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EDITORIAL: Annual Review: PROGRESS Opinion Section (December 28, 2016)

For many years now, the Moapa Valley PROGRESS Opinion page has been fulfilling one of the most important functions of a small-town community newspaper. It has offered an open forum for community discussion on the important issues and topics of the day.

Yes, it has always been our goal and our duty to present the week’s news in an accurate, objective and comprehensive way in each edition. We wouldn’t really be a newspaper if we didn’t.

But it is the Opinion page that really gives dimension and perspective to the news of the day. The news of the week is thrown into relief and given added detail by the viewpoints of the community towards it. So it is the Opinion page that allows our readers to reflect back the current community issues through their own individual points of view on those issues. And so we set aside this page, every week, for no other reason than to generate and encourage healthy discussion in the community. Whatever our readers may think about the opinions here, if these views have caused them to think at all, then the Opinion page has done its job.

We believe that a careful review of this page’s content over the past year indicates that it is still functioning very well. The free expression of opinion is still alive and well in Moapa Valley. And we hope that it will always be so.

To begin with, plenty of important local, regional, state and national issues have come across the news desk at the PROGRESS this year; more than enough to keep our editorial staff busy throughout 2016. Our Editorial columns and our “From The Editor’s Desk” feature have successfully framed many of these important issues this year.

We have expressed views on a variety of purely local matters such as the big power outage of 2016, the dire need for repairs and renovations on our State Highways and I-15 interchanges, the importance of local Toys for Tots program administration, the workings of the Justice Courts, and the joys of small-town rural life during the week of the Clark County Fair.

We have also cast our eye further out, at issues more regional in nature. We have followed, and commented extensively on, the process to reorganize the Clark County School District laid out in Assembly Bill 394 which has taken place this year. We have applauded the efforts of Clark County Building Department and Comprehensive Planning staff in engaging with the local community to make building and development more simple in rural areas. We have credited County Commissioner Marilyn Kirkpatrick for her role in facilitating that engagement. At the same time, we have also decried and criticized the bureaucracy and red tape that have been the undoing of various enterprises in the community from the Roos N More zoo to the popular Mud Bog races; and many other endeavors in between. We have championed the idea that public lands issues are best addressed by preserving, nurturing and engaging local groups and individuals to care for the lands which they use and value the most. We have maintained that in vast areas like Gold Butte, the locals really do know best how to solve the problems; and thus they should be consulted and involved in driving the process.

Finally, we have even broadened our views from time to time to the state and national arena. We have commented frequently on national politics, specifically in this years controversial Presidential race. And that was just the beginning in our dealing with election year issues. Over the past year, we published no less than six different Editorial pieces offering endorsements in every race on the ballot from the U.S. Senate seat, through the state legislature elections facing Moapa Valley voters, weighing in on all of the ballot questions, including the county commission races, and even right down and including our recommendations in the elections for Overton Power District seats. Those items truly covered a great deal of territory.

These editorial opinion pieces were not written to manipulate public opinion or to tell people how they should think. In a community as intelligent, varied and thoughtful as Moapa Valley, that would be a foolhardy effort. Rather they have been published with the hope of sparking a constructive local conversation on these important issues.
And we seem to have been successful there!

The PROGRESS has received and published many letters to the editor this year. That is a respectable number even for an election year. The majority of those letters were written by local residents; with a few coming from further afield. We appreciate and value the time and effort taken by all of those who wrote in to share their views.

The writers of letters who have appeared in print during 2016 included: Dr. Philip A. Long, Esther Ramos, Linda Hart, John Soltesz, Nathaniel Woolston, Barbara Heitmann Richardson, Martha Heitmann Haidal, and Betty Heitmann, Patty Holden, Sandi Cockburn, Mary Kaye Washburn, Pam Toulouse, Sharon Larsen, Carl Pro, Dan Cloninger, Lindsey Dalley, Judge Lanny Waite, Scott Carson, Connie Foust, Clint Brill, Mrs. Brill, Cliven D. Bundy, Keith Grimes, Janine Hansen, Dorothy Fetherston, Anna Stratton, Tony & Renae Terry, Melissa Holland, Coby Hunt, Chris D. Hallenburg and Kurt Hanson.

