Accountability, Transparency and Vision.

Thanks for stopping by! If you are new to our hub website you may not notice anything new, but if you are one of our followers, you’ll be a little surprised.  The short: We’ve rebranded. We’re now “The Central Washington Sentinel”. Here’s the deep dive …

First off, we have not changed our mission, the three words that guide what we do: Accountability, Transparency, and Vision. To us, those are the essentials of good government, and too often the process of running even a small rural county can hide important information. Officeholders must also be held accountable for their actions since they are basically given a guaranteed 4-year non-dismissal pass by their election. Their actions must be as transparent as technology and common decency permit. And they must be held accountable for their actions, the same as me and you.

And most important for all of us, they must have a stated vision that they are willing to govern by. Everyone talks big about their vision at election time (if they talk about it all) but that vision often gets whittled down by the actual experience of governing.  We don’t like to see that happen

We have made the site more contemporary with a new logo, masthead, and design, and most important we will be reaching out to other central Washington counties to enlist their ideas and input. The growth, economic development, social and governance problems that are happening to us here in Kittitas are coming to your county sooner than you think!

We’ll be inviting guest columnists to contribute, we’ll be soliciting ideas from throughout the political spectrum on how to solve rural county issues like affordable housing, growth management, economic health and diversity, forest use and wildfire prevention.

In the past we have been successful in stopping ridiculous Critical Areas Ordinances, trimming back Comprehensive Plan amendments and making sure that elected officials are aware that we are monitoring their actions.  We have started the move for a new view of forest health and productivity, and, with our regular interviews and meetings with pivotal people, we have gathered an overview of what people want in Kittitas county and, many times, have offered them pathways to get there.

We think  a wider conversation is necessary so the smaller counties in Central Washington can share their experiences and ideas, goals and dreams. And though we hesitate to put it this way, get the yoke of the western counties off our necks and allow us to become what we need to be to succeed in our own counties.

We’ll also be keeping an active Facebook page going so you can keep an eye on us and the things we report.

So, thanks for your support in the past. We hope that you’ll continue to follow us, and we hope you will become a participant in our mission, to make our local governments Transparent, Accountable, and driven by a Vision of the future, not a response to the past.