Past Is Prologue: A Farewell

By Scott R. Cooper, Crook County Judge
This column first appeared in the Central Oregonian of Prineville, Oregon, December 2008

At the end of December, I will leave office after eight years of county judge and four years as a Prineville city counselor. Thus, this my final column in my capacity as chief elected official for Crook County.

As I leave office, it is with a great sense of pride in our community and what it has become and what it is becoming.

First, a note about what we are not: Prineville and Crook County are not Bend. In fact, we are less like Bend today than we were when I was a child growing up here, and Redmond was about the same size as us ,and Bend was only slightly bigger. When I took office, it was with a determination that Prineville would find its own voice within the region and that we would not simply become a suburb in the Central Oregon milieu. All you have to do is listen to the popular media to find out that we achieved that goal. Reporters and editors regularly seek out Prineville and Crook County to get a different point of view, to try and understand another side of the complexity that is this region and community. Our voice is heard in Salem and in Washington, D.C., and every policymaker knows that a Deschutes County Commissioner or Bend City Councilor doesn’t speak for Crook County or Prineville any more than a Jefferson County Commissioner or a Madras city councilor. We strove to achieve identity, and as I depart it is with deep satisfaction that I observe that we have placed ourselves firmly on Oregon’s map.

A second note about what we are not: We are not Eastern Oregon. There was a time when Crook County and Prineville were regularly lumped into the category of “all those other counties east of the Cascades.” But just in my tenure, we have seen Oregon divide into three parts, not two. Perhaps they were always there, and we have simply raised the profile of the central region, but if so the raising of it has been for the better. Central Oregonians are different from the rest of Oregon because they deftly combine common sense with imagination and a realistic sense of the possible. They are not rooted in a past which is unlikely to return but nor are they hopelessly in love with a new vision that isn’t achievable, given our resource base. Central Oregonians, and Crook County residents in particular understand the need to feed their families and are willing to sacrifice resources to make that happen, but at the same time they have never lost their sense that it is just as important to feed the soul, and they preserve the land and special places around them for just that purpose. We have one foot firmly planted in the west, recognizing our economic interdependence with the more populous part of the state, and another planted in the east where we feel a strong affinity for the historic and cultural roots we share with our neighbors. Like children from a split family we are equally at home in the house of Mom or Dad, even while we sometimes wonder why our parents can’t just get along.

A third note about who we are not: as Crook County and Prineville residents, we are not at the pinnacle of what we are going to become. In fact, we are only at the start. While the growth and development we have experienced in the last decade has been at a pace which has seemed almost overwhelming at times, we have barely begun to change. Every force and reason which caused people to want to be in this highly desirable area in this decade is still in play. Once we are through the current economic hiccup which is dragging down the national, state and regional economy, the opportunity for growth and change will re-emerge with all its previous force and ferocity. Whether the community can position itself to hang on for the ride while managing to keep some semblance of what is best about us is the challenge for a new generation of leaders.

Crook County has been for me a wonderful place: a wonderful place to be raised, a wonderful launching pad for my early life and career, a wonderful place to return to in mid-career and a wonderful place to raise my three young children. It is a place which has nurtured me, just as it is nurturing my children to become self-confident, intelligent young people who understand that community is more than just the house in which you live. Just as I have benefitted from the economic opportunities that the community has offered, I hope economic opportunity will continue to grow and that someday my children will be able to find economic opportunity here, so that they can pass along the sense of rootedness which is so important to me to their children and to their children’s children as well. Just as the sun glinting on the snow-capped Cascades or the site of Prineville nestled in the valley as you come down over the hill raises my spirits, just as the cathedral-like Ponderosa forest fills me with a sense of awe and a drive through the vast loneliness of the eastern county following the lazy winding river gives me inspiration as I ponder the hardiness of the pioneers who came before me, I hope these sights, sounds and smells will stir the souls of my children as well.

We who live here are blessed with an awesome responsibility: the responsibility to love the land while at the same time to coax a living from the land. We must honor the past, even while we recognize that the past is only prologue to what is yet to be. Although it is a hard thing to do, we must try to steer the middle course in all things, veering neither too far to the left nor too far to the right, lest we founder upon the rocks of tradition or beach ourselves on the sands of progress.

I have done my best over the past twelve years of public service to steer the ship of local government in that way. I’ve known I was steering the course correctly when I’ve felt the slings and arrows coming at me from both banks of the river of fortune. There have been glorious successes and miserable failures. I’ve learned right along with all of you how to better navigate each treacherous passage, and I’ve tried to leave good maps for the next generation of pilots in the form of a well-administered system of government, a strong financial position and a group of staff and volunteers who are dedicated and passionate about serving this county and community.

Throughout my tenure in office, I have kept taped to the inside of the court notebook which contains my court papers a single verse from the Old Testament Book of Micah. It has guided me in difficult decisions. As I leave, I offer it to my successors and to the next administration as a goalpost for public servants, now and in the future: “And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly before your God.”

The principle is as sound today as it was when it was written.

Thank you for the honor and a privilege of serving you.