Over the years we’ve used the first editorial of a new year to call on our local leaders to think bigger and to set audacious goals for this community. In 2014, quoting Theodore Roosevelt, we asked the city, county and school district to “dare greatly.” To a large extent they have.

Those were darker days for this community. The recovery from the 2008 recession was painfully slow and while the rest of the state was growing, we seemed to be falling further behind. That reversed course beginning around 2016. Look at where we are now.

Consider this: If a member of the Grand Junction City Council serves a full four-year term, they will shepherd $1 billion through this community. Almost no goal should be considered out of reach.

This community has built and are building new parks, business developments, schools, sports facilities, community halls and fire stations. There is certainly more to do, and we’ll continue to advocate for projects and plans we think would benefit this community. We see needs and opportunities across the valley from housing to early childhood education to renewable energy. We also see how we could go back to the old days of myopic thinking if we don’t keep moving forward.

Across the nation, we’ve seen a rise in what has been dubbed “negative partisanship.” Rather than being for something, people instead have started to just be against whatever the other side wants to do.

We see this arise in this community with people disagreeing just to be disagreeable. This mindset will derail us and return us to the bad old days when we just limped along – surviving, but taking on water.

In that spirit, we’d like to share another quote that we hope will spur some creativity and cause you to dream a little bigger about what our community can be.

“Never give up on what you really want to do. The person with big dreams is more powerful than the one with all the facts.”

That quote is from none other than Albert Einstein and speaks to the power that having big dreams and setting lofty goals can have.

This is something we have done as a community before. Some of the earliest settlers arrived with incredible dreams. They built a canal system to transform this valley from arid scrubland into thousands of acres of agriculture. Why not dream just as big and work toward it today?

We have some ideas of our own. For example, governments from California to India are working on covering their canals with solar panels. We should pioneer this technology in the high desert. We’ve got plenty of sun and, thanks to the settlers of this valley, plenty of canals. Carbon-free power, less evaporation, cooler water, less plant growth, new liners and (oh, by the way) federal dollars to pay for it. It may even make the canal paths safe for walkers.

But that’s just one idea. What do you think? What would you like to see that would push this community forward in a positive and transformative way?

One thing we’ve come to believe is the power of goals. If we can set a big goal and make it a priority, we’ll hit it. We’ve done it in the past and we know we can in the future.

Let’s agree on our first goal: Setting aside acrid partisanship when it comes to getting big things done for this community.

Grand Junction Daily Sentinel Editorial Board

Read the original article here.