Elected leaders, please get involved

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Elected leaders are meant to work for the people who put them into their respective offices.

Yes, these elected positions require an extreme amount of time sitting on committees, representing the local entities in bigger-picture events and studying legislature and budgets. However, the biggest part of an elected leader's duties should be two-fold: educate their constituents on topics and listen to the constituents about those topics. Part of the education process is, of course, knowing what is actually going on. Elected leaders need to learn the intricacies of matters and then relay that to the masses. That is how you serve. You, as an elected leader, can also serve and improve your community by then relaying that information and listening to the responses of the people.

It’s a simple process, but it’s not truly being followed.

Locally, we are seeing very listening and very little action on the part of elected leaders.

The COVID-19 pandemic certainly placed a big, wet blanket onto the efforts of elected leaders, preventing them from holding in-person meetings and from meeting with the masses. Virtual meetings are always an option, but we saw little to none of these from individual elected leaders. One school board member, an elected leader or two from Edisto Beach … these are the efforts of individual elected leaders that we, as a newspaper editorial board, are aware of. Otherwise, we saw or heard little action from elected leaders who want to educate their Colleton constituent base, listen to their constituents and then vote accordingly.

With the pandemic now labeled as an endemic and the once-restrictive rules surrounding the pandemic starting to lift, we are asking ALL elected leaders to figure out ways to listen and act accordingly.

An example of this is Colleton County School Board Charles Murdaugh. After a very contentious and tense school board meeting, he visited classrooms, speaking to teachers and observing. This is the first step in what an elected leader should be doing.

We understand that these efforts probably happen more regularly without us knowing. We also understand that the pandemic has prevented much of these efforts from being able to happen. We are simply asking our leaders to get back involved in the community that you serve and that serves you.