We commend commissioners for putting together a timely program for Cass County’s 22nd annual intergovernmental forum at 6 p.m. April 30 at Dowagiac Middle School Performing Arts Center.

Cass County consistently capitalizes on its small size to network and stretch limited resources and pioneered this worthwhile annual get-together for township, village, city, county and tribal officials.

The dinner thrived through the long tenure of County Administrator Terry Proctor, but needed perking up after turnover and transition to new leadership.

It would be a shame to just quit having this dialogue which became a tradition.

A Pokagon Band preview of Four Winds Dowagiac is an obvious topic.

Ditto for a State of the County report by County Administrator Louis Csokasy, who excels at reducing complicated topics to concise, understandable terms, as he did while managing the road commission.

The third topic, Active Shooter, dominated discussion.

We hope Chair Skip Dyes was just playing devil’s advocate when he questioned the usefulness of “conjecture” since school shootings might never occur here.

Union High School had a lockdown drill Wednesday morning.

And it’s hard to miss the big weapon signs installed on Dowagiac school doors.

Sheriff Joe Underwood’s interactive program has been presented countywide in schools, as well as to county employees, who found it worthwhile and highly recommended it.

Municipalities are as vulnerable to shootings as schools. Cass can count its blessings it hasn’t happened here, but everyone should know what’s being done to insure it doesn’t.

Newtown, Conn., couldn’t imagine Dec. 14, 2012, when 20 children and six adult staff members were mass murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School in the second deadliest shooting in American history after the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre.

The same night commissioners got their first look at the county’s latest collaborative effort, a team to return missing and abducted children, which seems unfathomable in this bucolic rural area except 10 years ago it happened in Jones and thrust Cass into the national spotlight with a manhunt for a convicted killer which ended happily in California.

Rainbow Farm is a tragic incident we never thought could happen in Cass County until it did. And had the siege not gone down on Labor Day weekend before the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, Vandalia might have taken its place in national nomenclature alongside Waco and Ruby Ridge.