City needs to keep Ogilvie's leadership

For the last two years, I have served on the Sandpoint GEM community team with City Councilman Francis Ogilvie, who has been the council's liaison to the team and who is now running for re-election.

During this period, I have been continually impressed by Francis's thoughtful approach to issues, his openness to new information, his down-to-earth pragmatism, and his ability to work well with people of divergent views and interests. He is not a knee-jerk anything but rather an independent thinker and experienced leader with an open door and an open mind.

Francis also has a strong commitment to encouraging citizen input as early and broadly as possible before decisions are made at the city level. He began urging GEM to concentrate its energy on acting as a channel for community information and input to the council more than a year before the team finally concluded this could be its greatest community service.

Sandpoint is at a more than a crossroads today; it's at a traffic circle with roads streaking off in a dozen different directions. Re-electing Francis Ogilvie will retain a leader who will study each road closely and with dedication to finding the ones most likely to carry our city through this time of change without leaving behind the qualities that make it so unique.

DORIS A. SANGER

Sandpoint