Editorial: Thanksgiving gives us opportunity to appreciate our lives

Thanksgiving Day, whether it’s with our family in a cordial crowd or sitting alone in front of the television with a warmed-up frozen dinner in our laps, is a special time that leads us to contemplate our blessings.
We all can have gratitude for positive things in our personal lives, but through out the tri-community there have been lots of smiling and back slapping after voters passed lots of millages.
The library board is delighted it got the right size library in the right place that the voters would approve. They are moving forward to build the library in Belleville and outfit the satellite in Sumpter.
The Van Buren Township Public Safety Department is very pleased that voters decided they didn’t have to depend on landfill royalties to fund public safety. They won’t be getting anything extra, but the township board will have to spend the whole 6.5 mills on public safety. Of course the board gets the 2.5 mills it used to allocate to public safety, so we’ll all be watching to see if they spend it wisely.
The Van Buren Public Schools got its non-homestead millage passed, a big relief, and also will be getting more than $300 per pupil through the RESA millage that passed.
It’s hard to believe voters passed all those millages, but they did. And, we’ve got some new elected and appointed officials to watch. We’re thankful.