There’s a lot to be thankful for in our communities this year.

One of the big ones for this newspaper is Mount Vernon beginning the first steps on investigating a possible child care addition to the Lester Buresh Family Community Wellness Center. For the past two years, the work of the Childcare Solutions Group of the League of Women Voters has highlighted how significant an issue this is to our community, and that even with the expansion of Lisbon Early Childcare Center to a west location, there is still a waitlist and a need in this community.

We agree with city administrator Chris Nosbisch that this center alone may not fix the issue in the communities, and that the city may not be the entity who ends up running the center, but the catalyst to get this started for this community. We also agree, however, that if we don’t do something, we’re going to continue a pattern of stagnant enrollment and growth in our communities, as we can’t attract young families to live and work in a community without childcare options. And even if it doesn’t seem economically feasible for an addition, we at least know that as well.

We commend the ongoing work of the school, city, Cornell College and Childcare Solutions Group to keep this issue on focus in our community and working towards making sure this is a priority that is addressed in Mount Vernon and Lisbon.

A paving project addressed the stretch of Business 30 between Mount Vernon and through most of Lisbon, as prices finally came back to within reason of engineer estimates. It’s one of the smoothest roads in the communities of Mount Vernon and Lisbon now, and those millings helped to pave a number of alleys in Lisbon as well.

This weekend is also the second Shop Small Saturday for Mount Vernon and Lisbon area businesses. We think Anna Wilson hit it on the head in a conversation with the editor the other day – People always worry so much about making all their purchases locally, when it is just as simple as starting small to get that ball rolling. If we don’t want a town that has big box retailers and want the small town environment we have in the uptown, we owe it to them to shop small starting today.

This list could be a whole lot longer, for sure. At the end of the day we’re thankful for you as readers and what you all do for this community.