East Meets West

Ritzville, Port Townsend, Omak, Twisp, Camano Island, Liberty Lake, Waitsburg. The newspaper publishers who came to the round table session at the 125th Washington Newspaper Publishers Association convention in Yakima the weekend before last were from all over the state and from both sides of the mountains.

The round table was the last meeting at the convention that Sat- urday morning. It gave publishers from small weekly newspapers like The Times a chance to compare notes on businesses and our challenges.

Towards the end of our meeting, the discussion steered to the topic of our local economies.

Some of the Eastern Washington publishers made their busi- ness climate look pretty bleak. Omak, for instance, has lost a lot of retail stores, as has Ritzville, where almost two out of three store fronts is closed. In the latter city, which is in the midst of wheat country like our own communities, the only bright spot on the ho- rizon is the construction of a large new truck stop on Interstate 90.

Liberty Lake, which is east of Spokane, and Twisp, which is in the touristy Methow Valley, are holding their own on the east side of the mountains, though not without some businesses struggling and a soft real estate market. Some markets on the west side, such as Port Townsend, are picking up slowly, but no one is reporting a spectacular economic comeback by any means.

Our little valley too has been having a tough time. Businesses on Main Street in Waitsburg and Dayton are reporting slow sales this summer and so far this fall, despite the strength of commodity prices for our biggest grain crop here.

In part, this cannot be helped. Wheat farmers aside, Washing- tonians everywhere have less money to spend. Median incomes in most counties in the state have taken a hit the last few years. Here are some examples: Adams County's median household income fell to $41,068 last year from $42,455 in 2008, Okanagan County's fell to $35,161 from $36,681 during the same period.

In Columbia County the figure fell to $38,916 from $43,508 and in Walla Walla County it dropped slightly to $44,606 from $44,940. By comparison, King County was one of the few that was virtually unchanged at about $55,400.

But several of the newspaper publishers also agreed that some of their own local residents themselves are to blame for their "towns turning into ghost towns," as one of them put it. Many ru- ral consumers have fallen for the box store temptation, bypassing their own retailers in favor of the Wal Marts and Home Depots of the world, even if it makes for longer shopping trips.

We've commented on it in these pages before. We understand the temptation of cheaper products and more variety, plus the convenience of getting errands checked off the list in one trip. But our opinion remains that it's shortsighted, funneling revenues and profits to distant corporate headquarters and draining our own cit- ies of the tax income to keep our towns healthy and vibrant, not to mention the investments and contributions our own businesses make here.

In part, the answer lies in increased sales from outsiders who are attracted to our historic downtowns and recreational opportu- nities. Many businesses in the Touchet Valley would never make it without them and some are almost entirely dependent on them.

In that sense and in many other ways, the two sides of the Cascade Mountains remain interdependent and those who regard them as wholly separate economies should think again. Many travelers come here from Seattle to spend their money and in turn, our wheat farmers depend on West Coast ports to export their grain across the Pacific, where much of it goes to be used in the making of noodles.

The Walla Walla economy from which we benefit here wouldn't be half as healthy without the wine industry, which sends many of its labels to supermarkets on the coast. There is a similar east-west connection in wind energy. Farmers here get payments to lease land to the power companies, which need the wind-swept hills of the east to help generate electricity for households in the west.

The list of examples goes on and the economic message is clear. We're all in this together. With some signs that housing prices in the Seattle area are improving and the nation's economy is making an, albeit anemic, recovery, we hope the tide will start to rise again soon and lift all our boats.