Thursday, November 28, 2024
27.0°F

Health corridor process offers powerful lesson

| December 6, 2019 12:00 AM

For entertainment purposes, it’s a 7.

Pure information? Give it a 5.

How about as a lesson that might help guide locals in the future? Ah, that could register a perfect 10.

Today’s adventure led by reporter Craig Northrup through some of the blazing quotes and background from Tuesday night’s health corridor vote is worth the five solid minutes it might take you to absorb. We’re ignoring the goal of keeping articles as short as possible because in one big bite-sized chunk, you’re receiving a synopsis of the way the public’s business should be conducted.

What some might perceive as rancor and ranting in newsprint and ink, we see as a pure positive: Passionate citizens and public officials engaged in the decision-making process on an issue that will have major ramifications in our community for many years to come.

Whether you side with the urban renewal agency team and Kootenai Health CEO Jon Ness and the vast majority of the Coeur d’Alene City Council or with the head of the local Republican Party and the anti-urban renewal agency team and the occasional citizen who’s going to tilt against any windmill rising in the kingdom of officialdom is beside the point. Tuesday night’s 5-1 vote capped a civics lesson that was flunked by many because they weren’t paying attention.

Of all the reasons some people may have had for opposing the massive project, at least one is completely groundless. Accusations that the city, the urban renewal agency and the hospital were sneaking a fast one past the people are bogus. Claims of an 11th hour coup are simply wrong.

June 4 headline in The Press: New health corridor seeks public guidance

June 25 headline in The Press: Health corridor still looking for public input

July 9 headline in The Press: Big ideas, small crowds at health corridor workshop

July 11 headline in The Press: Consultants reveal first design to health corridor

On and on the coverage has gone. In fact, few topics have consumed more space in the community’s newspaper since early summer than this one, much of it dedicated to soliciting the public’s involvement and opinions on the subject. Anybody saying the power brokers were dealing in back rooms is admitting he or she just wasn’t paying attention.

The health corridor vote is over, but developing issues with community-wide impact are unfolding. Right now, Coeur d’Alene School District is reaching out to the public for many of the same reasons Kootenai Health and the city of Coeur d’Alene did: Growth is necessitating serious adjustments in the way business is being conducted. With Coeur d’Alene schools, growth means school boundaries are going to change. And that may become a major disruption for any parent who’s going to have to conduct the business of education differently next year than this one.

An old Buddhist saying goes, “When the student is ready, the teacher appears.”

Students, the school boundary teacher is already here.