After years of delays and disappointments, Harlan Countians received some good news last weekend with the release of the six-year road plan that includes money for the completion of U.S. 421 to the Virginia line and planning and improvements for U.S. 119 from Harlan to Pineville.

Road improvements won’t guarantee a brighter future for Harlan County, but we can be sure nothing will improve without better roads, and this is an important step in the right direction. It’s up to our local leaders to remain diligent about making sure funding remains in the budget for those projects and work is completed.

Our local legislators have received some criticism in this space for not working together in pushing for long delayed road improvements, but that hasn’t been the case in this session.

State Senator Brandon Smith reportedlly played a key role in drafting the road plan and assured members of the Harlan County Chamber of Commerce who traveled to Frankfort that our projects would be included, and he followed through on that promise. Rep. Rick Nelson helped put together a meeting between Chamber members and state highway officials to discuss the plan and showed a lot of interest in addressing Harlan County’s needs. Rep. Leslie Combs and Nelson participated in a meeting with House Speaker Greg Stumbo to discuss Harlan County.

Rep. Fitz Steele also took a lot of time to talk with Chamber members about Harlan County’s road needs and worked hard to help assure we wouldn’t be left out this time.

After hearing comments from Judge-Executive Joe Grieshop and magistrate David Kennedy, it’s clear we should also be excited about the new access road from U.S. 119 to Kingdom Come State Park.

As Kennedy pointed out, it’s tough to boost tourism when it’s difficult and dangerous for visitors to get to tourist locations.

Perhaps in the next round of road improvements, once we get these started, we can look at an improved route to Hazard, which could open a connection between Harlan and a large part of eastern Kentucky.

We also must continue pushing for ways to bring Harlan County together by improving access between communities. We have more divisions in our county than perhaps any other in the commonwealth, and one of the big reasons for that is because it’s so difficult to get from one place to another, even though sometimes they are only a few miles apart.

———

It’s good to see members of the Cumberland City Council were able to get some things off their chests during a meeting earlier this week.

Council members attacked the media, a local Web site and former mayor and current council member Carl Hatfield for creating discord in the city and making it difficult to conduct city business.

I can’t speak for the Internet site or Hatfield or any other newspaper, but I’ve followed the Cumberland City Council for at least a quarter of a century and there’s no doubt in my mind that Cumberland brings most of its problems on itself.

The only comment I found disturbing was from council member Yvonne Gilliam.

“If it’s up the road or if it’s down the road, if they do the same thing they’re not going to get reported,” she said. “It’s going to be Cumberland. We always get the bad rap, and you know what, were getting real fed up with this.”

Gilliam clearly has not been reading the Harlan Daily Enterprise a long time if she hasn’t seen detailed reports through the years about controversies in other Harlan County cities. Some of the city governments have cleaned up their acts in recent years, like Loyall and Evarts, and Wallins has had the good sense to quit pretending it’s a city and stop embarrassing itself.

It’s my belief that Cumberland didn’t “get the bad rap.” It earned it.

Hearing council members and mayors talk about moving forward before falling back into the bickering that has marked the Cumberland city government for years is getting old.

Perhaps the current council and mayor will prove me wrong and begin addressing real issues and dealing with real problems.

It’s time to stop talking and start doing.