In addition, many people have posted hundreds of comments to our website at www.mvprogress.com. Most of these have not been published in the hardcopy of the newspaper but they definitely add to the community forum experience. Those few who provided names with their comments included: Steve Getz, David Whisler, Kirsten Melvin, Brian K. Shoemake, Clyde Perkins, Mary Kaye Washburn, Denise Stoesser, Bill Mendenhall, Nikki Winchester, Maria Jarero, Pamela Cowan, C. Woodford, Tonya Campanile, Daniel Glenn, Christy Turner, Dawn Johnson, Keith Thomas, Ivy Beresford, Moe Horne, Susan Cronins, Chris Green, Helen Cook Turpin, Tracy Rodgers, Olivia Laning, David N. Kalinevitch, Carliss Hargrove, Shauna & Jeff Adams, Jay Logue, Buckey Walters, Gwenevere Ferrell, Loni Robinson Delehuerta, Debby Leavitt, Angie Robinson, Jule Wadworth, Connie Conner, Leon Travis Bonta, Richard Huskins, Dale Olive, Barbara Pate, Tammy Lou Bickerton, Ace Robison, Johnny Armstrong, Craig Fabbi, Rex Jensen, Boo & Ida Franc, Val & Elva Smith, Natalie Jacobsmeyer, Lois Lopez, Carol Vick, Carol Kendrick, Rene Brakefield, Mary Lou Linge, Kevin O’Meara, Peter Certain, Paul Cherubini, Terry West, James Owens, Sidney Bounds, Jamalee Mackey, Clyde Perkins, Gene Hart, Albert Craig Spitler, Scott Carson, Julie Paterson, Loren Pearce, Harold Poole, Sharon Beresford, Janet Allen, Jeff Hunt, Anita Szelestey, Sam Dunn, Sarah Walsh, Ada Marie Jensen, Jim Boone, Maxine Waite, David Linn, Robert Winn, Alena Stevens, Jim Vallet, Sue Baker, Frank and Linda Johnson, Dean Koutras, Paula Hemming, Coach Greenland, KaeLyne Pendleton, Myrna Cooper McDougal, Helen and Mike Gibbs, June Cruse, Lori Pedersen, Scott McCallister, Van Snow, GeorgiAnne Ozaki, Robin Hart, Carolyn Jackson, Becky Bartle, Remy Kahus, Jan Campbell and Leslie Prevish.

We have also been pleased to publish more extended views in longer op-ed columns that are more detailed than a simple letter to the editor can be. Some of these have come from our readers. Others have come from experts in various fields. These have added depth to the PROGRESS Opinion page. We recognize the following for their contribution in these articles: Nancy Grimes, Will Durst, George Rasley, Sidney Bounds, Dick Polman, Susan Stamper Brown, John L. Micek, Tom Purcell, Lisa German, Esther Ramos, Gerry Swanson and LTC Lynn N. Bowler.

For the tenth year running now, the PROGRESS once again expresses tremendous appreciation to Dr. Larry Moses for his insightful and entertaining column “No One Asked Me But…” We receive all kinds of feedback from readers about various aspects of the newspaper and its presentation. Much is positive and some is negative. But Doc Moses’ column, even after ten years, generates the most interest, discussion and feedback. The most common sentiment expressed by readers about this feature goes something like this: “I don’t always agree with everything that he says, but it sure makes you think. And it is always such a pleasure to read it.” Such comments encapsulate to a ‘T’ precisely what our mission is in publishing the Opinion page at all. Once again we are grateful to Doc Moses for this important labor of love in elevating the community discourse in this way. The PROGRESS just wouldn’t be the same without him!

Finally, we would take this opportunity to wish our readers a Happy New Year! As a community we will be facing 2017 together. It will include all of the commonplace events and sudden surprises; the happiness and heartbreaks; the victories and defeats; the joys and perils that might come our way. Our staff looks forward to bringing all of these things to our pages during 2017. And we look forward to hearing from any and all of our loyal readership, with your unique and valued perspectives on the news of the day.

Please don’t keep your opinions to yourselves! They are always welcome in the Moapa Valley PROGRESS.
And, once again, thank you, Moapa Valley, for reading the PROGRESS!

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