The city of Sun Valley's $30,000 contribution toward the city of Ketchum's programs for youths should not be lumped into the dreary category of just another financial transaction hammered out between governments.
A broader meaning has far more importance: Development of our area's youth is a regional re-sponsibility that crosses city limits and involves more than merely providing recreation activities in parks. Sun Valley in effect is becoming an investor, a partner in an established program.
A community's long-range attitude on youth should be to help develop character in a variety of ways, and in the end to thereby enrich the character and stability and harmony of the total com-munity.
The 18th century hymn writer Isaac Watts penned one fitting admonition and rationale for youth enrichment work—"For Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do."
Although the electronic age has provided an amazing assortment of gadgets that young people easily master as tools for school work, home entertainment, chattering with peers, gadgets hardly take the place of old-fashioned outdoor recreational and sports programs that bring young people of diverse backgrounds and interests together to learn self-reliance, courtesy and manners in rugged competition and respect for maintaining physical and mental health.
Momentary questions on the Sun Valley City Council of whether the city's $30,000 investment was disproportionate to the youth population in the city really was irrelevant.
Who knows what good will come of Sun Valley's share, whatever its amount? Steering even one young person away from the wrong path to adulthood is worth every penny.
