We believe that the government that is closest to the people is the best government. In Douglas County the government closest to the people are those folks who serve on the two dozen town and improvement district boards that provide most of our basic services.
These boards control our water, sewer, road repairs, and many other things that affect our everyday lives.
The people who serve on these boards are our friends and neighbors and if we can't get a fair hearing from them, there isn't one to be had.
So when Nevada Secretary of State Ross Miller drills all the way down to the Minden and Gardnerville town boards, to the Gardnerville Ranchos General Improvement and Minden-Gardnerville Sanitation districts looking for term-limited candidates, we tend to take that personally.
In 1996, voters approved an amendment to the state constitution that no person may be elected to a local governing body who has served in that office or at the expiration of the current term will have served 12 years or more. The question is does it apply to those who took office in 1996 and why weren't those holding office notified earlier?
We believe that those candidates who have been challenged by the Secretary of State's Office should have been told before the filing period they were ineligible.
One of the hardest things to do in this republic of ours is to gain public participation in the electoral process. We bemoan the lack of qualified candidates and then come up with all sorts of ways to discourage those who've made the effort to step forward.
