A s some regular readers of the Ellenville Journal may have noticed, we have recently reinstated our "Eye On" feature, which will be focusing on the news and events of our neighbors to the east, Pine Bush and the Town of Crawford.

The reason for this is twofold.

Having started the Ellenville Journal nearly two years ago to provide residents with a way of learning about the issues that impact their lives on a regular basis, we saw the need for a community to have news coverage devoted to every facet of its life — news that larger papers don't deem worthy of reporting. The Ellenville Journal was started on the premise that small towns and communities deserve the same level of quality news coverage, and the same avenue of dialogue, that larger towns receive. But Ellenville and Wawarsing are not alone in this respect.

Indeed, there are a number of small communities that exist on the edge of other coverage areas, Pine Bush being one of them, and we felt it was time to provide the same type of service to another community that has been passed over by larger publications.

The second reason for this expansion is due to the larger notion that Wawarsing and Ellenville do not live in a vacuum and that local residents must recognize that the issues that face nearby communities can have an effect on the way local residents live their lives.

The hamlet of Pine Bush is a fifteen minute ride from the center of Ellenville and much closer to town residents who live in the mountain community of Cragsmoor. It is far from any major shopping area. It has its drug store and its supermarket and an assortment of other small, locally owned businesses. Sound familiar?

There are those that may see this move on the part of the Ellenville Journal as costing our readers the coverage they have come to expect. It will not. We are committed to the mission of providing the best coverage we can and keeping readers informed about developments in local government, education, business, and culture. Furthermore, while such fears are understandable, they ultimately portray a certain level of provincialism that could prove dangerous as this community moves into the future.

Why can't Ellenville and Wawarsing residents benefit from following the issues and actions of other municipalities as they deal with a slate of similar issues? Or that the Town of Crawford could not learn from Wawarsing or Ellenville? The way forward for any small community in the twenty-first century is through collaboration and cooperation. By drawing false borders between communities, we prevent not only a broader sense of community, we may be impeding any hopes for future growth.

COMMENTS about this article (25)