Of, By and For: Commentary

After the Yamhill County Board of Commissioners turned down federal money to pay for a Yamhill County Habitat Conservation Plan (that would have created "safe harbors" for the county and landowners) and subsequently receiving an intent to sue by third parties for the county's "takings" of Fender's Blue Butterfly and/or Kincaid's Lupine and lack of a plan to address it, I fully expect Yamhill County to make life as unpleasant as possible for Yamhill County residents.

Word is, that instead of addressing the issue, they will stop road maintenance in certain areas and post notices of "rough road". This will make residents (whose gravel roads in particular need regular maintenance) very mad so as to shift blame from the county's refusal to follow the law to "tree huggers".

A News Register editorial opines:

The county’s in-kind match amounts to about $12,000 a year in a department budget of $10.5 million — that’s $36,000 out of more than $30 million over three years, and the $30 million consists entirely of state and federal infusions rather than local property tax revenue.

In other words, about 1 penny out of $10.00.

The county has legitimate concerns about ongoing management and mitigation obligations, but its local partners have pledged to pick up much of that burden. In a worst-case scenario, which the feds raised in the letter triggering this week’s headlines, environmental forces would sue, alleging non-compliance with the federal Endangered Species Act. That would create a vastly larger fiscal and management drain for the county, and a very real cost to local taxpayers without any compensating benefit.

The county may have "concerns" about the mitigation work, but it isn't really optional: they need to figure out how they are going to do it, not whether. The only question on "whether" is whether the county accepts the grant or pays for it out of its own pocket (assuming they aren’t going to fight it in court).

But yes, the conclusion is entirely correct for the county: "[non compliance by the county] would create a vastly larger fiscal and management drain for the county, and a very real cost to local taxpayers without any compensating benefit."

Continue reading "Re: Editorial: Butterfly project can co-exist with YC budget" »

Sometimes, particularly lately, on the county level, government transparency is more like an archaeology expedition.

Transparency in government is a two-way street. It requires that citizens participate in their own local governments and remain chronically vigilant.

One important way to do this is to attend the County Commissioners weekly meetings, and hearings which are open to the public.

The 2010 Public Hearings Schedule for the Yamhill County Board of Commissioners is available here.

Their weekly meetings occur on Wednesday mornings at 9 AM in Room 32 of the Yamhill County Courthouse at 5th & Evans in McMinnville. They reserve the first 30 minutes for Public Comment, and they give each person 3 minutes for their comments, which become part of the Public Record.

Of course, in order to be able to attend the weekly Wednesday 9 AM meetings, you need to be either independently wealthy, unemployed, homeless/indigent, or you have to play hookey from work or school. The argument is that they can't hold these weekly meetings in the evening, because they'd have to pay county staff more money. If these are salaried positions, there is no more money involved. If these are hourly positions, aren't you willing to pay a few extra bucks so we can all have access to our County Commissioners in meeting? I know I'm willing to do that. But, try and persuade the Commissioners. That has been the hard part.

So, do what it takes, and go to some of these meetings and hearings. Hell, write your kids a note for school, and take them on your own Civics field trip.

Folks, things are rotten in the state of Yamhill County, and in order to clean them up, we, all of us, have to get our collective hands back on the tiller of what is supposed to be *our* county government, Of, By, and For - The People.

The People part are you and me. All of us. Will I be seeing you there?

Yr. Obed. Scrvnr.,

Kathleen

Recently Kathy George has been criticizing the idea of increasing the size of the Yamhill County Board of Commissioners from three to five members. Her three arguments are:

Kathy claims it will add an extra layer of bureaucracy. -- But it will not add another layer. It would just make the top layer of three larger by two representatives, to just five.

Today each Commissioner is elected at large, meaning each of the Commissioners represents all of the almost 100,000 residents. Yet even each Oregon House member represents fewer than 60,000 people . If Commissioners were elected by districts, they could represent about 20,000 people each, in between City Councilors and House representatives, reasonable for the size of the county relative to it's cities.

In reality, a five person Board would have the same number of layers as today. But with district representation, it would bring the commissionsers closer to the people.
Kathy claims it would be cost neutral only initially because there would be pressure to increase salaries over time. -- But this just as true today with three commissioners: inflation causes costs for the Board to go up, just like inflation does for costs everywhere. If they start from the same base, they go up the same amount.

In reality, there would be no change in the rate of growth.
Kathy claims it is best if Commissioners can’t talk to each other about what’s going on in the county except at formal public meetings.

