Recently, in the April 15 edition of the Ramona Sentinel, Mr. Jeff Mitchell, Publisher included as a “Rant” the following: “Until Ramona decides it wants to be a city, stop complaining on how the county votes on issues that impact Ramona. All the local committees and planning group can do is offer opinions and recommendation, then the county will do whatever it wants. So we either accept it and move on, or make a decision to take control; you can’t have it both ways.”

After reading this and having spend sufficient time every Thursday reading about what the aforementioned “local committees and planning group” are doing in our fair community, I find I am compelled to issue a challenge to the residents here: Do everything necessary to secure local government for Ramona.

We belong to the Republic of the United States of America. A republican form of government needs to be formulated from the smallest unit (a family) all the way up to the national government, with city, county and state governments in between. In a republic we assemble and administer the government through our representatives and agents.

Each level of government is assigned the services that it can most efficiently and economically be performed.
Thomas Jefferson said,
“The way to have good and safe government is not to trust it all to one, but to divide it among the many, distributing to everyone exactly the functions he is competent to. Let the national government be entrusted with the defense of the nation, and its foreign and federal relations; the state governments with the civil rights, laws, police, and administration of what concerns the state generally; the counties with the local concerns of the counties; and each ward [city] direct the interest within itself. It is by dividing and subdividing these republics from the great national one down through all its subordinations until it ends in the administration of every man’s farm by himself, by placing under everyone what his own eye may superintend, that all will be done for the best.”

Local government is vital to preserving our freedoms. Removing the decision making process from our community decreases the willingness to help one another and even solve our own problems. We have stopped trying to solve our own problems. We have faded into the background as a non-voting, voiceless community.

Yet local government was the first thing that was set up by our forefathers upon this great land when they migrated to America. There is a basic instinct in all to set up assemblies and enjoy our rights ourselves. As the Founders devised their laws they understood that local self-government was essential to protect our community. The county should govern only things that concern the entire county.

In Ramona, we must be able to elect the public officials best fitted to represent us. These officials ideally would have the same respect for laws, individual rights and sound economic procedures that we have. We need to have public officials with similar attitudes of justice, evidence and consequences that our community has. We should be able to encompass the citizens of our broader territory in order to accomplish this task. This will build a Ramona that stands strong in statesmanship, liberty, reason, justice, contentment and progress.

The time for building Ramona City is now. Now is the time to do everything necessary to ensure our freedoms. Now is the time to secure our liberty to solve our own problems. We can and we must.