The collective cringe you’re hearing comes from the hard-working, thoroughly professional staff of this newspaper. The signature at the end of this tells you why.

Whenever I come home to help out (that’s what I call it, at least), I try to offer a set of fresh eyes with which to look at local issues. I am, of course, my father’s son: I’ve never met an issue I didn’t want to comment on. That said, my views from afar on issues that hit close to home:

New jail

It’s nigh-on criminal not to recognize that we need a new jail. The old one is too small and violates seemingly half the codes on the books. The questions are: How much of a jail do we need? Do we need all the other things proposed to go with it? And how can we pay for it?

Local officials were smart to assemble a committee to make recommendations. The committee may be a bit business-focused and could have done more at the outset to involve others. Still, it has been working hard to come to consensus even though it at times seems more interested in determining how big a bill taxpayers are willing to pay than in determining exactly how much of a project is needed.

Hospital renovation

St. Luke Hospital has no greater friend than this newspaper, but the hospital is in danger of making a similar misstep.

Rather than tell us how fancy its renovated facilities will be, the hospital needs to let us know exactly how its current ones are ailing. We’d all love a spiffed-up, state-of-the-art hospital with yet another beautiful new entrance. The question shouldn’t be how much can we borrow. It should be how much of an improvement we need.

The district’s plan for avoiding a tax increase is admirable, but the mechanism seems questionable. By avoiding putting the issue to a vote, the district may have to borrow at what could be much higher interest rates than would be available for a project approved by voters, doubling or tripling the total cost.

Our communities already are mortgaged to the hilt for other welcome but costly improvements, notably state-of-the-art non-academic school facilities.

Voters are smart enough to know when they need to burden future generations with debt and when they need to be frugal. Rather than try to figure out how big a tab to run up on our governmental credit card, sell us on the need. If it’s needed, we’ll find the money.

School grading

It may sound as if we’re doing something by changing the lowest A in Marion-Florence schools from 94 percent to 90 percent, but anyone who teaches knows what I know as a professor: It’s not the percentage right that counts; it’s how hard the test is.

Give advanced math students a test where the questions are 2+2 and 94 percent is charitable. Give the same students a test where they’re asked to calculate listwise reduction of variance in a multivariate statistical analysis and — well, even their teacher (and this professor) might not get 50 percent.

We’re already in danger of making grades too easy. Honor rolls routinely list half or more of all the students. Like Garrison Keillor, we seem to believe that all our children are above average.

Encourage them, yes, particularly in lower grades. But at some point students have to realize that the educational equivalent of running the 100-meter dash in five minutes isn’t a winning performance even though it nets them a ribbon for 29th place.

Grade inflation has swelled to the extent that selective colleges, including the major university where I have served as an admitting dean, no longer look at applicants’ GPAs and instead want to know class rank.

Educational systems elsewhere in the world — particularly ones that seem constantly to outperform ours — keep their focus on achievement, not on making sure every student wins an award and participates in activities or, as Peabody-Burns just did, on moving the golf team to grass greens when it barely afford to pay teachers. Perhaps we could learn a lesson.

Youth center

Even folks who’ve never texted or tweeted know something needs to be done. Drive down Marion’s Main Street at 11 p.m. most nights and you’ll see the problem. The question is, are we adopting too much of a “Field of Dreams” attitude, saying if we build it they will come?

Buying a building is an admirable goal, but experience shows it isn’t the building that makes the difference. It’s the people operating it and the rules they set.

Any place can be a youth center. Depending on your age, you might recall the Burger Shake or, before that, the Cozy Café. With the right spin on their business plans, any number of current businesses could perform the same function as a public youth center. And noble public ideas, like skateboard parks, can fail to achieve their objectives.

The youth center needs money. You definitely should contribute. But you may find that your time and ideas end up being at least as important as your dollars.

Summer events

One can’t help but be impressed by the quality and quantity of activities and events available here each summer — something we ought to remember when talking about youth centers. Even the easily bored suburban Chicago students who fill my classes each fall and spring are impressed when I tell them what’s available in Marion County each summer.

It’s hard work securing, organizing and operating these events. Those who volunteer their time, energy and financial support — particularly the area’s economic development officials, who often do yeoman duty — deserve our highest praise. Whatever the grading scale, they earn an A+.

Economic development

For the rest of their jobs, however, the grading scale had better be lenient.

Aside from a few retail ventures, we’ve secured precious few additions to Marion County’s economy in recent years, and much of what has been achieved seems to have come about by one town wresting things away from another within the county.

We’ve lost a nursing home. We’re about to lose a furniture store. Businesses that once were locally owned are now branches of remote corporations. The Elgin has been restored, and it’s great. But Kingfisher’s, which had been one of the area’s biggest lures, is not only closed but also permanently transformed into non-commercial property.

A writer some time ago suggested we would do more for economic development by taking the salaries and expenses of various development efforts and writing each resident a check for their share. We’re perilously close to that scenario, which we presume was intended as a joke.

We can’t do without economic development, but we need a broader perspective than the very small projects that seem to occupy our growing development bureaucracy’s time.

It’s time to think whether less might be more. Does every town need its own separate staff, each of which seems to spend half its time meeting with counterparts from other towns? A real countywide effort — like a countywide central office for schools and perhaps even for public works and law enforcement — may be an idea whose time has come.

But that’s malarkey

Or, as Dennis Miller would say, that’s just my opinion; I could be wrong.

I have interests here. Because of them I probably follow local news more closely than do others who spend most of their time elsewhere. Still, I’m just one person, whose views and $4.50 might get you half a cup of joe at some chi-chi coffeehouse.

My vote doesn’t count. Yours does. What do you think? What should our priorities be? Where is our county riding high? Where is it missing the boat?

If you didn’t find something in this editorial to disagree with, I didn’t do my job. My job, as my father taught me, isn’t to tell you what to think. It’s to start you thinking.

Now it’s your turn. Send us a letter or an e-mail. Tell us what’s malarkey and what isn’t.

— Eric Meyer