Her claim seems absurd: what is so weird about the Yamhill County Board of Commissioners that they shouldn’t talk to each other, say, about what one of them learned at a community meeting with one of the others? Or ask a question about something one of the others knows more about? It works fine in the Newberg City Council of seven, the McMinnville City Council of six plus the mayor for seven, ... in fact almost all elected bodies have well more than three representatives and our democracy functions just fine, arguably much better.

If she really believes this, why hasn’t she campaigned to have Newberg City Council cut to three councilors, or the Oregon House and Senate to three each (boy that would save a lot of cost!)?
In reality, almost all government bodies have more than three people and function just fine and it would be better in Commissioners could talk to each other.

But worse, she has recently voted for the things she says she is against! Kathy voted for an extra layer in county government and for higher costs:

She voted to move department heads from reporting directly to Commissioners to instead report to a new position of County Administrator who then reports to the Commissioners; and
because she added more responsibilities to the Admistrator, she voted to increase the Administrator's salary by about $50,000 per year ... without reducing the Commissioners salaries even one dime!

So, Kathy has voted for an extra layer of bureaucracy and increased costs and she doesn’t think Commissioners should be able to talk to each other. But the five-Commissioner proposal wouldn't add a layer or costs and would allow Commissioners to talk to each other just like almost every other elected body in the state.

Increasing the size of the Board of Commissioners would bring substantial benefits to Yamhill County:

two more voices for Yamhill County lobbying on the regional, state and federal funding levels, the source of about 30% of the Yamhill County budget;
more diverse viewpoints can better navigate through the coexisting needs of farming/viticulture, small business, retirement community, and tourism as well as provide attention to environmental concerns and changing resource availability, such as water;
reduce the likelihood of stalemates or just two people deciding key issues in the county if one of the commissioners has a conflict of interest;
district representation would bring commissioners closer to the people, representing fewer at once;
allow one-on-one conversations with each other, productively sharing ideas informally for initial feedback, just as other government bodies can do.

Well it was interesting that our local news rag had as it's headline today: 'Lawmakers return to work' but failed to mention our state rep wasn't there, due to 'personal business' ~ great for morale when you don't show up the first day on the job in the new session ~ go, Jim!

School gardens have something for everybody

Long before the unpleasantness on Wall Street, we heard talk about "food security" from school-garden mavens in places as disparate as Mill Valley and Richmond's Iron Triangle.

I first advocated this idea 10 years ago and have been pushing it, and documenting it, here in Yamhill County, Oregon ever since I moved here five years ago.

We need Community Victory Garden FoodSheds at every Head Start, Elementary, Middle, and High School in America, which will function in five capacities:

Community Victory Gardens for the students, teachers, administrators, and their families - year round, built on a hybridized pattern - a marriage of - Community Gardens with Victory Gardens.
Farmers Markets with richly diverse crops, which will raise money for the schools, train future local farmers, and provide localized seed-saving and propagating hubs.
Living Laboratories on a shoe string where you can teach math, chemistry, physics, botany, biology, etymology, mycology, meteorology, literature, history, civics, business, shop, etc etc.
FoodShed Security Hubs which will help to decentralize and secure food supplies locally. This idea is not new at all - Alexander the Great, the Caesars of Rome, and Napoleon, among others, *all* exhorted their people to keep their own small patches of food.
Serve as hubs for converting private yards, then city & county parks, then the land around and in front of every civic building (police stations, courthouses, city halls, community centers, churches, jails, etc.) and finally every Hell strip to be found, into Victory Permagardens.

Yr. Obed Scrvnr., Kathleen Blair
McMinnville, OR

Well, really the People of the Great State of Oregon are the winners.

When I was in college my French professor, Arturo Sanchez used to say "There are two kinds of flunk - a good flunk and a bad flunk. A good flunk is 50% - you are close and can improve easily and make up the difference with a little more work. A bad flunk is 20% - 30% - no way."

Tonight in Yamhill County we had a good flunk. The good people of the great State of Oregon affirmed and ratified Representative Democracy as our Founding Fathers gave it to us.

Our congratulations to the coalition of local Dominionists, the United Teabagger Liberation Front & Temper Tantrum Committee, and a few whingeing Republicans for running a hard campaign with all the over-sized illegal signage. Perhaps if you'd had a poster child?

Of course, now you understand why abusing the petition initiative is a two-edged sword. And an expensive one at that. Since these backdoor fees and taxes to the State and the County - and thus The People - were unnecessary and avoidable, as demonstrated by majority vote, perhaps someone ought to drop you all an invoice. Now may The People please have their money back?

