Baker City councilors have had their disagreements recently, but they proved Tuesday that they can carry out the public’s business in an admirably efficient manner.

And a very vital piece of business at that.

We’re encouraged by the straightforward — and cordial — way in which the Council went about finding a new city manager.

On Tuesday, just six weeks after Steve Bogart told councilors he would resign Sept. 23, they voted unanimously to offer the job to Mike Kee, Ontario’s police chief and a former Baker City resident.

I’m troubled, albeit slightly, by a federal judge’s ruling last week declaring California’s ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional.

But the cause for my dismay is not that Judge Vaughn Walker sided with those people who believe gay marriage should be legal.

I happen to be one of those people.

I don’t care if two people of the same gender get married.

And it bothers me not a whit if the government deems this legal arrangement a marriage rather than a civil union or some other silly euphemism.

So far as I can tell, society would do well to encourage pairs of adults — any pair of adults — to make lifetime commitments to love one another and to raise their children in a nurturing environment.

The greater problem in this country, it seems to me, is not that too many people want to get married but that too many of us can’t stay married.

At least one thing, it appears, defies the worst recession.

The commitment that Baker County residents and businesses have for our community’s kids.

As proof of our admittedly bold claim we offer these statistics from the 4-H/FFA livestock auction that took place Saturday, during the Baker County Fair.

Making a big difference in a little kid’s life can be a simple matter.

As simple as tossing a carton of crayons or a plastic ruler into your cart during your next shopping trip.

The annual Project Back to School campaign started today.

The idea is as basic as it is vital.

Residents donate school supplies — everything from pens and pencils to glue sticks — and The Salvation Army distributes the items to students before classes start Aug. 30.

If you spend much time poking around in the Elkhorn Mountains near Baker City you’re apt to get a misleading impression about Oregon’s abundance of mountain goats.

The majestic mammals are indeed plentiful in the Elkhorns. The population there numbers about 400, according to the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.

But with the exception of the nearby Wallowas, which harbor most of the rest of Oregon’s estimated herd of 800 goats, the state’s other major mountain ranges have few goats or none at all.

It has not always been so.

Based on historical records and the more recent opinions of wildlife biologists, the consensus is that mountain goats as late as the 1800s lived in parts of the Blue and Wallowa mountains, as well as the Columbia River Gorge and the Cascades as far south as the Three Sisters, near Bend.

I was awakened on a recent morning, and long before dawn, by the bleating of a deer fawn, searching for its mother.

This is the sort of benign annoyance I happily endure for the privilege of sleeping so near to where deer walk.

And bleat.

Which is a slightly less happy circumstance, at least when the bleating deer happens to be bleating right outside my bedroom window at 4:20 a.m.

Nor did it improve my attitude that the fawn’s plaintive cries had frightened another youngster, this one a little girl who insisted on climbing into her parents’ bed.

I can confirm as a result that, on the spectrum of effective sleep-deprivation techniques, a whining deer falls far short of a three-year-old who kicks you in the shin every few seconds.

Or someplace more sensitive than the shin.

Although I suppose the fawn’s kick could cause real damage, what with the hard hooves.

The story apparently ended as I hoped it would, with a reunion of mother and offspring.

Normally we’re leery when local government officials fly to Washington, D.C., to lobby.

But the plight that might be facing Ash Grove Cement Co. later this week — and by inevitable extension also facing Baker County — surpasses normal by a goodly distance.

If the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency imposes mercury-emissions limits that don’t include a subcategory that acknowledges the higher-than-average levels of mercury in the limestone that Ash Grove uses at its plant near Durkee, then the company probably would have to close the factory.

The damage to Baker County’s economy that would result is significant.