Blog Entry #3

I have been to a few of our town hall meetings during my civics class that I was in when I was a freshman in high school. Those ones were at the town hall and it was a pretty interesting debate. The main issue of the night that I was there was about the Big Lake Police Department. The city wanted to reduce the number of Big Lake Police officers and bring in more Sherburne County sheriffs. The city council seemed all up for that idea but some of the citizens did not. Many of them stood up to try and keep the city cops. But I do believe that it was passed, and the number of Big Lake cops was reduced. That town meeting was three or four years ago though, but recently I went to a meeting at our high school auditorium. It was about the referendum for more money in our school district. Last year the vote didn't pass so the school had to cut back to try and save money. This year however, they set up a meeting to try and push the referendum so that they could add back the things that they had to cut last year. People came to agree with the referendum because everything raised in prices such as lunch and sports. Sports prices went from 90 dollars a season to 220 dollars in only three years. People came to disagree with it however because the referendum would obviously raise their taxes.

I think going to those town meetings are pretty interesting. It gives people the chance to see what is going on in their community, a chance to speak their mind, and they can see what other citizens in their community have to saw about certain issues or concerns.

Help for Haiti

I was just recently reading an article in my local news paper and it was about a families efforts to help the people in Haiti from the recent earthquake. Their plans are to get around 100,000 meals to bring over there and help build decent homes for the people that lost their old ones in the earthquake. I'm very glad to see my community try and help a place that is so far away yet struck by tragedy. I also remember reading something a few years back of a couple groups of people from my town that also went down to New Orleans to help with the Hurricane Katrina relief. I just feel good that I live in a community that is set on helping others instead of ourselves and I want to get involved with it as much as I can because we live in a place where that sort of thing can't happen to us and i feel fortunate for that. If anyone that lives in the Big Lake area and would like to help with the relief the phone number is 763-262-HOPE and you can send checks to

Hope Filled Hands, P.O. Box 66, Big Lake, MN 55309.