ACHTUNG: The following is not a “fair and balanced” article. It is an editorial by the editor.

The Dorr Township Board’s interesting debate last week about insisting applicants for board and commission seats submit resumes and be interviewed actually is a good example of what’s playing out in these modern times.

Trustees Chandler Stanton and John Tuinstra maintain that anyone under consideration for a seat on the Planning Commission, Zoning Board of Appeals, Parks Commission and the like should submit a resume and be interviewed for the job. That’s the way things customarily are done for anyone applying for a job.

But, as Supervisor Jeff Miling pointed out, the times they are a-changing. And the more accurate and appropriate approach is that if you make something easy to do, people will do it. If you put conditions and hoops in front of them, they won’t.

This is true of voting and recycling, though it isn’t true for teen-agers trying to obtain their driver’s licenses.

When society deemed it a good and proper thing for people to recycle as much as possible, people finally responded when the process could be done curbside rather than make them drive to a site, separate paper, plastic and glass, and then put them in the appropriate bins. Again, if you make its easy for people to do, they’ll do it.

This applies to getting people to serve on boards and commissions. In days gone by, before “Bowling Alone” and Covid factors arrived, it wasn’t that difficult to find civic-minded individuals to fill these positions, which pay nothing or very little and require people to get out of the house once a month or so.

“Bowling Alone” is the concept that people nowadays go to work Monday through Friday (sometimes Saturday) and they come home to only eat, sleep, watch TV and maybe work in the yard. Gone are the days of widespread community service. Dorr, Wayland, Moline, Martin and Hopkins have become bedroom communities.

So inserting another roadblock, such as submitting a resume or agreeing to an interview, in front of people not all that enthusiastic about serving is just another way to continue the shortage.

It shouldn’t be this way, but it is. And Miling made it clear he practically has to beg people to take a little of their personal time to sit on these boards and commissions. And resumes and interviews only makes it even more unattractive.

So we’re faced with the prospects of bringing in people to serve though we know little or nothing about them. It shouldn’t be this way. But it is.