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About Illinois Valley news. (Cave City, Oregon) 1937-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 21, 2020)
Page A-8 Illinois Valley News, Cave Junction, Ore. Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2020 LETTERS ... Continued from A-2 Past mayor warns of misinformation How do you work with someone who makes up their own set of facts and delivers misinformation? Mr. Hall has these inclinations. For example, he has said the city’s budget is fat and yet he has never attended a budget meeting. At the candidates forum he actually said that he has no idea how the budget works. The fact is the Cave Junction city auditor has continued to praise the city for its attention to detail and lawful use of public funds. Mr. Hall’s signs say, “Honesty, Integrity, Trust, Respect and Honor.” Where is the “Honesty” when you refer to the city having fines from the state of Oregon when there have been none? Hall has stated that the city does not have a licensed sewage treatment plant operator; this is another lie. Steve Bethke has a Water Level 3 certification. Steve also has a Level 2 certification in Wastewater Treatment; Eric Larsen has a Level 3 and is the Certified Systems Operator. Bethke as the Public Works Coordinator is a cost savings measure that Hall doesn’t know or care about. He only wants to create chaos and distrust. Where is the “Respect” and “Trust” when you say you will “Privatize” the city’s water and sewer plants when this will create higher fees in the long run? Hall has been getting his information about the internal workings from a disgruntled ex-employee who is giving him wrong information. This previous employee now contracts out to small cities running their water/ sewer plants. Hall is suggesting that the city would be better served by contracting out this service. Is there a connection there? What incentive would there be to keep the city out of trouble once the contract is awarded? I have a suggestion; if you want real information ask at City Hall not Chris Hall! There is so much misinformation in Chris’ diatribe about the golf course, but I’ll keep it short. He should know that the effluent is not discharged into the river because of water temperature, not because the city’s effluent is icky! The effluent is often times cleaner than the river water. The CJ Wastewater Treatment Facility was upgraded in 1992 and brought up to “snuff” by replacing the UV System and Digesters after the previous operator left employment with the city. Where is the “Decency” when you talk about firing the city recorder when you are quoted as saying you will pay for the “New Position” by firing the city recorder? As a union member there may be a problem there with a possible lawsuit to the city, costing taxpayer’s money. Where is the “Honor” when we cannot believe what he tells us? He seems to think if you lie loud enough, long enough and keep repeating the lie people believe you. Don’t be fooled by him. These are my opinions as a former mayor and councilor of Cave Junction for almost 20 years. Rita Dyer Cave Junction Christopher Hall for Mayor, Jason Gill for City Council position#2, and Joel Dierkes for City Council, position #4. In particular, former Mayor, Daniel Dalegowski, wrote in the October 14 edition of this paper stridently criticizing the idea, as did Jesse Dugas, an opposing candidate for City Council, position #4, in the entirety of his two-minute closing statement in the IV News/ IVCDO Candidates’ Forum held on Zoom October 15. I’m not sure why. I researched all the available data from the City Council Meeting Minutes from 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020, and I counted up every single vote, excluding votes on the minutes and consent agenda (which are almost always unanimous in any organization). This is what I found: In the six years, there were 254 action item votes taken for which data was available (the city did not publish minutes for 14% of the meetings during this time period for unknown reasons). 92% of all the votes on ordinances, resolutions, and motions were unanimous. 6.5% had one dissenting vote, and 1.5% had two dissenting votes. The data from which these totals are derived has been provided to the IV News publishers as an attachment to this letter. It appears from the voting record over the years that there already has been a team in place, and we’re just running to replace them. Sincerely, Christopher Hall ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Cave Junction Reader asks what’s the issue? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Recently there has been quite a kerfuffle over the idea that three candidates for local office in Cave Junction are running as a team: Here is why I support Meadow Martell Meadow has been a resident of the Illinois Valley for almost 30 years and is well aware of our culture here. Meadow had over 40 years experience working in nonprofits and government agencies. The reason I bring this up is that it helps if you know how the system works before you start to make changes or improvements to the system. Meadow has the knowhow to acquire both federal and state grants for projects here in Cave Junction. The city council has already approved an intergovernmental agreement with Josephine County for a Community Development Block Grant for a zero interest, no monthly payment loans for housing repairs and rehabilitation for