Editorial

A growth agenda

Northwest Direct is leaving Sisters for Bend.

The company came to Sisters from the Willamette Valley two years ago with the help of grants. In securing those relocation funds, it was argued that people in Sisters needed the work.

Northwest Direct is leaving because it can't find enough workers. That's been a chronic complaint of business in the last year.

Some will say this is evidence of a need for affordable housing, which will also bring students, which will help our school budget.

We need to be careful.

The cumulative impact of this thinking is a growth agenda: Build housing in Sisters to bring workers for jobs brought to employ workers whose children we need to fill classrooms we build for the new students.

Growth may or may not be good. It does have an impact.

We need a community discussion on this topic.

In fact, the issue should probably be raised before every public organization that has been advocating growth, including the Sisters School District, the Sisters Area Chamber of Commerce, the Community Action Team of Sisters (CATS), as well as the Sisters planning commission and city council.

More housing and bigger schools and new businesses may be a great thing, but we should decide as a community how much fuel we want to add to a fire already burning.

E.D.