Hazel Dell resident David Poland offers his support for Cathie Garber in her race for the Charter Review Commission
Editor’s note: Opinions expressed in this letter to the editor are those of the author alone and may not reflect the editorial position of ClarkCountyToday.com
Remember when Clark County neighbors could speak their minds, and live and let live? Before extremist views divided our families and ended lifelong friendships, we used to just agree to disagree and ignore when people said things we didn’t like instead of fearing violence. We have suffered a lot from the agendas spread by mainstream media – cooked up by some wealthy and powerful people who demanded local folks “align” to keep their job.
Those of us born and raised here remember the old ways, why things really matter to us – like our passed-down traditions, keeping farms going after berrypicking was banned for youth, cherishing things old like historic buildings and the Columbia River Interstate Bridge, cleaning off an overgrown grave-marker with a toothbrush, seeing our past and our future when we put out the American flag for Independence Day, and our right to not be brainwashed robots – things 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. To preserve the rights of The People, we created a charter. But it led to new problems with partisanism and power. So we tried again, and found that now those we elected had lost power over the county staff to the point that things went even more extremely partisan. This time it just has to work, or things are going to get worse!
The public just wants to have justice, fairness, and not be forced into extremism in their own personal 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 working in our elections department. As I volunteered as the Deaf Representative to the Clark County Joint Elections Advisory & Accessibility Committee, I never found her to be biased, partisan, or demanding of volunteers to conform their minds to an extreme ideology, or silence them, 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 experience reading the charter and knowing how elections work, along with her voice of reason and impartiality, would lead us this time to create a version of the charter that will finally work, so that our county will know where their boundaries are drawn, and work for the people again.
Please remember to register to vote this November! And for Charter Review Commission District 2 Position 2 you really ought to critically think about voting for Cathie Garber. She’s one of us.
David Poland
Hazel Dell
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