Give the greatest gift:
your ideas

Black Friday. Small Business Saturday. Cyber Monday. Giving Tuesday. You have to admire the chutzpah of those who tell us what to do on specific days even if most of us have never been fans of herd mentality, especially when it comes to spending money.

We actually follow many of their commandments — but in our own way and on our own schedule.

We regularly look for bargains, just not on one particular day when mega-merchants try to get us to buy things we don’t want or need because they’ve overstocked them.

We try to shop at places where you can talk face-to-face to the owner and don’t have to press 1 for this or 2 for that to get a scripted response from a customer service agent in Sri Lanka.

We order things online — though not necessarily from mega-merchants, as proved by our online order Monday from a locally owned restaurant.

We also look for good causes that need support — again preferring local causes to anything else. That’s why we at the paper offer special rates to charitable groups that sponsor community events and are supportive enough of businesses in their community to advertise those events in locally owned papers.

With Cyber Tuesday foisted upon us, our email has been overflowing this week with announcements about various charitable projects we can contribute to. The volume almost matches robocalls trying to lure us into various Medicare Disadvantage plans.

Some of the pitches already have decided the causes for us. Apparently, some group somewhere has determined what its members want — and want us to pay for. Other groups, laudably, are asking first for ideas, then for money.

All of which got us thinking what would be the best projects for our community to undertake — projects that would be investments, not just new-fangled whatevers, especially if those whatevers end up benefiting government, which always can raise taxes if it really needs something.

Here’s our list, but don’t take it as final. Perhaps you might suggest other projects in a letter to the editor or a conversation with local officials or donors.

 Trees. One of our favorite schmaltzy poems speaks of living in a little town where the trees meet across the street. Years ago, they often did. But so many have been damaged or removed that many of our residential areas now are devoid of the beautiful shade trees can provide. Every house should have at least one tree along its parking, and anytime a tree is removed, a new one should be planted.

Trees aren’t just pretty. They help the environment and hold down heating and cooling costs. They also are cost-efficient. According to multiple studies, having a tree increases home value by 7% to 19% — a much bigger increase than comes from having a plush lawn or flower garden.

A tree-planting program that provides financial assistance to homeowners wanting to add or replace trees according to an arborist’s master plan is a program we eagerly would contribute to.

 Sidewalks. Communities missed an opportunity by not requiring sidewalks for new construction and renovations, but it’s not too late to start. A charitable fund or a government program to defray costs of making sure there’s a sidewalk on at least one side of every street would alleviate past oversights.

Sidewalks aren’t as financially beneficial as trees, but they still increase home values by an estimated 0.9%. For a new $250,000 home, that’s an extra $2,250 in value — enough to cost-justify the typical cost of installing a concrete walk.

Walks need to be maintained, of course, and in many communities this is a function whose cost is shared between the homeowner and municipal crews. A charitable fund to help get this started would again be a program we’d eagerly contribute to.

 Attractions. Many people have many ideas about adding things local residents might use, but why not go instead for things that could attract people to town in addition to serving already existing residents?

Hiking trails that go off into nature along riverbanks, old river channels, and drainage sloughs — especially if they go near historic trails or locations of historic Native American settlements like those all around Marion — would serve not only local residents but also people who might come to town to walk, run, or bike on them.

 Education. College, with its high costs, isn’t for everyone, but a high school diploma isn’t enough to secure long and profitable careers or even the understanding necessary to become engaged citizens, able to meaningfully contribute to their community’s governance.

One of the problems is that we don’t have enough teachers with enough expertise to guide students professionally. A huge growth area, for example, is hydraulics. It can be taught as a vocational-technical skill or even as a high-level college-prep class, focusing on fluid dynamics. But few teachers, who generally are forced to be generalists, would be comfortable teaching it.

Establishing a program to bring in top professionals from the community to help teach everything from plumbing to graphic design would pay handsome dividends to students’ earnings potential, their ability to stay within the community, and the skills of the community’s work force, which in turn improves chances for economic development.

 Frugality. Among the biggest limitations on economic development is the huge tax burden we carry. We carry that burden because citizens increasingly want government to assume responsibility for things private groups and individuals used to provide. Voters undoubtedly would question labeling it this way, but there’s a name for that practice: socialism.

Taxpayers end up bearing huge burdens every time someone who slips at home and needs help getting up calls a high-dollar ambulance crew instead of a relative or neighbor.

With huge costs for travel, equipment, and burgeoning coaching staffs, schools charge taxpayers a hefty bill to offer such a full array of sports, even while many teams struggle to have enough athletes to be competitive. Even worse, overly picky limitations on competing against slightly larger or slightly smaller schools translate into massive travel time and travel expenses for the teams we field.

Returning many sports to volunteer recreational activities — and actively supporting them as a community — would help lower taxes as much as would insisting that government workers make do with something less than shiny new equipment.

As I write this, I sit at a chair that uses black tape to cover scuffed areas on its arms. I’m using an older word processor. The windows near my desk aren’t thermo-pane. Small towns always have been about making do with what still works, not insisting on new everything every time we turn around. Challenging government to be equally frugal and to take the money saved and invest it in services that will improve the community is a cause worth encouraging.

We also need to make college more affordable by forgetting anti-intellectual populism and restoring slashed state aid. We also need to insist that universities abandon their common practice of using undergraduate tuition to subsize graduate education.

The list could go on and on, but on this day after Giving Tuesday, what our communities really need is willingness of their citizens to put forward their own ideas about how to invest in our future. We’re eagerly awaiting yours.

— ERIC MEYER