News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
Last week, the Sisters City Council appropriated $10,000 for a “Greater Sisters Community Vision & Growth Strategy,” a series of “Community Summits” and a survey.
The end result is is to be “a vision that portrays a desired future condition for the Greater Sisters community” and a plan to achieve it. Total price tag: $72,000 (See story, page 4).
Three city councilors who voted to appropriate the city’s contribution — Mayor Dave Elliott, Brad Boyd and Lon Kellstrom —expressed serious reservations about the project. They said they were worried that it would produce no tangible results. We agree. They should have voted the proposal down.
Sisters needs more action, not more talk. This is a step back, not forward.
Sisters already has a 20-year comprehensive plan that is supposed to provide a “vision” for the community and policies to achieve it. Sisters already has a development code, which it is in the process of updating with citizen input. A committee already came up with a couplet plan, which has since been essentially scrapped. A committee has already created design standards for drive-thru businesses, which has yet to be acted upon.
For the same $10,000 the city could help create a wi-fi cloud that would give residents and visitors wireless access to the Internet. This is something real.
Sisters is faced with many pressing issues: transportation, housing, power supply, economic stability. All of these things have been talked about and talked about and talked about for more than a decade.
It’s time to stop talking and get some work done.
Jim Cornelius, News Editor
Jim Cornelius is editor in chief of The Nugget and author of “Warriors of the Wildlands: True Tales of the Frontier Partisans.” A history buff, he explores frontier history across three centuries and several continents on his podcast, The Frontier Partisans. For more information visit www.frontierpartisans.com.
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