King County Council chairwoman, Julia Patterson issued a call to arms to Highline last week.

Speaking before former colleagues on the SeaTac City Council, she cited shocking statistics that showed Highline lags behind the rest of the county.

She also highlighted the disparity in resources we receive to tackle our human services needs.

The problem is that Highline is broken into so many city boundaries. Our leaders do not lobby together for our shared needs.

With many of us living along the gold coast of Puget Sound or in other comfortable middle class enclaves, we don't realize how much Highline has changed in the past decade or so.

But the reports from Patterson and the county's public health department should wake us up.

A child in Burien, SeaTac or Tukwila is twice as likely to drop out of school as a child on the Eastside.

Compared to other county high schools, the Tyee High complex in SeaTac has the highest number of youth who have never visited a primary care physician.

The three cities have the highest number of uninsured people in the county. It's not because we are a bunch of unemployed bums seeking to live off government largesse. Our employment rates are similar to the rest of the county.

SeaTac and Tukwila rank first in King County for the percentage of residents with high blood pressure, the birth rate among adolescents and adults not seeing a doctor in the past year because of costs.

The two cities rank second in number of babies with very low birth weights and the percentage of pregnant women who received very late or no prenatal care.

We have a lot to moan about.

But, Patterson scolds, "We should talk less about how unfair it is and start to organize."

Patterson is bringing the entire county council down south to the Kent Senior Center on March 24. A town hall meeting beginning at 6:30 p.m. will focus on equity and social justice.

This summer, Patterson will convene a summit of local leaders to plan an organized attack.

The good news is that we are a scrappy, feisty bunch - battle tested from the third runway and Lora Lake fights.

The latest battle is over the insistence of Seattle-centric officials and lawmakers led by Seattle Deputy Mayor Tim Ceis that Seattle deserves twice as much state money as Burien to administer the same North Highline area if one of these cities annexes it.

(My daddy always taught me to be wary when negotiating with a guy nicknamed "The Shark.")

Staying with the battle analogies, the cavalry arrived last month to reinforce troops fighting the long battle to help our under-siege schools.

The Tukwila Community Schools Collaboration expanded to SeaTac and North Highline while the White Center Early Learning Initiative announced it had received $12 million in grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Thrive by Five Washington.

Like a nervous starlet accepting an Oscar, I hate to start thanking agencies that have been involved in helping our needy kids and their parents for fear of leaving somebody out.

While the agencies may apply for government grants, nonprofits along with faith-based groups also seek private partnerships and individual donations. That should warm the hearts of compassionate conservatives.

We lost one of our own last week.

Tim St. Clair, Robinson Newspapers reporter for nearly two decades, died of pancreatic cancer on Feb. 25.

Tim reported for the West Seattle Herald and White Center News but we borrowed his stories occasionally-particularly on North Highline annexation.

He died before he told us how the story ended.

What I remember most clearly about Tim are the same qualities mentioned so often in the tributes offered by others-he was a genuinely nice guy and he was the consummate objective journalist.

Reading one of his stories, you had absolutely no clue what he personally thought about the subject.

No matter the future of news, there will always be a need for content providers like Tim who objectively gather the facts and present them in an organized and illuminating manner.

His quiet competence will continue to inspire us at Robinson Newspapers.

And as news consumers, I hope you readers continue to demand the high standards that Tim embodied.

Eric Mathison can be reached at hteditor@robinsonnews.com or 206-388-1855.