Page:The Name of William M. Tugman Added to Honor Roll.djvu/14

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CARL C. WEBB AND GEORGE TURNBULL

held to a minimum and kept on short term serial basis.

These are purely introductory calculations. There should be a great deal of very careful planning and close figuring before definite proposals are put to vote. What we want to emphasize is that it is time to get to work on these problems—NOW!

Following up these earlier articles there appeared April 12 an editorial on the local stockpile of improvements calling for $590,000 a year for Lane County projects. The point was made that this expenditure constituted, in addition to other advantages, a home front against inflation. "We do not expect every body to agree either on projects suggested or on the financing proposed," Mr. Tugman concluded, "but we ask for argument, intelligent thought on this program. We say this is something we can do for ourselves and for the country in the war against inflation and for 5,000 veterans who will return expecting honest work."

Only a few days later the postwar planning campaign took the direction of an editorial arguing for adequate sanitation. The editor contended for: 1) the end of haphazard sewage; 2) cleaning up of the water supply sources in the county (a MUST); 3) stamping out of mosquito swamps and disease breeding places.

"There is nothing visionary or impractical about public sanitation," Mr. Tugman wrote. "There is nothing which can knock business for a loop or destroy property values so rapidly as an 'epidemic.' The time to 'get scared' about this problem is now."

Then (April 27) there came an editorial entitled "Problem of Fire Protection," in which the editor repeated an earlier suggestion, that 1) experienced firemen be paid a scale necessary to keep together a well-trained, well-balanced organization, and that 2) these firemen be supplemented with OCD fire reserves, specially selected and trained.

Another fire-protection editorial, eight days later, headed "Blunder on Forest Funds," complained of the abolition of $6,500,000 in funds for emergency forest fire protection. County roads came in for some attention at that time. An editorial May 12 was entitled "Road Laws Need Fixing." This editorial pleaded for the unscrambling of the tangle in the application and distribution of levies for county road purposes. "We have a mess of old laws which have been amended and