Yakima Herald Republic Letters To The Editor

Yakima Herald Republic Letters To The Editor – Voters must sign their ballot to be counted, Yakima County Auditor Charles Ross reminds citizens. Yakima Herald-Republic

From the sounds of it for at least the last few months, a number of voters in the Yakima Valley have had it with their local and state elected officials:

Yakima Herald Republic Letters To The Editor

Council member X has never delivered on a single campaign promise and cast another disappointing vote when the ____ resolution came up at City Hall the other night. Yakima County Commissioner Y was off the rails to say ____ during that dust up with the health board last year. And what was state Sen. Z thinking by shooting down ____ just before the Legislature adjourned this spring?

Letter: Editorial Disrespected Diversity Of Views

With all that frustration and discontent, you’d think the 2022 primary would be fiercely competitive. Long lines of newcomers challenging the status quo. Citizens who are fed up ready to roll up their sleeves and run for public office themselves.

No, the Friday filing deadline has come and gone, and with the field now set for the August 2 election, we can’t help but wonder how many races are uncontested.

All three state races have only one candidate in District 15. Representatives Bruce Chandler (Position 1) and Bryan Sandlin (Position 2) have no Democratic opposition. And with longtime state Sen. Jim Honeyford, R-Sunnyside, announcing his retirement this week, Republican Nikki Torres of Pasco faces no competition to replace him.

A similar story in the 13th, where state Sen. Judy Warnick and state Representative Alex Ybarra (Position 2), both Republicans, are running unopposed.

From The Editor: Yakima Herald Republic Invests In The Future, To Move To 3 Days A Week In Print

At the Yakima County level, Commissioner Amanda McKinney, Assessor Jacob C. Tate, Auditor Charles Ross, Treasurer Ilene Thompson, Prosecuting Attorney Joseph A. Brusic and Yakima County Sheriff Robert C. Udell have no opponents, either.

And with three seats on the state Supreme Court up for a vote, I wonder how many people are running? (Answer: three.)

To be sure, these are thankless jobs that require — ideally, anyway — high levels of skill, ethics and professionalism. They may not be for everyone.

Yes, the demands seem daunting, but we guess the biggest obstacles are the costs of running a campaign and the inevitable personal discomfort of stepping into the public eye. Set those elements against the home field advantages the incumbents have — name recognition and established financial backing, for starters — and it’s a big step to declare your candidacy.

Letter: Whoever Picked That Cartoon Should Be Fired

But at the same time, there’s an old saying that goes something like this: You can’t get hold if you don’t vote. (The exact words escape us, but you get the drift.)

Anyway, before you resume criticizing every action your local representatives take, consider this: They are the ones who showed up. All communities suffer when they lose timely, accurate news reporting. With a continuous supply of essential news reports from the Yakima Herald-Republic, provided at no cost to the community, that won’t happen to the Yakima Valley.

Fewer candidates running for office. Fewer people vote. Elected officials are becoming less responsive to the public and sticking to party lines.

We cannot allow that to happen in the Yakima Valley. And with a continuous supply of essential news reports from the Yakima Herald-Republic, provided at no cost to the community, it won’t be.

Judges Association Letter To Sunnyside

You’ve probably read about the Yakima Free Press Campaign. Administered by the Yakima Valley Community Foundation, it was created to support local public service journalism of vital importance to the community. That’s what we intend to cover, starting with essential news.

In 2012, the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism provided the Federal Communications Commission with an assessment of the critical information needs of Americans. The report concluded that in order to participate fully in a community, people need to have access to information that allows them to make informed decisions about their health and safety, their employment, their education and their civic lives—in in other words, they need essential information.

To deliver it here in the Yakima Valley, we will build a critical news team. Initially, the team will consist of four reporters focusing on critical topics for the Valley: Health care, public safety, social and economic issues, and agriculture.

If we are going to report on agriculture with insight, we need to speak to field laborers and packing machine workers in Spanish. That requires a bilingual journalist.

