an opinion
february21
2013
An Opinion: What’s Going On?
By Scott Laird
Trails End Recovery has been
working in Vernonia for the last sev-
eral years doing home demolitions after
FEMA flood buyouts. More recently they
have been conducting the old school site
demolition.
Trails End has hired and em-
ployed several local people during their
time working in Vernonia. They have
recovered and made available to the
public many items and materials at ex-
tremely reasonable prices. They have
been easy to work with and good friends
to this community. Trails End provided
a low bid for deconstructing the school
site and saved the Vernonia School Dis-
trict money in the process.
So how have at least a few mem-
ber of this community chosen to repay
Trails End Recovery for providing jobs
for our folks? By stealing from them
and vandalizing their equipment. That’s
right; Trials End had approximately
$50,000 in damage done to a piece of
equipment that was left overnight on the
school site last year. In addition over
$50,000 in recoverable materials that
Trails End intended to salvage and sell
have been stolen from the site. The sal-
vage operation and the expected resale
of materials was how Trails End was
able to provide that low bid to the school
district. Lumber, wires, fixtures and
more have been disappearing from the
site regularly. Fencing around the site
has been cut so trucks can pull in and be
loaded with stolen goods.
School Board members re-
cently expressed frustration at the way
this company has been treated by what
is hopefully just few members of this
community. When Trails End works in
Portland they build in an expected loss
of 3-5% for just this reason; they expect
some thievery. But this job is now, way
over that amount. “Frankly, I would
hope that people would have some type
of a conscious and bring the stuff back,”
said School Board President Jim Krahn.
“but it’s probably silly to think that
might happen.”
What is more likely is that
someone with a conscious might contact
the local police and turn in those respon-
sible.
required by DEQ. The City has been
out of compliance and dodging the issue
for many years. The City completed the
first phase of the project back in 2005;
the flood of 2007 has hindered the com-
pletion of the entire project. The City is
now moving forward and has plans for
a $5-6 million upgrade, which is down
significantly from the original estimate
of $11 million. The City does not have
the money in reserve to pay for this proj-
ect and will have to borrow the funds
needed. DEQ will not allow us to put
this off any longer; putting it off to a
later time only increases the end cost to
the City.
So now let’s address the three
main points I heard during that internet
discussion. First, no one ever likes to in-
crease utility rates. Citizens hate it and
become outraged; elected officials avoid
it like the plague. That is one of the rea-
sons you may not be aware that the City
is currently wrestling with this issue—
no one wants to talk about it. Past City
Councils and city staff have tried to de-
lay the issue for the same reason-raising
rates is unpopular and it hurts people in
the community.
The Vernonia City Council is
made up of citizens just like you and me-
any rate increase affects their friends,
family and neighbors, as well as them-
selves. They do not want to increase
rates but find themselves in a difficult
spot.
The Vernonia Public Works
Committee is a group of volunteers who
are appointed by City Council to repre-
sent the citizens of our community and
give input to the City Council about
public works issues. The current group
has been very involved in the process of
the wastewater upgrade as well as sev-
eral other projects to make the Public
Works department more efficient. They,
along with city staff, have looked at just
about every way possible to cut costs on
the project. Recently the Public Works
Committee made a recommendation to
City Council and the City Budget Com-
mittee that they refrain from raising wa-
ter or sewer rates by holding or lowering
operational costs.
The citizens serving on the City
Council and city committees take their
responsibility seriously. The issues they
are asked to deal with are complex and
require research and deep levels of un-
derstanding. They make great sacrifices
of time and energy to attend meetings
and be informed and I believe the deci-
sions they make weigh heavily on them.
In my opinion, being angry at
the citizens who represent us is misguid-
ed and a poor use of energy.
Which brings us to my second
point. City staff and the City Coun-
cil are aware that they have not done a
good a job of getting information out to
the public. As the local news outlet, I
don’t think Vernonia’s Voice has done
as well as we could in talking about the
issue of high utility rates, or other sen-
sitive or negative issues. The City has
agreed to work with us to provide the
City Administrator Report for each issue
of our newspaper in an effort to provide
more detailed information about current
issues and projects. They also have been
including information in the utility bills
they send out monthly. City Administra-
tor Bill Haack has been monitoring con-
versations on the internet and occasion-
Publisher and Managing Editor
Scott Laird
503-367-0098
scott@vernoniasvoice.com
Contributors
Mark Brown
Chip Bubl
Tobie Finzel
Nick Galady
Bill Haack
Jennifer Moloney
Dennis Nelson
Sonia Spackman
An Opinion: The Power of Listening
By Scott Laird
Recently a conversation took
place on the internet that got me think-
ing about several things. The discussion
was held on Facebook on the Vernonia
Community Bulletin Board and was
started when someone suggested that
community members attend a Vernonia
Planning Commission meeting.
An interesting conversation
emerged that went on for over a week,
included over 135 separate postings
and involved numerous participants.
The discussion centered on the City’s
wastewater facility upgrade project and
the possibility that utility rates could in-
crease in Vernonia-again. The conversa-
tion revealed many things.
People expressed concern, anger
and outrage about the potential of higher
water and sewer rates. Others tried to
explain the reality of the situation and
the reason Vernonia has such high rates.
Some people encouraged citizens to be-
come more involved. Some said they
would and did. People vented their
frustration and a feeling of helplessness
at increasing rates.
What I heard as I followed and
listened to this conversation were sev-
eral things. First, there seems to be a
lot of anger towards our elected officials
around high utility rates. Second, there
is a lack of accurate knowledge and in-
formation in our community. Third, and
I already knew this, but is always nice
to be reminded, people really care about
Vernonia.
First. lets clarify a few things.
The City of Vernonia has undertaken an
upgrade of their wastewater facility, as
Photography
Tracy Easlon
Scott Laird
Mckenzie Titus
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ally joining them to add information.
My hope is that the City will
continue to improve on their commu-
nication. As for Vernonia’s Voice, we
are upgrading our web presence with a
new website that links to Facebook and
hope that this will allow us to be more
timely with information. By including
a community calendar, weather, polls
and news updates between print publica-
tions, we hope to keep Vernonians better
informed and be the source you go to to
find out what is happening in our com-
munity.
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