Email to Gresham Stake President Rick Craft about the recommendation to realign stake boundaries to match school boundaries

12 February 2021

Hello, my friend…

As you know, we have a meeting with Elder Blunck on March 2 about whether stake boundaries can be realigned to match high school boundaries in an effort to keep youth together. (BTW…they’re holding the meeting on March 2 so I can still be involved before I’m released in our stake conference March 6-7.)

It’s a valid desire to realign boundaries to bring unity and nurture righteous and supportive friendships among our youth, but it would take some pretty drastic surgery.

I took the liberty of asking Chuck Allen, a former bishop and member of our stake presidency (I think you know him well), to overlay the Gresham and Barlow HS boundaries over our stake and ward boundaries. It’s very telling, as you can see by the attached.

It’s apparent the cleanest or easiest move is to transfer the Kelly Creek Ward into our stake—so all Barlow HS students are in the Mt Hood Stake)—but that would be very painful to you, I’m sure. And it means we’d have yet another unit meeting in one of your stake buildings (Stark building), which isn’t horrible but not ideal. 

To send all of the Gresham HS students into your stake would take sizable chunks out of three of our leader-laden wards—Powell Valley, Walters Hill and Damascus—and reduce our membership total significantly (we’re now at around 2,800). Some of the numbers lost by us would be offset by the Kelly Creek Ward into the Mt Hood Stake, but I think it’s a relatively small ward, yes?

To go the other way would equally be painful to you, I’m sure, as I assume your Blue Lake and Kelly Creek Wards provide significant leadership for your stake.

Anyway, I thought maybe we can start visiting now and contemplate how beneficial or devastating a boundary realignment would be to both of our stakes…so we can make a recommendation or explain our challenges in the March 2 meeting.

It would also be helpful for me to be able to pass along our combined thoughts on the matter to the new Mt Hood stake presidency in March so you won’t have to re-explain everything to them.

Want to visit on the phone some time soon?

Thanks,

Crismon