Lynch Mayor Ronnie Hampton is counting on nostalgia to help pay off $200,000 in past due taxes, coming up with an unusual idea to rescue his city in its quest to work its way out of debt.

Hampton sent letters asking hundreds of former residents to donate to Lynch. The idea earned the city statewide attention with a couple of stories in the Lexington Herald-Leader and helped turn some of the attention away from the current lean times and shift it toward the past glories when Lynch was one of the premier coal mining communities in the nation.

As a long-time advocate for the merger of the Tri-Cities, my biggest problem with the entire idea of “saving” Lynch is that it continues to take away from what I think should be our priority — working together to solve Harlan County’s problems. We need to start moving Harlan County forward instead of living in the past.

All of the small cities in our county do little more than provide a diversion from the real issues we face as they fight and struggle to stay alive. Good mayors like Hampton come in and everything gets a little better, then not-so-good mayors eventually replace them and everything falls apart again with nothing much accomplished in the interim, other than staying alive.

Lynch will be Lynch with or without a city government. The city government wasn’t even formed until the 1960s, which is just about the time that the city started its decline. Obviously, U.S. Steel is no longer around, which means Lynch isn’t going to return to its heyday, but a city government with no money would hardly be missed.

Harlan County has dozens of communities that do just fine without the trouble, cost and embarrassment of a city government that can’t pay its bills or keep up with its money.

The Wallins City Commission hasn’t met in over a year, and even though city officials haven’t followed through on their plans to officially disband the commission, no news is better than the bickering that dominated meetings of years past.

Former Lynch mayor Tom Vicini received criticism over a decade ago when he said it was time for the Tri-Cities’ governments to merge because the declining and aging populations would make it difficult to survive. History has proven him correct.

Lynch council member Carl Collins said in a recent Enterprise report that it’s important the Tri-Cities prove they can work together by combining services. Collins and some other leaders in the area realize how wasteful it is to try and support three of everything in such difficult times.

As the years go by, it would seem more city officials would have picked up on the logic of Collins’ efforts, but perhaps it’s difficult to think logically while you’re drowning in nostalgia.