Ken Graham: FROM THE PUBLISHER

The presidential election campaign is topping the national news all the time these days, with Hillary Clinton gaining and Donald Trump slipping in the polls.

But that election is still more than a year away. You’ll probably be reading about it in this space next October.

Right now, it’s time to pull our heads out of our TVs for a few minutes and take a look at the election that’s directly in front of us.

Touchet Valley voters have a number of important choices to make in the next week. In Waitsburg, residents in the city will be deciding whether to annex the city fire department into Walla Walla County Fire District 2. Fire District 2 residents outside the city are voting on annexation as well, and the measure must pass in both areas.

But for Waitsburg residents, annexation comes with a cost: an increase in property taxes, beginning in 2017. County residents in the district are already being taxed at a similar rate for fire services.

We’ve covered this issue at length in the past few issues, and Waitsburg City Administrator Randy Hinchliffe gives a detailed explanation of how those taxes work on this page.

Voters in the Columbia County portion of Fire District 2 will also be voting for an EMS levy, that will put them on par with the rest of District, as it prepares to launch a new ambulance service.

Voters in both the Waitsburg and Dayton School Districts are choosing school board members for the coming six years. There is one contested race in each district.

There is also a contested race for the Columbia County Hospital District board of directors. The district includes all of Columbia County, as well as the portion of Walla Walla County in the Waitsburg School District.

The Mayor of Dayton and several city council positions are up for election this year, but all of those positions are uncontested, as is one of the Port of Columbia commissioner positions.

Initiative 1366

There is an interesting initiative up for vote at the state level which you all should pay attention to. It involves the continuing effort by initiative guru Tim Eyman and his associates to require a two-thirds approval by legislators, or voter majority approval, for any tax increase.

Voters in Washington have repeatedly approved measures to require such approvals for tax increases, but those measures have been struck down by the courts as unconstitutional.

So the new approach is to implement a cut in the state sales tax rate until the legislature passes a constitutional amendment to override the courts and re-implement the requirement that was struck down.

So fill out your ballot and mail it in. Then you can go back to enjoying the presidential election. There’s another in an unending string of Republican debates on Wednesday this week.