Palatka Daily News

This is Sunshine Week, when media outlets across the nation take the government to task for eroding public rights to information. We want to take to task two other legs that's participation is required to hold up a healthy democracy -- the public and the press.

Locally, there are many important issues facing our community. Major residential and business developments are in the planning and even building stages in all corners of Putnam County. The developments will have major consequences on local traffic, schools, utilities, business, law enforcement -- you name it. Putnam is a changing place.

How Putnam changes will be decided by who gets involved in the process. People who do not get involved may be sorry about how the community around them changes.

It is every person's responsibility to care about their community. That responsibility involves getting informed about the issues and making sure informed opinions are heard by decision-makers.

Recent events have given us reason to be concerned about the public's willingness to get involved. Foremost was lack of participation in Palatka's city elections, with a mere 16 percent of eligible voters casting votes in the Nov. 8 election. Low turnout at government meetings in which important decisions are made are baffling. There seems to be a tendency to want to complain about decisions after they are made than to try to direct the decisions before they are made.

Sunshine laws are meaningless when no one is looking.

We are heartened that issues right in people's backyards have given rise to several community organizations formed specifically to oppose major changes in their areas. Some have even been successful in overcoming projects that otherwise would likely have gone through.

Local governments have reached out to try to get people involved. Putnam County's East Putnam visioning process is a prime example. Others have come up with creative ways to further reach their public, such as Palatka Commissioner Allegra Kitchens sponsoring the broadcast of Palatka meetings on television.

Our preference, naturally, is that the public turn to us for information. It is frustrating when we hear that people were not informed about items we have reported. Some who attended a public workshop about code enforcement, for example, said the county should have mailed notices to the entire county so the public would know about the meeting. They said they didn’t know about it because they don't read the paper. It's a poor excuse to expect to be spoon fed information that is readily available.

Our challenge is to make our newspaper interesting and relevant enough for the public to want to turn to us. Our challenge is also to earn the public's trust that we are providing a fair and accurate portrayal of events in our news coverage and well-informed positions for the good of the community in our editorials. We struggle daily with how to meet those challenges. We try to balance the important but sometimes boring coverage of local government with entertaining features that will lure more people to the newspaper.

Our challenge is to direct the sunshine so that people will look.

Reproduced courtesy of the Palatka Daily News.
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