It’s nice to attend meetings in person again

Here are some words that I never thought I would ever say.

Mark White is Editor of The News Journal.

It was actually nice to physically attend a school board meeting Thursday. Perhaps the even sadder part is I am pretty sure there were other people there, who probably shared the same sentiment…LOL.

Unless you are being recognized, receiving an award, or knew someone in one of those two categories, I don’t think anyone gets excited about attending a government meeting. Let’s just be honest, these aren’t interesting things to attend, although Mayor Roddy Harrison does tend to liven up Williamsburg City Council meetings.

After being largely confined in either our homes or at work for months due to COVID-19 earlier this year, attending almost anything in person is actually kind of a nice feeling.

While government meetings, as such, usually aren’t too exciting, I do actually enjoy talking to a lot of the people, who I cover. It’s good to see them again and socialize even if we are wearing a mask.

Thursday’s meeting involved the Whitley County Board of Education. The meeting was held in the lobby of the administration building in downtown Williamsburg. There wasn’t a large crowd, and the seats were spread out so people could socially distance.

The school board recognized three recent Whitley County High School graduates, Terron Broughton, Mirna Hernandez and Katie Young, who passed tests to become Certified Phlebotomy Technicians. These are blood suckers, if you will. Not the vampiric kind, but rather the folks, who draw your blood when you are donating blood or have to get lab work done.

This was the first time that the school board had met in person since February. During the meeting, the board members met in executive session for quite some time with Superintendent John Siler to do his annual evaluation. He got the equivalent of A’s in case anyone is wondering.

In addition to the return of one of the first government meetings that I have been to in person in a while last week, I was also able to make it out to two events, which helped reduce the amount of trash and garbage in our environment.

The first was the Whitley County Fiscal Court’s Dumpster Days program Friday, which was held at the county garage. The event gives people a place to properly dispose of junk that your garbage man typically won’t haul off, such as old grills, broken televisions, and dilapidated old carpet.

The event is typically held at different locations around the county each month, but this was the first one in several months due to the pandemic.

The other event I went to Saturday morning was the Cumberland Falls Clean-Up, which is usually held in the spring, if memory serves me correctly. Several volunteers turned out to pick-up trash below Cumberland Falls.

While it is good to see community involvement, it is sad to see so much trash, which ends up in our rivers and streams.

To all the folks doing what you could to keep trash off of our roadways and out of our streams – whether it was properly disposing of junk or picking up trash – thank you.

Given COVID-19, it was good to get back to some semblance of normalcy last week for however long that lasts as cases are spiking again.

Please do what you can to help avoid another shutdown, such as washing your hands frequently, wearing a mask, avoiding large crowds and social distancing when you can.