BY KATHLEENE PARKER
White Rock

The week of Juneteenth, trash and recycling trucks flew through White Rock because people either didn’t know about the early holiday pickup or had forgotten. Nowhere, anywhere in my neighborhood, could I see a trash bin out for pickup.

Yet, that same week, via social media, we were treated to a “how to” missive from a county “information” person, seemingly from the internet versus from a reliable local source, like Game and Fish, on how to scare off a bear.  (Gosh, that when, I thought you should just give the bruin his or her space until he or she decides to move on!)

We have also been treated to tutorials on hot weather and, in other county information, how to extract a tick, with that to no standards taught by local doctors to ensure that the tick’s head doesn’t remain in the wound.

Meanwhile, updates or reminders of various meeting agendas for county boards or commissions seem to require work on our part or boards themselves publish information in a not very professional form (but appreciated nonetheless) when it seems that our paid “information” people should be making sure that is effectively and professionally disseminated.

What is their purpose, to post things they scrounge from internet searches, the same magazine-type reports now substitute for real news on alleged “newscasts,” or should they be monitoring, sorting and disseminating notices—the equivalent of  well-written “news briefs” that newspapers once used—that keep us informed about county operations, whether meetings, board vacancies, trash pickup or (important this summer) wildlife incursions?

Shouldn’t it be their job to keep us well-informed about the county equivalent of county “hard news” and spare us fluff from internet searches seemingly generated to just get something out there?