Let the whining continue - louder!

To columnist Steve Cameron and editor Mike Patrick:

What you are proposing is to have the people who will be carrying this community into the future stop their cries for a wage increase, which is not OK and minimizes a real concern for many of our community members.

We get it, Steve. We live in an area that has adventure and beauty right outside our door, so why complain? Because if our average community member is either traveling out of state for work or is too busy to enjoy it then who will? We aren’t all transplants, we are real working-class men and women who want to choose to live, to bring a balanced and healthy life to our families. We don’t want to be hedge fund managers or Wall Street brokers, we want to live in a community that has a thriving economy and happy people who make enough to get their children to college and can also retire here.

We don’t want a Silicon Valley, what we want are people like yourself to realistically view our community as what it is. A community made up of unique men and women with an array of backgrounds ranging from retirees, geriatrics, young families, mature families, youth college educated or not and the homeless or those who utilize some form of aid. Our community members deserve to have their voice heard and their concerns shouldn’t be minimized.

Mike, I bring you in now because their concerns are real and our community deserves a real examination into the direction it is going and the motivation behind it. This examination is important and needs to happen not just for us but for the future of our community.

This whining, as you call it Steve, shouldn’t stop! In 2015, only 44 percent of all Idaho high school graduates went on to college; that number dropped from 50 percent in 2014. These numbers are concerning because about 93 percent of local high school students graduate! This reflects the bigger issue at hand. Families either don’t have enough to support their child to further their education, or the economy here doesn’t require a college degree — thus keeping our community dependent upon tourists, which is a real threat to many people’s financial situations.

Members of the community who express concern around wages have precedence and shouldn’t be minimized as whining. Coeur d’Alene lacks a real consistent economy. It thrives off of tourism which is a blessing because local businesses are able to thrive and the community brings in enough income to keep the quaint nature of our downtown community alive. But it also paints a false sense of reality, which unfortunately is the basis for some future plans. Decisions are based off the influx of visitors, such as the proposal to build a public dock on the east side of Tubbs Hill. Our community and our environment can’t afford such an installment.

When our community comes together we can do great things. The community members who you say are whining are merely representing a true concern and it shouldn’t go unheard.

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Lauren Sanders is a Coeur d’Alene resident.