We sympathize with Baker City councilors as they grapple with a pending $2.5 million tab to further cleanse the city’s drinking water, which is already admirably pure.

But we urge councilors to be judicious in expressing their concerns about the federal rule designed to protect people from cryptosporidium and other microscopic parasites that can make people sick and, in rare cases, kill them.

We’re not suggesting councilors muzzle themselves.

In fact we encourage them to interrogate government officials about the rules. We’re particularly interested in the possibility, as City Manager Mike Kee told councilors last week, that the current rules could change before the city’s October 2016 deadline to deal with crypto.

That said, councilors would do their constituents a disservice if, as Councilor Clair Button warned last week, the city incurs a fine or other penalty because it misses a key deadline.

We don’t think that’s likely. The city has plenty of time before it totally commits to buying equipment that will subject our drinking water to a disinfecting dose of ultraviolet light.

The federal government has shown a curious inconsistency in its concern for wildlife over the past quarter century or so.

Early in that period, the plight of the spotted owl was deemed so dire that, by way of a federal judge’s ruling and the subsequent policies of several federal agencies, it was decided that only a drastic curtailment of logging on public lands could fix the problem.

Holding school on Jan. 2, a federal and state holiday, was a mistake. While other government agencies were closed, Baker schools opened.

The school district’s response, that they would recommend we don’t do this again, was a smart move. I am still concerned about statements made to me by the superintendent that “Those who chose to skip or promoted skipping are making a judgment that is ethically challenged. It is the behavior of those who skipped that bears scrutiny, not the district’s.”

Some cretin has illegally killed a bighorn sheep ram near Brownlee Reservoir.

This is like walking outside and shooting the neighbor’s cat.

Except there are too many cats as it is, whereas bighorn sheep are not so abundant around here that we can afford, biologically speaking, to sacrifice any to scofflaws.

The Baker School District seems to have learned a lesson about having classes on legal holidays.

We understand why the school board decided, last April, to make Monday, Jan. 2 a regular school day even though, as a result of New Year’s Day falling on a Sunday, Jan. 1 was the legal holiday.

This is the district’s first school year with a four-day week. Having classes on one legal holiday gives the district a little more flexibility in meeting its required number of school days.

What officials perhaps didn’t fully account for, though, is the ubiquity of technology.

The Bureau of Land Management’s strategy for managing 428,000 acres in the region, most of them in Baker County, was conceived during the Reagan Administration.

BLM figures it’s time for a fresh outlook. This is appropriate, considering events that have transpired in the past quarter century which directly affect how BLM deals with the vast swathes of public ground for which it’s responsible.

Protecting sage grouse habitat, and a heightened interest in how livestock grazing and motor vehicles affect flora and fauna, are but a few examples.