Faith Summit was inspiring success

Kudos to all the organizers of and participants in this week's Montana Faith Community Impact Summit in Kalispell.

The event lived up to the billing in that lengthy title.

It was a strong outpouring of faith, whether through the rousing speech from U.S. Senate Chaplain Barry Black or the evocative words of Gary Mortenson describing how his faith in education is making the difference in the lives of Afghan and Pakistani women.

It was an impressive community effort with people from many sectors of society represented - and attendance was outstanding.

It also had impact, not just from the keynote addresses but also in the various breakout sessions that tackled subjects from housing and homelessness to community philanthropy.

And it was literally a summit, with top leaders from across the state on hand to work toward finding remedies instead of finding fault, in the words of summit sponsor Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont.

Bigfork voters have spoken, and they are of two minds.

That's all right. There's no reason to expect complicated issues to be resolved unanimously.

In two mail-in school bond issues, voters said yes to the elementary school levy and no to the high-school levy. The votes were very close in the elections, and actually both passed in the Bigfork district, but the Swan River district went heavily against the high school proposal, dooming it.

More money, of course, is not a guarantee of solutions, nor is a failed bond a harbinger of declining education. The elementary and high school districts will both work to give students the best education possible with what is available.

It's understandable that voters did not approve two such large expenditures at the same time. Taxpayers must gauge the impact of levies on their own families as well as on the community.

In the meantime, the elementary school will begin to gratefully make improvements, and the high school will go back to the drawing board.