To the editor:

Someone once wrote the fate of a democracy hinges on an active, informed press.

The more important word is informed. Last Friday’s Review offered an active airing of impact fees. It was not entirely an informed one. Sometimes a “straw man” view can help pre-Labor Day sagging circulation. Let’s hope that’s what it was. This topic deserves a more seasoned, nuanced study than it was given.

It also deserves to inform about the developers rushing their plats past overworked planners to be free of such fees off-plat even if just. We taxpayers pay ultimately.

While The Review picks its upcoming fights, however, it ought to consider the $15 million bond issue we’ll vote on this fall for an unusually posh police and court facility. That represents an awful lot of traffic tickets as impact fees for the rest of us.

So far The Review has called for leaders to step up about that bond issue. Yet it’s time for the paper to lead or sort out the pros and cons. We can hold back a bit on reading the smiley face news to get informed about the details, and why so much money about hoodlum management, by one of our two newspapers. Their inactivity so far suggests the papers are not informed or may hope to duck.

Our local democracy is already creaking from their void in focus. The voter practice during 25 years of local government on our own has been to vote “no” about murky pigs in a poke.

R.O. CONOLEY

Bainbridge Island