[Vision2020] Moscow, growth, and MHS (was School Levy)

[Joan Opyr]

My friend Ted writes:

"The Palouse is beautiful and peaceful.  Crime is limited, the air is clean (well, now in Moscow there is more and more of a "choke" factor with all the vehicle exhaust), there are numerous appealing outdoor recreation opportunities within a days drive, and property can be bought in Latah County for prices that are attractive.  There are two major universities adding a cultural and entertainment mix to a rural agricultural/forest resources economy that is a draw to people who want the country life and still have some big city culture.  Spokane is close enough, and the roads good enough, to make a one day shopping trip complete with dinner and a film I'm not saying we are about to become another Denver, but it seems apparent that there are enough positive variables to attract enough people to the Moscow area that growth could seriously negatively impact the small town rural life that Moscow represents, or did represent."

Now, Ted, you know that I haven't been body-snatched.  What self-respecting alien would pick me when it could have Jennifer Lopez?  I'll bet she's been body-snatched at least half a dozen times.  That would explain her string of 3-month marriages.  No human being could possibly be that fickle.

About Moscow becoming a bedroom community of Spokane -- could I just say politely and respectfully that I very much doubt it?  I drive the road to Spokane often enough to know that it's 1) no great shakes in the winter time, and 2) that I average at least three near-death experiences per trip.  Highway drivers between Pullman and Spokane love to pass on blind curves, up hills, and across the double yellow lines.  Between the 18-wheelers, the suicidal maniacs, the Shameless Speed Trap that masquerades as the City of Colfax, and farmers transporting heavy equipment, I don't see how anyone could consider the 160 miles from Moscow to Spokane and back a reasonable daily commute.   

[And don't tell me that drivers can go the back way through Palouse; the state of Washington dismantled that road sometime last spring and it seems to have no intention whatsoever of rebuilding it.  Highway 12 is nothing but rocks and mud from the Idaho border to the Ringo Road.  Perhaps Palouse has been taken over by your Jennifer Lopez body-snatching aliens, and Washington is conducting an experiment to see how long they can live on only creek water and wheat tailings?]   

As for reasonably priced property in Latah County, where are you finding this magical acreage, Ted?  Because I want some.  I happen to have on my desk both the Latah County "Parade of Homes" and a Real Estate guide for Wilmington, NC, a popular seaside city with a strong economy and a population several times larger than Moscow's.  Care to guess where it's cheaper to live?  Or who has better weather?  And really great seafood?   

I am not dismissing the attractions of Latah County; far from it.  There's a reason I live here and not in Wilmington, but our booming economy is not one of them.  And I'm still waiting for that massive influx of billionaire Californians that native Muscovites have been warning me about since I moved here in 1993.  Where the devil are they?  And why aren't they spending their money here in town?  Do they get all of their clothes from a catalog and have their food shipped in from Fortnum and Mason?  The inconsiderate (and invisible) bastards.   

Unless global warming continues to give us winters like the one we just had, I don't see Latah County suffering the kind of population growth that has plagued little backwater towns in Georgia, Florida, Texas, and Arkansas.  Eric Estrada is not on his way here to film one of those commercials touting the joys of our sunny golf courses and cheap tract housing.  And a good thing, too, because we none of us want that -- that sort of growth would be horrible.  But unless our winters become perpetually mild and our community's economic engine starts running on more than two cylinders, Eric Estrada will confine his tan and his teeth to those small Southern hell-holes that are so popular with retiring snowbirds.  Latah County has the university, and it has agriculture.  That's not enough to make us the next Denver, Colorado.  That's not enough make us the next Lizard Lick, North Carolina.     

Traffic congestion?  That's when you're the fourth car in line at the stoplight on Third and Jackson.  Urban sprawl?  How about rural sprawl?  We haven't yet gotten to urban.  I hate to see us conjuring up difficulties for ourselves.  We have real problems with water.  We have real problems with a state legislature that chronically under-funds our university.  We need a more diverse and a more resilient economy.  You mentioned Moscow prospering just fine in 1965 with a population of only 13,000, Ted.  In 1965, Moscow was the hub of higher education for the entire state of Idaho  Forty years ago, who went to BSU or ISU if they could get into the University of Idaho, the state's flagship institution?   

Once upon a time, Moscow High School produced the best graduates in the state.  Melynda tells me that in 1981, a quarter of her graduating class went on to universities like Yale, Princeton, Stanford and several of the larger land grant universities.  Many more went on to the University of Idaho, which justifiably prided itself on the number of Rhodes scholars it produced.  The primary reason I intend to support the facilities levy is because I think one of the strongest values Moscow holds as a community is the near-universal belief in the efficacy of a good public education.  I understand that you can be both pro-public education and still oppose the upcoming levy, but we've gotten seventy good years out of the current high school building, and, in a changing world, what was good enough in 1965 isn't cutting the mustard today.  I want my kids to have decent science labs, a real music room, and a safe and adequate gymnasium.  I want them to have the same or better opportunities as students at MHS that Melynda had, or that you had, or that their grandmother, the former Rosemary Amos, Class of 1963, had.   

If I thought they could get that in the current MHS building, I'd say damn the levy.  I'd say new high school my Aunt Fanny.  But MHS is not the facility in 2005 that it was in 1965.  Forty years have passed, and you can't expect an IBM Selectric to do the work of an IBM Thinkpad.  Change is upon us, whether we like it or not, and we can either stand up and greet it, or we can turn our backs and let it beat us about the head and shoulders.   

The facilities question is open for discussion until April 26th.  After that, we'll either be screwed or renewed.  I'm not ashamed to hope for the latter.

Joan Opyr/Auntie Establishment

PS: Donovan mentioned in an earlier post that the high school was perfectly adequate when he attended 13 years ago.  One of my favorite pictures of Melynda is of her marching downtown to protest the inadequate facilities at MHS . . . in 1981.  One of the things we need to acknowledge in our discussion (argument?) over the future of MHS is the role played by the emotional attachment of its graduates to the physical space that the high school now occupies.  Melynda was marching to protest the facilities in 1981, but it makes her sick to think of the school moving out of downtown and "way out" onto the Trail property.   

Who says liberals march in lock-step?  We can't achieve agreement in this house much less in this town about what needs to be done regarding MHS.  The only thing that we agree upon is that current facility cannot offer our kids what they need, but it may well be the case that when we go to the polls on April 26th, Melynda and I will cancel out one another's vote.  In our 13 years together, that will be a first.           

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