City/County Joint Session agree to help homeless this winter

I only have a few moments this morning before dashing off to class but I wanted to tell you all some news on the homeless advocacy front because there's no story about it in the paper this morning.  Last night in a drama-filled joint session, the city and county commissions here met to debate whether or not to step up to a challenge by a wealthy private citizen (developer Clark Butler) to match his offer of $200,000 to fund immediate emergency measures this winter to help those who will be spending it outside.  About a dozen citizens from the community showed up, all spoke in favor of the temporary measuers.  Only one city commissioner was adamently opposed to the idea (Rick Bryant) and dominated the meeting with all the reasons why it was a bad idea but in the end he had to vote in favor of it (because how awful would he look if he didn't?).  Our best commissioner, Jack Donovan, a former Unitarian-Universalist minister, spoke powerfully and most eloquently of all.  I was so proud that our city elected him.  He truly represents our values of caring for the most vulnerable.  It was relatively easy to agree to come up with $200,000 (especially since the City just gave $37 million to developers); the hard part will be agreeing how to spend it.  But whatever they decide regarding that, some people this winter will have things a little bit easier and that's what counts.