Opinion

For approximately 17 years Quincy Community Services District and East Quincy Services District have been meeting regularly, planning to join the two districts. The main goal and advantage of the consolidation effort was to better serve the customers of both districts.

It seemed self-evident that one district would be more efficient in the use of manpower, equipment and management costs as well as simplify the planning for the future of the American Valley.

Few would argue that America’s metropolitan newspapers are in trouble, beset by declining circulation and ad revenues and free online competition. But rural and community newspapers, like the six weeklies we publish here in Plumas and Lassen counties, are weathering the storm.

In the United States, some 7,500 community newspapers — papers with under 30,000 in circulation — still hit the streets, front porches and mailboxes at least once a week.

Sometimes my job can be tough.

Maybe that is because I actually have two of them: Reporter by day; small-business owner by night and on weekends.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m having a blast reporting the county’s news. And I equally enjoy building campfires and tracking down extra toasters, pillows and wine glasses for my guests at Camp Layman.

“It’s 10 p.m., do you know where your children are?” was the question asked on nightly television, usually about the time of the evening of curfews, which based by county or city ordinance, was either 10 or 11 p.m.

It was a national message, a very well-recognized public service announcement that played daily on the ABC television network from the 1960s through the 1980s.