I appreciated the 2025 City of Enumclaw “Person-to-Person Guide” published in the March 12 Courier-Herald. It was good to see the faces of Department Heads, as well as those of our current council members. Also, the list of City Departments was enlightening. Like many residents, I rarely need to interact with any of these departments and probably don’t know what all they do to keep our city running efficiently. The few times I’ve reached out for assistance from a couple of the departments, I’ve found them to be very responsive and helpful.

So, it would be hard to imagine a Musk-DOGE team of techies, who know nothing about how our city works or what our residents need, coming-in and slashing the staff in half to “save us money” while enriching themselves. Then, it would also be hard to imagine our city council members shrugging and telling residents “it’ll be fine – these were the ‘bad’ staff and we didn’t need them anyway.”

That’s what’s been happening at the Federal level. Admittedly, most of us probably didn’t know what services these Federal agencies provided, unless we happened to need help from one of them. However, if we didn’t know before, we’re finding out now. It’s not like these agencies had funds to advertise their services to the general public, except possibly via government websites, many of which have now become inaccessible. Moreover, with diminished staff, it’s become harder to reach out by phone to get assistance from these Federal agencies.

Then there’s the relationship with our neighboring communities. It would be difficult to imagine that our city government would decide that Enumclaw needs to promote Enumclaw-made products over ones that come from our friendly neighbors like Buckley or Maple Valley. In such a far-fetched scenario, Enumclaw could decide to charge a sizeable fee on any product coming from either of our neighboring cities. Well, if Buckley or Maple Valley couldn’t reach a reasonable agreement with our city, then they’d likely start to charge a retaliatory fee on products from Enumclaw. None of the cities would win and these products would all be more expensive. That’s what’s happening in reality on a much larger scale at the US Federal level with Tariffs on goods from Canada and Mexico.

In the meantime, although I’m obviously upset by the Trump-Musk handling of our American Federal government, I’m grateful to live in a community that values its residents, “plays” well with our neighbors, and provides much needed services to keep our city running smoothly.

Donna JK Smith

Enumclaw