Column: An Essential News Team At The Yhr Will Make The Community Stronger

The reporters covering health care and social and economic issues come from Report for America, a national service program that places talented and dedicated journalists in newsrooms across the country to report on local underserved communities’ n sufficient in developing their professional skills. RFA pays half of a journalist’s salary, while the newspaper and local donors pay for the rest. Our two RFA reporters start in June.

To round out the team, one of the six YH-R reporters now on staff will cover public safety.

Starting next summer, they will go to health board meetings on your behalf. They will track the Valleys growing season through the second year of COVID-19. They will look at the local economy and document how it affects individuals, families and communities, especially in the Lower Valley. They will shed light on threats to public safety, such as opioids and gang violence.

The critical news they report will appear on and on the Yakima Herald-Republic app, where you can read it for free.

Read The Full Letter From The Attorney General’s Office Here

With grant funding from the Yakima Free Press Campaign, we will eventually add two more reporters to the critical news team to cover education and local government.

Then, as soon as funding allows, we will put together a second essential news desk — this time, a team of bilingual reporters whose mission is to cover the Hispanic community in the Valleys.

In a place like Yakima County, a community of more than 250,000, a monolithic approach to newscasts won’t work. Not when the latest Census data shows Latinos now make up a little more than half the population.

Ultimately, we are a single community, yes. We face common challenges. We share common resources. But in reality, we are a community of many communities, and a significant portion of the Yakima Valley is shut out when Spanish speakers cannot access vital news in their language of choice.

Joseph Thomas Withdrawal Letter

From time to time we may double up on assignments so that we can report quickly in Spanish and English. It is much more likely, however, that we will translate stories from one language to another for both desks, further expanding the availability of essential local news.

As we move forward, our journalists will continue to provide the investigative and enterprise journalism that is critical to the public health, safety and economic well-being of the Yakima Valley. Their local sports coverage will continue, too. And we’re also putting a new emphasis on exploring the things that set the Yakima Valley apart from everywhere else in Washington – the brewpubs, trails, wineries, clubs, theaters and restaurants, just to name a few.

Since those journalists will not be funded by the Yakima Free Press Campaign, that coverage will continue to require a subscription or registration on . takes place in the comments section of news stories on the web and social media platforms.

It is something that local newspapers have tackled for years without a clear path to success. Reader interest has waned and faded, starting with the advent of the newspaper marking when most were anonymous.

Enjoy Yakima Safely Letter From Dr. Teresa Everson

Currently, the Yakima Herald-Republic accepts comments on its website through Facebook, so an account with a name is required. Most of the discussion of our stories happens on Facebook itself, where people comment on our social media posts.

We have been revisiting our approach to both recently, as we work to expand and improve our digital offering. This comes as we have run into more situations recently where trolls are taking over our comments or baiting people with personal attacks or false information.

At times, there is a good conversation on the platforms, or people alert us to a fact that we were not aware of before. We appreciate people who take the time to be thoughtful and share insights based on their experience. We know you care about what’s happening in our community, and that fuels our work to provide quality journalism focused on the Yakima Valley. We also know that most people who read our stories and comments are not participating in the conversation.

We are tackling the issue in stages. First, we took steps this week to clearly explain our social media policy. Our aim is to listen to community voices and encourage readers to listen to each other. We ask that people remain respectful when engaging in dialogue and reserve the right to delete comments that go off-topic, provide false information, contain personal attacks or lies, or are trolling or spam. We reserve the right to remove comments and ban people who continue to break the rules.

Covid 19 Spread At Yakima Jail While Some Guards Went Without Masks

Much of this has been our policy before. We received a range of feedback to this publication, some positive and some negative. We had questioned our policy, and suggested that it was an attack on freedom of speech. The First Amendment prohibits the government from “abridging the freedom of speech or the freedom of the press.” It does not force private companies to publish anything from anyone. The reality is that we have no responsibility