low-income families. The city has not heard the results of this application yet but on the other hand Meadow’s opponent has written over 500 emails to State of Oregon Agency Managers to undermine our applications for various project grant funding. Most of the time these Agency Managers know our city and therefore call us to ask what is going on and who is this guy. We have been lucky so far in that none of our projects have been scrapped due to this deception and subterfuge. Who knows what will happen if Hall is selected mayor. Because Meadow has worked in the Illinois Valley community on economic development as part of the Community 2010 Committee she has first hand contacts throughout the state of Oregon. I can tell you from experience how beneficial it is to be able to pick up the phone and talk to both elected state officials and counterparts within other Oregon cities about projects and policies effecting Cave Junction. Projects that Meadow worked on with the Illinois Valley 2010 Committee were successful in obtaining a $3 million grant that funded jobs and projects here in Cave Junction including matching funds for the city water expansion plant, and the Illinois Valley Family Coalition Building on River St. Meadow Martell is the clear choice for Cave Junction Mayor! Lastly please vote and drop your ballots off at the official white ballot box in Cave Junction at City Hall before 8 p.m. November 3 to let your vote count. Wes Dyer Cave Junction ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Reader says Smith is his guy I am voting for Ron Smith for county commissioner and urge all those who voted for me in the May primary to vote for Ron as well. Several years ago voters rejected the “nuisance ordinances” by an overwhelming margin. This ordinance allowed county officials to come into your private property to look for violations Deyoung is supporting the new 2020 version of these illegal ordinances Your property is your castle do not allow Deyoung and county officials to violate your rights. This will not even be on the ballot. Deyoung unlike Ron Smith supports a gas tax a lodging tax a sales tax as well as higher property taxes Please don’t be fooled just because Deyoung was born and raised here. Protect your rights and your hard earned money. Vote Ron Smith Sincerely Mark Seligman Selma Nifty Tidbits: by Chuck Rigby Originally printed in Illinois Valley News Oct. 11, 2000 Why doesn’t Eight Dollar Mountain get as much rain as the rest of the Illinois Valley ? This is a question that has been asked of me many times at IVHS or as a summer naturalist at the Oregon Caves National Monument. I tried to explain that Eight Dollar probably gets about the same amount of rain but it looks drier because of the plant differences created by the soil. Serpentine is a metamorphic rock that is referred to as ultramafic. Mafic means that it is high in magnesium and iron and “ultra” means that it is almost all magnesium and iron, or full of ferro magnesium minerals. This causes the rock to be dark and sometimes a green color. Someone thought it looked like a snake, therefore, the name serpentine. The result of the high percentage of magnesium and iron is a percentage of calcium and silicon minerals. When this rock is broken down into sediments, the soil is high in magnesium and iron , but deficient in calcium, which is needed by most plants. The entire west side of Illinois Valley, from Selma past O’Brien has serpentine soil. Most plants can not tolerate this and therefore do not grow well in this type of soil. Gardeners, in this area, know that lime must be added to grow good gardens. There are some plants, however, that can tolerate this condition and will grow with little competition from more common plants. Darlingtonia, Jeffrey Pine and most manzanita are some examples. At least two of the rare serpentine plants of the Siskiyou Forest have Howell’s name. Howell’s Mariposa Lily, Calochortus howellii, is a form of cats-ear. It’s name is derived from “calo or kalo” which means beautiful, and “chortus” which means grass. Another plant is Howell’s Manzanita, Arctostaphylos hispidula, other manzanita species are very common. This name comes from “arcto” meaning bear, “staphyl” meaning bunch of grapes, and “hispidula” meaning hairy or bristly. These two plants are found in the Siskiyou Mountains and nowhere else in the world. Thomas Jefferson Howell was born Oct 9, 1842 in Missouri. In 1850 his father, a physician, brought the family to Oregon by wagon train and settled in the Portland area. By the 1880s, Thomas and his brother Joseph were operating a fruit farm on Sauvie Island, just north of Portland. Thomas decided to collect and identify the native plants of Oregon. He had only a few months of formal schooling, but was still able to correspond with leading botanists back East and learned the basic principles of plant identification. In 1884 he was collecting in the Siskiyou Mountains. Brewer’s Spruce, the last official tree species to be discovered in North America, was one of his finds. Howell, from 1897 to 1903, published the first guide to Oregon plants, “A Flora of Northwest America.” He learned the printing process and then did the typesetting himself a few pages at a time. The serpentine soil and glacial relics are only two reasons for the large variety of endemic plants found here. Truly, this is a region of the country that is rich in plant as well as animal diversity.
