Craig Daily Press

For all our boasts of a small-town community, where everyone is a neighbor and we help each other in times of need, we see something else going on in Craig.

The city’s recent citizen survey made official the rumblings we’ve heard during meals, drinks and casual conversation.

Some people say they don’t like living here, and the survey put real numbers behind that. If the results are true, we ask, what do you want?

Is the city too dirty, have too many weeds? Forty-five percent of us thought so.

Is there a drug problem? Seven­ty-one percent of us said yes.

Is your quality of life bad? That one’s mixed. Taken as a whole, survey respondents were largely apathetic.

We’d like to think this town is capable of being the kindly epitome of small-town dreamscapes our government officials paint in their speeches and online videos.

But that will never happen if the same 100-odd people do all the work, attend all the meetings, serve on all the boards.

Everyone has the chance to be a leader, whether as a Craig city councilor, a Moffat County commissioner or a member of Communities Overcoming Methamphetamine Abuse.

Unfortunately, we see a lot of Craig residents shrugging their shoulders and deciding nothing can be done, at least not between when one shift ends and another begins.

It is what you make it, Craig.

Maybe you understand why people indulge, with some booze here, maybe some marijuana there. Maybe you believe there’s not much to do, and what’s the harm anyway if it has nothing to do anybody else, right?

We’re not going to say they will become hopelessly addicted. Or that they will turn to a life of crime. Or that they will eventually start smoking meth and shooting heroin (though this board is in disagreement about the degree of the latter).

The harm is people are doing those things and not engaging other people, except the ones they enable to waste time on the escaping and hollow feel-goods that come from pipes and bottles.

The harm is that while getting high may be an escape from weekday drudgeries, it does nothing to make those weekdays any more fulfilling, or make Craig anything closer to a better place to live.

We’ve recently touted the Wyman Museum for putting together the Winter Festival, and, at the risk of shooting a dead prairie dog twice, we’d like to tout the people at COMA. When meth addiction was known only to users and cops, COMA members left the comfortable glow of their televisions and did something constructive.

That’s all we ask. Do something constructive.

There are obvious problems around here, and there have to be people out there with inklings of what can change.

And you might ask, what’s the point? You might say, the people in charge, even in this small town, are the people who will always be in charge.

You might call the volunteers — and they are volunteers — that makeup the various business and community service groups a closed circle, a group of good ol’ boys that all know each other and don’t want to know you.

Well, the reason they all know each other and don’t know you is because you don’t go to the meetings and they do.

Now, it’s hard to make a living and even harder to be happy. But if you give up after you go home, what difference does it make if you live here or New York City or Hawaii.

Craig is what you make it.