Last week, we made the tough decision to close the Visitors Center.

Tough because we know so many tourists need restroom facilities and information. But the costs associated with providing those services became prohibitive and cut into our weekday staff’s work productivity.

We sought grant money to help defray the weekend person’s wages and cost of paper products, soap and water but because we are a for-profit business, organizations with money to give aren’t interested.

Also, being a newspaper sets up conflicts of interest with government agencies, etc.

So, now our hours are 9 to 5 Monday through Friday again.

The Chamber of Commerce phone number, which we’ve answered since 2013 when the Chamber folded, will go to the Idyllwild Arts gift shop just down the street on North Circle Drive.

That way, someone will be available to answer it on the weekends.

• • •

On another note, I received seven letters to the editor this week but only four made it inside.

They were the only ones who followed the letter policy. The three that didn’t make it in were a thank-you letter, a political letter without payment and a letter that was way over the 400-word limit.

That edited-down version came back to me after I had put through “Readers Write.”

JP is on vacation so we’re short-handed. But even without that hiccup, we work solidly on all the many elements of the paper to meet the printer’s deadline and get the paper in your hands as fast as we can.

So, please, folk, read the letter policy before you submit. Rant over …

Becky Clark, Editor