july18 2019
free
VERNONIA’S
volume13 issue14
reflecting the spirit of our community
Vernonia School Board
Taking Applications
for Open Position
The Vernonia School
Board is seeking applicants to
fill an open seat on their Board
of Directors after no one filed
to run for the position in the last
election in May 2019.
Currently Position #7
on the Vernonia School District
Board of Directors is vacant.
Position #7 is a four year term,
however the appointed individ-
ual to this position is required
(if they so choose) to seek elec-
tion during the regular election
process in the Spring of 2021 in
order to serve the final two years
remaining of the original term.
Any individual that is a regis-
tered voter and has lived within
the boundaries of the Vernonia
School District for one year (12
months) is eligible to submit
their interest to the Board. Em-
ployees of Vernonia School Dis-
trict, including all substitutes,
are not eligible.
Candidate
Informa-
tion Sheet will be accepted be-
tween July 12 and July 26, 2019,
due at the District Office by 4:00
pm on July 26, 2019. The Can-
didate Information Sheet can be
accessed at: www.vernonia.k12.
or.us.
Please submit com-
pleted information sheet to Barb
Carr at the Vernonia School Dis-
trict Office - mailing address
1201 Texas Avenue, Vernonia,
OR 97064 or deliver directly
to the District Office located in-
side the Vernonia K-12 Schools
Building - 1000 Missouri Av-
enue, Vernonia, OR 97064.
The School Board antic-
ipates appointing an individual
to this position at the August 8,
2019 regularly scheduled Board
Meeting beginning at 6:00 pm in
the Vernonia Schools Library.
Please contact Barb
Carr at (503) 429-5891 if you
have any questions.
Remember to Walk Your Wheels
on Vernonia Sidewalks
The City of Vernonia is reminding
citizens that they are required to walk their
bicycles, scooters, and skateboards when
traveling on city sidewalks.
The reminder was prompted by a
recent accident in which a patron leaving
a downtown business was struck and
knocked to the ground by a youth riding a
bicycle.
City Ordinance 745 allows for
fines of up to $50 for anyone caught riding
on City sidewalks.
Seniors Look to Take Over Scout Cabin
Vernonia City Administrator Josette
Mitchell informed the City Council at their
regular meeting on July 15, that the Friends of
the Scout Cabin have notified the City they are
relinquishing their lease with the City for the
land where the Scout Cabin building stands.
Mitchell also provided the Council
with a letter from Vernonia Senior Center Board
Treasurer Tobie Finzel notifying the City that
they have been offered and accepted the Scout
Cabin structure and all its assets.
In her letter, Finzel said the Senior
Center would continue to operate the facility as
a public rental space, but also use it for their
own social activities.
Council gave consensus for Mitchell
to move forward with preparing a new lease
between the City and the Senior Center, which
they will review at their August 5 meeting.
Digging Deeper into Oregon’s Cap-and-Trade Proposal
Part 2: HB 2020, the bill
Oregon legislators failed
to pass last month, was an
ambitious attempt to reduce
carbon and halt global climate
change. Was it too ambitious?
By Scott Laird
When the Oregon House of Rep-
resentatives passed HB 2020 in June and
sent it to the Oregon Senate last month,
Oregon Republicans were furious, and
Republican Senators left to avoid voting
on the bill. The bill died when several
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democratic Senators, including Betsy
Johnson, who represents Vernonia and
the rest of Columbia County, said they
would not support the bill, leaving it
short of the votes needed to pass.
While the bill was being dis-
cussed in the House and Senate some-
thing amazing happened. Rural Orego-
nians started showing up, first to listen,
and then to protest. Loggers, truckers,
farmers, and others, banded together un-
der the banner of “Timber Unity,” and
traveled together to Salem in several in-
creasingly larger caravans, (one caravan
stretched for five miles). They flooded
the streets of the capital with horns
honking, and the offices of their leg-
islators. Timber Unity started small,
turned into a wave, and has now be-
come a movement of over 50,000
people.
Two members of Timber Unity
were invited to visit Washington, D.C.
and met President Donald Trump on
July 8. While the group says it has
no political affiliations, it has become
an official Political Action Commit-
tee (PAC) and group leaders say the
group will continue to advocate for
the working class and rural commu-
nities. It has become a voice for rural
Oregonians who work in natural re-
source industries, and is standing up
for those who say they have grown
tired of being pushed around by urban
legislators.
Why Vernonia’s Democratic Rep-
resentatives didn’t support HB
2020
Support for HB 2020 was most-
ly partisan, with just a handful of Ore-
gon Democrats siding with Republicans
and declining to back it. Two of those
Democrats who crossed party lines were
State Representative Brad Witt, who
also represents Vernonia and Columbia
County, and Senator Johnson.
Representative Witt, in his regu-
lar newsletter he sends out to constitu-
ents, said he “...believes dealing with
climate change is the moral imperative
of our time,” and that we must, “...ensure
that the earth remains inhabitable for us
and every other living species.” He said
HB 2020 was not the answer though, and
said he voted against the bill because it
“...is built on a flawed model,” that tol-
erates:
• allowing polluters to continue to
pollute by buying credits
• leaking Oregon revenues to out-of-
state interests
• excessive fuel costs
• losses in market competitiveness and
rural jobs
• creating a large, inefficient and
expensive bureaucracy to run the
program.
“I am concerned about the eco-
nomic impacts that HB 2020 will have
on our rural communities, so I voted
no,” said Witt.
I spoke with Senator Johnson
by phone for this article and asked about
her decision to reject HB 2020.
“This bill went well beyond
making Oregon carbon neutral,” said
Johnson. “Describing this whole thing
as the greatest crisis of our lifetime, and
then plunging into it with as little un-
derstanding of the effect it was going to
have on farmers, the nursery industry,
and timber, it was just too complicated
and problematic, and just didn’t make
sense. All those timber families came
down to Salem to make a case for what
this was going to do to what was left of
the their industry, and they made a lot of
valuable points.”
Johnson said, that despite ap-
pearances, she did not believe that Or-
egon Democratic legislators listened to
their constituents when they held public
forums this spring. “In my opinion the
bill was flawed on two levels, on a policy
basis and on a process basis,” explained
Johnson.
Johnson said she objected to a
number of ways the bill would be im-
plemented, noting that the final bill had
over 120 amendments from the original
proposed bill. She said implementing
the bill would involve nine different
state agencies, create a new layer of bu-
reaucracy, and commit a portion of the
state budget that would be administered
by unelected and unaccountable admin-
istrators. And most importantly, that the
actual costs of implementing the policies
were unknown.
“People’s untested beliefs that
creating this policy was somehow going
to contribute significantly to reducing
world climate change, just seemed to me
to be fallacy.”
She also had major issues with
the emergency clause Democrats at-
tached to the bill. “When you look at the
diminutive impact of Oregon’s contribu-
tion to global climate change, it’s hard
to understand why they slapped on an
emergency clause, except to keep it from
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