OUR OPINION: Thank you, Council Member Christensen

Grand Forks is a place of order. Crime is low, schools are good, parks are extensive, utilities are reliable.

So, in the mayor's race, the question is not whether city government is bad. The question is whether it's too expensive. There's a gigantic difference, as anyone who lives in a badly run city would agree.

But badly run is exactly what Grand Forks could have been, if decisions made after the flood of 1997 had gone the wrong way.

Think about it: The flood all but ruined the city, destroying some neighborhoods, covering basements and first floors with flood-mud in others and partially torching downtown.

In coming back from such a cataclysm, a whole lot could have gone wrong. In fact, a whole has gone wrong in various American cities as they've recovered from floods, tornadoes and other disasters.

But Grand Forks' recovery has been famously successful. Why?

Doug Christensen is one reason for that.

When the city needed capable leadership, attorney Christensen stepped forward. He wasn't the only person who did so. Hal Gershman was another, Mike Brown was a third, capable council members such as Eliot Glassheim stayed on, and many others such as former Mayor Pat Owens played key roles.

But Christensen brought crucial skills to the Grand Forks City Council, and the council's decisionmaking in the flood-recovery years has been the better for it. The evidence for that is everywhere you look: in the leafy streets, bustling stores, and news coverage that routinely leads with, say, local sports rather than scandal and social breakdown and crime.

Is it paradise? Of course not. But American governance isn't set up to deliver paradise. It's set up to deliver the word at the top of this editorial: order, with as little restriction as possible on freedom.

But it can do so only if capable citizens recognize and accept their responsibility to lead. Christensen did this. He saw a need in City Hall, sensed he had something to offer and took on the challenge, knowing full well the headaches and heartaches his all-but-volunteer role would bring.

That was 16 years ago. Next month, he'll be retiring from the council, secure in the knowledge that Grand Forks' flood recovery is complete and the city's in good shape for his successor.

To which a grateful citizenry can only say, "Thanks."

-- Tom Dennis for the Herald