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About The nugget. (Sisters, Or.) 1994-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 27, 2019)
2 Wednesday, November 27, 2019 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon O P I N I O Happy T hanksgiving FROM THE NUGGET NEWSPAPER N Business should pay attention to idling By Steve Nugent Guest Columnist Thank you to all of the local businesses and sponsors who helped The Nugget to support the Sisters Community Thanksgiving Dinner. The Nugget will be closed Thursday, November 28. See additional holiday deadlines and hours on page 26. Letters to the Editor… The Nugget welcomes contributions from its readers, which must include the writer’s 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 Unpublished items are not acknowledged or returned.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: Guest columnist Josh Groves makes impor- tant points about reasons to oppose develop- ment pressure in his “Expansion of Sisters Benefits Few” piece last week. Growth benefits a handful of developers in the short term, but it does not benefit most citi- zens or tourists who are attracted to Sisters as a small community with a special connection to nature and who marvel in its clean water, air and pristine habitat. He9s right to point to les- sons from Bend, where unchecked growth is causing worse congestion and putting pressure on natural resources without increasing afford- ability or family-wage jobs. But there9s another reason to be extremely cautious when turning up the heat on develop- ment and handing out building permits with- out thinking about the future, as recently high- lighted in the New York Times (“As Climate Risk Grows, Cities Test a Tough Strategy: Saying »No9 To Developers=). With dangers from climate extremes rising, so too is the likelihood of wildfire, especially in wildland- urban interface towns like Sisters. No matter how many preventative mea- sures are taken, another wildfire that has the potential to cause major devastation isn9t a matter of if, it9s when. And as the finan- cial and emotional toll of climate-related disasters experienced throughout the nation have shown, greater development in these vulnerable areas only ups the ante on that threat. If protecting what makes Sisters special as a community — celebrated by locals and tourists alike for its small-town feel and close connection to nature 4 aren9t enough for elected officials and community leaders to stop yielding to pressure from special interests and developers, then the very real dangers of climate change and the drive to keep Sisters and its residents safe should be. Darcie Buckley See LETTERS on page 14 Sisters Weather Forecast Courtesy of the National Weather Service, Pendleton, Oregon Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday Monday Snow Snow showers Partly Cloudy Snow showers Snow showers Snow showers 29/19 26/13 28/6 27/16 34/22 39/25 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 & Lisa May Community Marketing Partners: Vicki Curlett & Patti Jo Beal Classifieds & Circulation: Kema Clark 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. A Sisters contractor just completed some work for my house and we were talking about the benefits of electric cars and the real cost of gasoline. I was shocked when he told me that his workforce used 25 percent of the compa- nies fuel up just idling the work trucks unnecessar- ily. He hopes to eliminate this behavior because it9s an avoidable expense. He had devices installed in his trucks to monitor fuel usage. Idling is not as inexpen- sive as you think because the cost of gasoline is not what you see on the pump. There are a lot of hid- den costs. Oil subsidies are one of these costs. Total US subsidies for coal, oil and gas are $650 billion annu- ally, more than the defense budget according to an IMF study. At least 50 percent of this is oil subsidies, tax- breaks and other oil-related programs and bureaus, or $325 billion. $27 billion is the monies going directly to oil companies as subsi- dies for oil production and exploration. A conservative amount that is related to oil production is $100 billion. Another big cost is the mil- itary defense for middle- east oil interests. This is estimated to be $81 billion/ year or about 16 percent of DOD base budgets. This amounts to about 28 cents per gallon to defend these foreign oil interests, even though the U.S. is now mostly oil independent. A smaller cost is the subsidy for corn-ethanol farming and production. Ethanol costs drivers in the U.S. $10 billion every year in higher gasoline prices for lower-quality gasoline. Subsidies and tax- breaks for the top ten corn producers combined with other programs, like the farm bill amount to about $450 million annually. If you add up all of the hid- den costs of gasoline, these come to about $181.5 bil- lion annually. We have about 230 million drivers in the U.S. Therefore, the added cost for gasoline for each driver is about $790 annually or $66/month. The average gas expense per driver per month is $250, so the actual cost is $316/month. This is a 26 percent increase. This increases the average gas price in October 2019 from $2.99/gallon to $3.78/gal- lon. This is what you are actually paying, not what is on the pump. There is no good reason to idle a truck under normal circumstances. For diesels, maximum of three min- utes of warm-up is recom- mended by the manufac- turers. More causes engine wear. I guess if it9s not your fuel, you don9t care if you waste it. The downside is that it creates less profit for the company you work for and maybe makes them less competitive when bid- ding for jobs. This can affect your job prospects. If you are sitting in an idling diesel truck, you are probably breathing some carcinogenic fumes. You may develop lung cancer, even if you don9t smoke. I have watched as the Salvation Army delivery truck sits for hours in the Target parking lot, idling while the attendant sits on the back lift. I have watched as CEC trucks parked next to job sites idle with the windows open and no passengers for hours unattended. Besides being against the law to idle a heavy truck for more than five minutes in a two-hour period (ORS 825.605), it9s bad for the environment and increases everyone9s living expenses. UPS is a good example of a company doing the right thing for the planet and the smart thing for their business. Even though their delivery trucks stop a hundred times each day, they turn off the engine and restart at each deliv- ery location. Their start- ers don9t wear out and their trucks last just as long, maybe longer. If only FEDEX would do the same. If only all truck drivers in Central Oregon would do the same. Opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer and are not necessarily shared by the Editor or The Nugget Newspaper.