That squeaking and hard breathing you hear are all of us Progressives. Right. On. Your. Heels. I’d pedal faster if I were you :) Don’t mind us, we’ll be passing you on the right here shortly. :)

The Oregonian called the state-wide race early FOR Measures 66 & 67 – both passed.

Thank you Portland, Eugene and Benton County for saving Oregon’s proverbial butt. :)

Congrats to Defend Oregon, and all of the sensible people who understood how important these measures were.

Thanks to all the Yamhill County Democrats, Indepndents, and cross-over *real* Republicans (yes there were some) who phone, pushed, put up signs, fought illegal signage, kept the Faith, and worked hard to do our part.

YAY!!! The GOOD GUYS WIN AGAIN!!!! YAY!!!!!

Yr. Obed. Scrvnr.,
Kathleen

What exactly is affordable housing? Affordable housing, by its most basic definition, is that not more than 30% of the household’s total income is spent on housing (including mortgage, taxes, and insurance) and if you were to use this definition you would find that many of us are not living in affordable housing. That being said, when I say affordable housing I am talking about housing in Newberg, Oregon for the working middle class people who have only two choices: to live above their means so they can stay in Newberg, or to leave.

I guess it might be important to talk about who these people are that need this type of housing before you shout, “If they can’t afford to live here, let them leave!”

Continue reading "Affordable Housing For Working Families in Newberg" »

It is always a sad day when one of our oldest mom and pops (Newberg Garbage service, since 1941) gets swallowed up by a Fortune 500 out-of-state corporate giant such as Waste Management Inc. (WM) Newberg's garbage is cheaper than McMinnville's but one can assume WMI will use its empowered monopoly status to hike the rates with this new purchase development.

However, the silver lining with this consolidation is that Newberg Garbage service maintains a compacting transfer station on land already zoned for industry. When the land-use fight over Riverbend Landfill winds down, and Waste Management has lost its fight to expand onto farmland and the riverbank, they will be all set to export our trash up to their desolate facility in the desert without having to raise the costs due to the siting and construction of a new transfer station. WM just undercut their own argument that there is a need for a zone change because they just bought industrial land in Newberg that they can now transfer their garbage to Arlington through without destroying EFU farmland!

Continue reading "Impacts of Newberg Garbage Service Sale to Waste Management" »

Taxes are always a hot-button subject, and never more so than on Measures 66 & 67 which will be the *only* ballot issue before Oregon voters between January 8, 2010 when the ballots go into the mail and January 26th, Election Day. These measures have their share of supporters and detractors, each armed with pre-digested arguments. But what will 66 & 67 really mean to all of us little folks when the rubber meets the road?

Well, let’s look at this in hard numbers. I got these figures off the nonpartisan Oregon Legislative Fiscal Office web site at http://www.leg.state.or.us/comm/lfo/ which has tallied cuts which may be required if Measure 66 & Measure 67 are voted down.

If the ~~Anti-Veteran, Anti-Cops, Pro-Crime-Pro-Drugs-Pro-Sex-Offenders~~ “Vote No” folks win, here are some major negative impacts in Yamhill County:

Continue reading "The Cost of Defeat" »

Letter as submitted to the News Register's Letters section:

Recently Oregon House Republicans including Yamhill County representatives Jim Weidner and Kim Thatcher proposed that the state of Oregon pay 50% of the cost of remodeling your home. This is unfair to taxpayers, undermines personal responsibility, does little for the public good, rewards the well-off, and further depletes the future tax base.

Continue reading "Oregon Republican legislators propose nutty stimulus alternative" »

Of, By and For

How we govern matters.

December 16, 2010

How will Yamhill County manage endangered species now?

May 11, 2010

Re: Editorial: Butterfly project can co-exist with YC budget

April 20, 2010

Local Government Transparency

April 16, 2010

George Says: Don't let Commissioners talk to each other

February 03, 2010

Where's Weidner?

January 30, 2010

School Community Victory Gardens Must Happen Now

Common Sense and The Good Guys Win!!!

December 30, 2009

Affordable Housing For Working Families in Newberg

December 18, 2009

Impacts of Newberg Garbage Service Sale to Waste Management

December 17, 2009

The Cost of Defeat

February 22, 2009

Oregon Republican legislators propose nutty stimulus alternative

Of, By and For

Recent Announcements

Search

Recent Comments

Archives

About Of, By and For