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Your vote matters - make it count

| October 18, 2017 4:00 AM

City government plays a vibrant role in our everyday daily lives.

Maybe it’s a new roundabout impeding your route to work, a spike in your water bill, or a big subdivision that just popped up across the street. It’s your locally elected officials at City Hall that are responsible for these types of impacts.

We advise everyone to get to know the candidates on the ballot in the upcoming municipal elections in Kalispell, Whitefish and Columbia Falls. The Daily Inter Lake has profiled each of the races so you can do your homework before filling out the absentee ballots that are set to arrive today, or before heading to the polls on Nov. 7. All the stories are online at www.dailyinterlake.com.

Your vote never matters more than at the local level — make it count.

Comeback Kids inspiring

Over the past week, Inter Lake reporter Hilary Matheson has spent some time catching up with six young adults who were originally profiled as high school seniors in a series recognizing noteworthy local graduates from the class of 2016. The series highlighted students who turned challenges into personal triumphs: the “comeback kids.”

It was inspiring to catch up with these six unique individuals. For some of them, life after high-school graduation looks a lot like they thought it would. Paths have been set and followed, and dreams continue to be pursued.

But others have found life harder to navigate then they had anticipated. Carefully made plans have been delayed or changed; relationships with family remains tenuous or nonexistent.

Undeterred, these young fighters are all adapting to the changes in their lives and the world around them.

Daniel Batt, a Columbia Falls High School alumnus, summed it up best: “Before senior year I looked at the glass half-empty. After senior year I looked at the glass half-full. One thing my boss told me was, ‘why not just get the right-sized glass,’” Batt said.

As all of these individuals continue on their path to find the right-sized glass, the rest of us would do well to learn from their collective grace and determination.