We like that more local teenagers are willing to get outside and run around.

But we don’t want them hightailing it through somebody’s backyard.

That might be healthy in a cardiovascular sense.

Unfortunately it’s also trespassing.

The Baker City Council had a chance on Tuesday to forge a compromise in a difficult situation.

Unfortunately, a majority of the councilors let that chance slip away.

The Council instead voted 5-2 to allow the In & Out Drive-In, at the corner of 10th and E streets, to keep three parking spaces on the north side of the restaurant even after the city builds a sidewalk there.

That means customers, when they leave, will back their vehicles across the sidewalk — an inherently dangerous situation for pedestrians.

Longer vehicles could block the sidewalk altogether, possibly forcing walkers to detour onto E Street, the very thing the sidewalk is supposed to prevent.

Dan Van Thiel, the city’s contract attorney, believes the city would be legally vulnerable were a pedestrian to be hit by a car backing out of a parking space.

We had begun to wonder whether the Oregon Legislature would get around to doing something about a matter vital to the future of Baker County schools.

It was belated action, but this week it finally happened.

The legislation is Senate Bill 250, and it will soon become law.

Walt Wegener, superintendent of the Baker School District, deserves to have his employment contract extended for another year.

That would give Wegener, who started work here July 1, 2010, and signed a contract that continues until June 30, 2012, some measure of job security through June 30, 2013. More importantly, it would give the district continuity of leadership while it restructures its staff and budget to accommodate declining enrollment.

The school board, though, is considering offering Wegener a multi-year extension, beyond 2013.

That’s not appropriate.

We’re not branding the National Weather Service as Chicken Little, but we were getting rather annoyed by the onslaught of flood watches and warnings the agency issued earlier this spring for the Powder River in Baker City.

All the while the river, though certainly running high for the season, stayed comfortably within its banks.

The weather prognosticators, to their credit, have adjusted their threshold to reflect the realities of the river.

This is what you call “ground-truthing.”

We have on occasion chastised the Oregon Legislature for dealing with inane topics while it’s in session in Salem.

Designating an official state soil, for instance, seemed to us an unjustified indulgence when Oregon’s coffers, or so we’re told, are $3 billion short.

And so it is with the understanding that we expose ourselves to charges of hypocrisy that we congratulate lawmakers for passing a bill designating Edward Dickinson Baker Day.

The term “public land” sounds pretty straightforward.

It’s not.

Not in parts of Baker County, at any rate.

A person would naturally expect that public land belongs to the public, which is to say all of us. And so it logically follows that all of us can go there.

The first part is accurate.

The second part, not so much.

Baker City’s kids deserve clean and safe places to play.

Boys Jungle could be one of those places.

But it’s not one now.

True humor is relatively rare in politics but we always have a good chuckle when one politician responds to a blatant publicity stunt with.... a blatant publicity stunt.

Oregon Congressman Earl Blumenauer really got us giggling this week with his clumsy, and silly, ploy to embarrass Sarah Palin.

The Baker School Board needs a refresher course on Oregon’s Public Meetings law.

We’re convinced that the board ran afoul of the law Monday afternoon.

Specifically, the board excluded two reporters from the Baker City Herald from attending the portion of the meeting when a teacher, who has filed a grievance against the district, met with the board.