Richmond Vermont's Citizen Journalist Website and a great compliment to the richmondvermont.com web site.

MyRichmondVT.com is your site. Richmond is your community. If you care about either, it is important to engage in both, and here is why...

MyRichmondVT is one of the few places where your voice matters. It is important to utilize this voice to sound-off about the positive and negative elements of our community.

The only way Richmond, Vermont can remain a vibrant community and grow into an area with an unprecedented quality of life is to feed into the discussion.

For example, last month's Teachers Strike caused little to no discussion. Why? And before that, the discussion surrounding the Impact Fee caused very little discussion. Again, I ask "why?" Fortunately, I have an answer.

While many people visited the site and read the stories, very few were contributing for a few reasons:

1. People don't like to get controversial
2. People do not feel they have enough information to comment.
3. People know that others will get involved.

First, get controversial... just don't get slanderous. We all have opinions and the only way to see other points of view is to engage them.

Secondly, it is crucial to share the piece of information that you know. Everybody is a specialist in some area, but even specialists don't always see all the pieces of the puzzle. Your services are required to help your fellow citizen Richmondite obtain a wealth of knowledge (even if it is in bits and pieces).

Finally, the future belongs to all of us. A lack of involvement is a surefire way to have an apathetic community. An apathetic community is basically a community that is NOT engaged in the democratic process.

These may be strong thoughts, but what we need is strong civic actions to support these beliefs.

Join and contribute to the MyRichmondVT.com community and help Richmond become a stronger town.

Here's a link to the site: MyRichmondVT.com