the average Montanan to get their head around but there is, under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), a highway system that runs from southern Mexico to Fairbanks, Alaska. If you do not believe me just Google "Central Western Corridor;" it runs through the entire state of Montana. Its unofficial name is CANAMEX, a four-lane highway extending from Mexico City to Edmonton, Alberta.
Since NAFTA was proposed in 1979 by Ronald Reagan and signed in 1992 by George H.W. Bush, we now have Mexican truck drivers that have free reign on the roads. They bypass customs and do not have tariffs imposed. They bring no taxable income into our country and are putting a deep strain on independent and national trucking companies. When this highway is complete another major industry in America will be dead, replaced by cheaper foreign labor.
If you think property rights are a problem now wait until NAFTA is finished. Not only will we have land grabs through "imminent domain," but also cost of consumer goods increases and loss of sovereignty for both the state of Montana and United States of America. This is opening a portal and infrastructure design to integrate us into the North American Union.
Don't let this happen, help me repeal the NAU and NAFTA with your vote. Ask your Congressmen to get us out, and don't vote for those who are for NAFTA into office.
I urge Congressmen, legislators, senators and governors: Please do not sell us out, and get us out of NAFTA in January 2009.
Eleanor Goodwin
Kalispell
Obama impacts Montana youth
Half the soldiers killed in Vietnam weren't old enough to vote. The monumental injustice of that triggered the adoption of the 26th amendment in 1971 which lowered the voting age to 18. Montana Sen. Mike Mansfield noted that his leadership role in lowering the voting age was perhaps his proudest achievement in his long life of public service. In guiding the legislation through the U.S. Sen. Mansfield said, "At 18, 19 and 20 young people fight our wars. I think they have earned the right to vote."
Congress sent the proposed constitutional amendment to the states for ratification on March 23, 1971. I was a freshman state legislator then, and remember the excitement just six days later, when under the sponsorship of Montana State Rep. Francis Bardanouve — a close friend of Mansfield's — Montana's Legislature was one of the first to approve the amendment, which was adopted in record time by the necessary three-fourths of the states on July 1.
Perhaps surprisingly, in the 1972 presidential election that followed, not quite half the 18- to 20-year-olds voted. That, sadly, has been the history of the youth vote. In fact, it has never exceeded 50 percent. In 1996 about 32 percent of the 18-24 age group voted. In 2000, 36 percent did. But in 2004, in the aftermath of 9-11 and perhaps signaling renewed interest, 47 percent of those under 24 turned out to vote.
Politicians pay a lot of attention to health care because about three-fourths of those over the age of 65 are regular voters. Simply because young people have not voted in large numbers, political candidates have not targeted them. That is, not until Barack Obama.
Obama's pivotal victory in the Iowa Democratic caucuses came almost entirely from voters under 25 years of age. He actively cultivated them, importantly through the use of modern technology. Employing the same strategy, Obama went on to carry the youth vote by three-to-one margins in the New Hampshire and South Carolina Democratic primaries. He is counting heavily on an expanding network of college students to finally vanquish Hillary Clinton in Pennsylvania.
Obama is connecting with Montana young people, too. In mid-March I conducted a survey of 183 high school students, primarily graduating seniors, visiting their schools in Butte, Kalispell, Livingston, Whitefish, St. Ignatius and Townsend. While not particularly scientific, my survey revealed that a whopping 87 percent of the students, at least as of now, plan to vote in the November election. While that seems unlikely, the young people do rate voting as more important than helping collect food for poor people in their communities, donating blood, and assisting elementary students with reading.
If they were to vote today, those who have decided how to vote would decisively prefer McCain over Clinton by 58 to 25. They would, however, vote for Obama over McCain by a startling margin 105 to 42. Seventy-eight of the students declared a preference for the Democratic Party, 75 for the Republicans and 30 had no party preference. McCain beat Clinton in Kalispell, Livingston, Townsend and Whitefish. Clinton prevailed over McCain in Butte, and they tied in St. Ignatius. Obama overwhelmed McCain in all six locations.
