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About The nugget. (Sisters, Or.) 1994-current | View Entire Issue (May 22, 2019)
2 Wednesday, May 22, 2019 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon O P I N I O N City did not protect homeowners By Doug Wills Guest Columnist Honoring those who died defending our FREEDOM & DEMOCRACY Letters to the Editor… The Nugget welcomes contributions from its readers, which must include the writer9s name, address and phone number. Let- ters to the Editor is an open forum for the community and contains unsolicited opinions not necessarily shared by the Editor. The Nugget reserves the right to edit, omit, respond or ask for a response to letters submitted to the Editor. Letters should be no longer than 300 words. Unpublished items are not acknowledged or returned. The deadline for all letters is noon Monday. To the Editor: After retiring, my wife and I moved to Sisters 4 a place we always loved to visit and enjoy. However, our enjoyment of the small- town experience is fading away. Businesses moving in, traffic getting worse (try to make a left on to Cascade Avenue sometime), and increasing vandalism. The vandalism is the reason I am writing this letter. Within the last few days someone went into the Village Green and vandalized our flag pole. We assumed we had a pretty secure installa- tion as the rope pulley is inside the pole and access has to be made through a locked hatch. Someone managed to pick the lock, lower the flag and remove the counter-weights from the rope. This allowed the flag to go back up to the top of the pole with no easy way to get the flag down. And, of course this is just before our Memorial Day event that the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars hold in the park. We are appreciative of our city in their willingness to help effect repairs. While looking around the flowerbed sur- rounding the gazebo to see if the counter- weights had just been tossed into the flower bed (they hadn9t), I made another discovery. The vandal(s) have broken a piece out of the rock that has the memorial plaque and names of our departed veterans on it. Then I noticed that the plaque that held the information hon- oring one of Sisters9 veteran supporters had been removed from its mounting. Fortunately, the plaque was found in the flowerbed. Maybe this is just a sign of the times, but it9s a sad period of time when a memorial to all of our local veterans is desecrated. Seems like a pretty brazen act to me. Right in the park, See LETTERS on page 26 Sisters Weather Forecast Courtesy of the National Weather Service, Pendleton, Oregon Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday Monday PM Showers PM Showers Partly Cloudy Mostly Cloudy PM Thunderstorms Mostly Cloudy 64/47 69/46 60/42 61/44 66/47 69/47 The Nugget Newspaper, LLC Website: www.nuggetnews.com 442 E. Main Ave., P.O. Box 698, Sisters, Oregon 97759 Tel: 541-549-9941 | Fax: 541-549-9940 | editor@nuggetnews.com Postmaster: Send address changes to The Nugget Newspaper, P.O. Box 698, Sisters, OR 97759. Third Class Postage Paid at Sisters, Oregon. Editor in Chief: Jim Cornelius Production Manager: Leith Easterling Graphic Design: Jess Draper Community Marketing Partners: Vicki Curlett & Patti Jo Beal Classifieds & Circulation: Lisa May Proofreader: Pete Rathbun Owner: J. Louis Mullen The Nugget is mailed to residents within the Sisters School District; subscriptions are available outside delivery area. Third-class postage: one year, $45; six months (or less), $25. First-class postage: one year, $85; six months, $55. Published Weekly. ©2019 The Nugget Newspaper, LLC. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. All advertising which appears in The Nugget is the property of The Nugget and may not be used without explicit permission. The Nugget Newspaper, Inc. assumes no liability or responsibility for information contained in advertisements, articles, stories, lists, calendar etc. within this publication. All submissions to The Nugget Newspaper will be treated as uncondition- ally assigned for publication and copyrighting purposes and subject to The Nugget Newspaper’s unrestricted right to edit and comment editorially, that all rights are currently available, and that the material in no way infringes upon the rights of any person. The publisher assumes no responsibility for return or safety of artwork, photos, or manuscripts. The Sisters City Council at the May 15 meeting, encouraged by certain staff members and based on facts that were not entirely accurate, approved to make Williamson and Hill con- necting streets from the new Hayden development at McKenzie Meadows Village. These roads will connect through the Village at Cold Springs, continuing through the new Village at Cold Springs East and continuing on to Rail Way. This deci- sion will turn our privately owned and maintained roads into a major traffic thor- oughfare with hundreds of extra cars per day. This approval also poten- tially committed your tax dollars being allocated to cover the legal costs that this decision will incur. Why will your tax dollars be spent on this decision? The City Council ignored the data presented to them that these were designated private roads by the City in 2005 when Hayden sub- mitted their original master plan for the Village at Cold Springs. We own all these roads, pay taxes on these roads, and all the homeown- ers pay for all costs to main- tain these roads. The City Council also ignored their own codes 4 which outline how these streets were to be built 4 and allowed them to be built not following their specifications. All of this is in clear violation of the City9s own transportation plan, and yet was inaccurately pre- sented to the City Council and Planning Commission. Certain City staff members pushed for these roads to be connected without concern for the safety of the children that play in their yards, ride their bikes on these narrow streets, the adults that ride their bikes on these streets and those of us that walk on these sidewalks. Another comment made by Mr. Bessman, the traffic engi- neer consultant that lives in Bend, was that the nar- row streets will automati- cally slow traffic down. Yet, on April 15, Mr. Bessman drove down Fremont, turn- ing onto Williamson and was in the middle of the street, past my house as I was pulling out of my drive- way, well in excess of the posted speed limit. Is this a <do as I say, not as I do=? The key item we requested was to have emer- gency gates installed at the west end of Williamson and Hill. I provided the City and City Council with those specifications which I had received from Doug Green, the fire safety manager for the Sisters/Camp Sherman Fire District. Based on com- ments from the Council members, they either did not read this information or didn9t understand it. It was very obvious the way the entire April 24 meeting was set up, it was geared to promote the City9s agenda and program and not to help the citizens of Sisters that live in the Village at Cold Springs. At the City Council meeting on April 24, all the City plan- ners, the consultant traffic engineer and Hayden were given unlimited time to present their information, which in some cases was not accurate. When it came time for those of us that will be directly impacted by their decision, to present our con- cerns and recommendations, we were given only three minutes each AND NOT ALLOWED TO SHOW OUR SUPPORTING DATA ON THE SCREEN. It also should be noted that nobody on the City staff nor the City Council live in the Village at Cold Springs, so they will not be affected by their decision. Their decision will impact over 300 citizens of Sisters. I also question how many of the staff and Council members actually visited the Village at Cold Springs, drove the roads, saw the blind spots, saw the narrow roads and realized the potential safety concerns. This is how your City Council and the City staff, that your taxes pay for, operate. They give several variances to the big guys who do not live here and don9t contribute much to the city or the citizens, but they will not do anything to help those of us that live, work, own businesses and pay taxes in the City of Sisters! Remember this at the next election. Opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer and are not necessarily shared by the Editor or The Nugget Newspaper.