Before I came to Virginia, I worked for a paper in Macon, Georgia.

Macon is near a small town called Milledgeville, a place that is nearly as affecting as Goochland in its wild, untamed beauty.

And Milledgeville boasts a writer, Flannery O’Connor. She once said, “The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.”

As the interim editor of The Gazette, I sit through a lot of meetings, and I hear a lot of statements and opinions, some founded on the truth and some founded on other things.

Outside of this column, my job is to tell you, the readers, what this paper witnesses, to relay the facts as they occur.

Your job is to consider those facts, to think about how they will affect you, and your family, and the value of your home and livelihood.

We have all been subjected to the rigors of an election year, to continuous political coverage, to advertisements and yard signs.

And we did the right thing by showing up and casting our vote.

It would be easy at this point, with the economy spinning and the holidays looming, to decide we have done enough. The allure of collapsing onto a couch and popping in a DVD of “It’s a Wonderful Life” might seem a pretty seductive alternative to continuing our civic vigilance.

But the truth will not change, even if we decide to stop paying attention to it.

And the school board is drafting its budget, and the board of supervisors will say yay or nay to this request, and they are inviting you into the process. It might seem easier now, to stay home from the public meetings, but will it seem easier when the county decides to cut funding for your child’s transportation to school, or to eliminate athletic or arts programs?

This is a time when our country is enduring an economic free-for-all, when the truth needs to prevail for the greater good. Our government needs to be transparent, and they will only be so if you demand it.

You, as the citizens and taxpayers of this county, can affect what happens here.

You can hold our county employees accountable for their decisions.

You have the right, the privilege and the access, to your board of supervisors and to your school board, to ask questions.

Our country is meant to be representative at every level… and for us, nowhere is that more possible, and more relevant, than on a county level, than right here in Goochland’s Courthouse District.