Linda Mowery-Denning Editor/Publisher

Residents of the Canren Addition, in the south part of Ellsworth, are upset because a developer plans to build a dozen single family homes in the area. They attended meetings this past week of the Ellsworth County commission and Ellsworth City Council to voice their concerns.

That is as it should be. Every resident of every county in Kansas has the right to question their elected officials when they have concerns.

It’s the timing that bothers us. If we may make a suggestion —

First, no one has been trying to operate behind closed doors. The Ellsworth County Independent-Reporter has been writing about these planned homes for months, starting with the first time the developer visited Ellsworth County. The early stories did not list the site where the homes would be built. But the later ones did.

We readily admit this sounds self-serving. But it’s true. If you want to know what’s going on in Ellsworth County, read the newspaper. We even published photographs of the drawings of the homes.

Subscribe to the newspaper. It’s one of the best deals in town.

The other week, we went through the I-R and counted the number of stories that were tied to websites. A reader would have had to search more than two dozen websites to get the information that was available in that week’s newspaper. And you still wouldn’t have read about Gretchen Griffith’s beautiful new home at Carneiro and many other stories.

Years ago, we wrote about the construction of a new jail in a rural Kansas county in another part of the state. Not everyone was excited about the project, but they didn’t do anything about it until a bond issue had passed. Then they went to the Kansas Legislature demanding legislation to stop construction. There are still residents in that county who don’t speak to each other because of hard feelings over the jail.

We’re all busy; however, keeping up with what’s going on in our schools, our city hall, our community in general is surely worth a couple of hours a week.

And the best and most efficient way to do that is by reading the local newspaper.

We repeat.

Subscribe to the I-R. It’s one of the best deals in town.