After the high school surveys, I took in the Obama performance on the University of Montana campus in Missoula on April 5, and had a first-hand experience with "Obamamania." The Illinois senator's charisma is powerful and captivating. The largely youthful crowd, estimated at over 8,000, left enthralled, energized and on fire for Obama. Fickle as the youth vote has been, if Obama is the Democratic nominee, I expect it will shatter the 50 percent barrier this fall.
The implications of this could be significant in Montana where our people may be turning a political purple to match our mountains. A surge in the youth vote for Obama could make Montana a truly battleground state. Can the Democrats break the Republican presidential lock on the Treasure State? Maybe the kids will provide the key.
Bob Brown, former Montana State Senate President and Secretary of State, is a Senior Fellow at the University of Montana's Center for the Rocky Mountain West.
What we owe our young people
You cannot step into an American community today without finding a lively conversation about educating our children. How to boost math and science learning, whether our school children are reading and writing enough, what constitutes a "quality" education - all of this figures in the national schooling debate and its thousands of local echoes.
Yet with all respect, I believe this debate is missing a fundamental piece: a recognition that a well-rounded education includes the civic virtues. We owe our young people not just a solid grounding in math, science, English and a foreign language, but also an education in democratic citizenship, because in all too many places they're not getting it. Too many youth lack a basic understanding of our representative democracy, and we reap the sour fruit of this in many Americans' disengagement and lost opportunities to contribute to our society.
What would a decent civic education look like? It begins, I think, with a robust account of the American story: the full, unvarnished history of our successes and failures, our ideals and the human flaws that jeopardize them, our progress over the centuries and the detours we've taken along the way. That is the best way to learn how crucial the involvement of ordinary citizens has been in setting the course of our history. It is also the best way to gain an appreciation for how deeply experimental our system remains, with basic questions about the use and allocation of power that were present at the beginning still in play.
Indeed, understanding that we continue to evolve as a nation, I'm convinced, is the strongest spur not just to participating in local and national civic life, but to appreciating the skills democracy imposes on us: consensus-building, compromise, civility, and rational discourse. The only way to learn them intimately, of course, is through experience: the hard but rewarding work of face-to-face engagement with political leaders and our fellow citizens. But learning how crucial they are to making our system work, both in the trenches and at every level of government — that is something our schools can teach.
So, too, we need to teach that citizenship carries with it certain responsibilities: staying informed, volunteering, speaking out, asking questions, writing letters, signing petitions, joining organizations, finding common ground on contentious issues, working in ways small and large to improve our neighborhoods and communities and to enrich the quality of life for all citizens.
Civic education can help young people feel a part of something larger than themselves by connecting them to the splendid traditions of American democratic involvement, and by showing them how to make the most of their talents to leave their communities better places than they found them.
Withholding civic education, on the other hand, means denying the people who will build our future the means to help them do so. The 21st century is bringing with it some very tough challenges: terrorism; nuclear proliferation; declining energy resources; global warming; a rapidly changing economy; competition from China, India, and nations still emerging as global players; immigration; new diseases; fundamental questions of governance. Our young people cannot hope to be successful in confronting those challenges if they have no idea how to get along together in an open and democratic society.
In the end, then, a good civic education has to include not just history and the skills demanded by democracy, but the qualities that undergird collaboration and engagement.
These are not matters for classroom education alone, of course. For the most important quality a democracy must possess is the ability to transmit its needs and values through the experience of participating in it. Our families, our communities, our political system as a whole — all serve as teachers.
We adults have been given the great opportunity of political freedom, and we have a heavy obligation to pass on the knowledge of where it came from and how to sustain it. But teaching our civic virtues has to start somewhere, and I would argue that a key place is in our schools.
Lee Hamilton is Director of the Center on Congress at Indiana University. He was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives for 34 years.