{"id":7565,"date":"2012-10-26T20:47:47","date_gmt":"2012-10-27T03:47:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/?p=7565"},"modified":"2012-10-26T20:58:25","modified_gmt":"2012-10-27T03:58:25","slug":"denny-hamiltons-promise-to-mason-county","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/denny-hamiltons-promise-to-mason-county\/","title":{"rendered":"Denny Hamilton’s PROMISE to Mason County"},"content":{"rendered":"

Welcome to the first article in the “What’s on My Mind” e-bulletin–a series of short<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"

Denny Hamilton<\/p><\/div>\n

position papers in which I will share my thoughts and perspectives–and seek yours–on particular issues facing us in Mason County. We are launching this communiqu\u00e9 ten days before election day (November 6, 2012) to urge you to read about my PROMISE idea, share it with others, and, of course, to vote for me if you haven’t already. Please feel free to email or call me (Denny@electdennyhamilton.org<\/a>\u00a0360-440-3527)<\/em><\/p>\n

Here is my idea of a P-R-O-M-I-S-E to Mason County<\/strong><\/p>\n

Partnerships<\/h2>\n

A true \u201cPartnership for Progress\u201d would assure greater public participation in\u00a0 decision-making. For example, we have a number of advisory committees. We need to seek their input and listen to their suggestions.\u00a0\u00a0 We need to bring people together\u2014who work in government, in business, in education, and in non-profit service organizations\u2014to form new partnerships. These partnerships would bring people and ideas together. They would maximize our potential to make progress in Mason County.\u00a0\u00a0 What do you think?<\/p>\n

Resources<\/h2>\n

We need to protect and use our resources wisely. We have abundant natural resources\u2014fresh water, saltwater, forests, highlands, lowlands,\u00a0 shellfish, salmon, birds, timber.\u00a0 We can share our experience with these resources by encouraging others to visit and enjoy them here.<\/p>\n

We also must recognize that our young people and our seniors are our most valuable resources. Some people see seniors as a burden to bear and young people as a trial to get through. I see them as genuine resources. Young people are walking the road of life into the future.\u00a0 We need to encourage and support their journey. Seniors have walked along their road, are still on the road and they can point out some things to avoid and some things not to miss. Perhaps we can get some young people and some seniors to sit together and share their stories. Could be one-on-one, could be a small groups.<\/p>\n

Opportunities<\/h2>\n

I want to strike out against the most debilitating form of poverty\u2026the poverty of opportunity by creating new opportunities and preparing young people to access and take advantage of opportunities that are already available. I\u2019ve seen a single treadle sewing machine and a few hours of training turn a poor village in Burma into a children\u2019s clothing business that employed 30 women. I have seen kids breaking rocks in a quarry in India get an opportunity to go to school and become teachers. I have seen child prostitutes in Tanzania and child soldiers in Liberia who graduated from high school and went on to further training, because somebody recognized that what they needed was an opportunity.\u00a0 We may not have these kinds of dire circumstances here, but we have people living among us who are stuck. We need to be creative about identifying opportunities and building capacities that make it possible to pursue them.<\/p>\n

Moving Forward<\/h2>\n

We need to share a vision of what we want Mason County to become.\u00a0 We, together, need to identify what we want our place to be in the future.\u00a0 We need t chart a course.\u00a0 It\u2019s our future.\u00a0 It should be our vision.\u00a0 The future is starts now.\u00a0 Let\u2019s lead the way into the future and not be handed a future we don\u2019t want by a group of people who have planned for us and haven\u2019t asked us our opinion.<\/p>\n

Industry<\/h2>\n

We need to provide the environment for industry\u2014in the clean industry, small business sense of the word.\u00a0\u00a0 We need to help folks develop management skills by working with organizations like the small business development center and supporting start-up programs that provide entrepreneurial training like Washington CASH and Enterprise for Equity. We need to support\u00a0 those industries that already exist.<\/p>\n

Solutions<\/h2>\n

We need to get clear about and get on the \u201csolution side\u201d of problems.\u00a0 I\u2019m a pretty good listener and I want to be up front about my approach. If you think something\u2019s broken, I\u2019ll be there to listen, but I don\u2019t just want to hear that you think it is broken.\u00a0 I\u2019ll want to listen to how you think we can fix it\u2014and I will also listen to the ideas of the person sitting next to you and how he or she thinks it can be fixed.<\/p>\n

Education<\/h2>\n

Even though the county is not the entity responsible for education in our state, what we do at the county level impacts on the educational\u00a0 experience of our children and youth.\u00a0 We can expand on what we do well, improve where we could do better, and get more young people on a solid path to their future.\u00a0\u00a0 Educators can become active partners in the \u201cpartnership for progress\u201d\u2014helping students develop small business skills, gain experience and prepare for their first job (for a lot of reasons, some kids who want to work just don\u2019t know how to work). We can support ideas that are already out there like developing courses about solid waste, storm water and basic forest management. Community college certifications in these areas could create opportunities for entry into these professions.\u00a0 We can also expand our access to academia, by working to create a Science, Technology, Engineering and Math magnet school\u2014a STEM school.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Welcome to the first article in the “What’s on My Mind” e-bulletin–a series of short position papers in which I will share my thoughts and perspectives–and seek yours–on particular issues facing us in Mason County. We are launching this communiqu\u00e9 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7565"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7565\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7569,"href":"http:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7565\/revisions\/7569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}