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About Eugene weekly. (Eugene, Oregon) 1993-current | View Entire Issue (June 7, 2007)
• The passage of HB 3337 by the Oregon Senate last week means the Homebuilder Association’s bill trashing local metro planning and forcing Eugene to do a premature and expensive buildable lands inventory is going to the gov, and he’s expected to sign it. Might not be too late to call Kulongoski’s office at (503) 378-4582 or send him an email via www.oregon.gov Floyd Prozanski stood his ground in the Senate and represented the best practices in land-use planning, along with Kurt Schrader of Canby. What happened to Vicki Walker? She really let Eugene down on this one. Bill Morrisette has been firmly behind this flawed legisla- tion, lately justifying his support by saying the Eugene council was split on the issues of an early lands inventory. That’s an absurd argument. So Eugene should go to the Legislature to reverse Springfield on some of its split-vote decisions? What we’re learning from all this is that the Homebuilders Association is trying to become the new timber industry in terms of political clout. Shame on you, Springfield, for being led by the nose. Don’t be shocked when your taxes go up to pay for sprawl. • Repeal the gas tax in Eugene? Gas station owners are leading the charge to put the city’s new 3-cent per gallon gas tax to a vote, and at the same time elimi- nate the last 2-cent tax hike. People filling up in Eugene would pay 3 cents instead of 8 cents if the initiative goes on the ballot and passes. Not a good idea, unless backers come up with a better plan to fix potholes and repair other street prob- lems that tend to multiply when ignored. The city’s new gas tax is not perfect by any analysis, but it is relatively fair and equitable. And higher gas prices tend to encourage less driving and better vehicle choices. • FBI crime statistics are out for 2006 in Portland, Eugene and Salem this week, but it’s best not to take the FBI’s conclusions at face value. The FBI Portland Field Office says, “Eugene saw a 12.8 percent increase in violent crime and an 18.06 decrease in property crimes in 2006 compared to 2005.” But in the actual statis- tics, murders dropped from five to three, and forcible rape dropped from 54 to 44. Aggravated assault is the only statistic that skewed the numbers, rising from 119 to 155. The report also concludes that Salem saw a 3.09 percent decrease in violent crimes, and yet murders jumped from three to nine and forcible rape jumped from 53 to 74. Robbery and aggravated assault numbers dropped. Watch out for statis- tics; they can be used to support just about any agenda. Meanwhile, are you living in Eugene and thinking about moving to Salem? You are significantly less likely to have your car stolen or your home burgled, but you are more likely to get raped or murdered. As the police sergeant used to say on Hill Street Blues, “Be careful out there.” • A blogger who says his name is Steve and claims he’s a UO grad and “software nerd” living in Portland has taken a fancy to EW letters to the editor. Check out eugeneweeklyltte.blogspot.com for a snarky, conservative response to our reader’s views. He calls EW “a weekly ‘newspaper’ put out by the intellectual elite of Eugene,” and says our letters are “hilarious.” “Eugene is filled with actual hippies, wannnabe hippies, poseur anar- chists and filthy people who are so far to the left that Ralph Nader and Dennis Kucinich shy away from their support.” In response to a June 1 letter from Joshua Welch, the blogger writes, “This retard can’t comprehend that someone could possibly see things differently than himself, that some people might not think our being in Iraq is wrong.” In other comments he refers to all Eugene residents as “dipshits,” calls Whiteaker “Felony Flats” and says “99% of all Eugene Weekly readers are pot heads.” We can chuckle at his unconstructive name-calling (not so funny is his violation of our copyrighted con- tent). But unlike our beloved letter writ- ers, “Steve” is cowering behind anonymi- ty. Anybody recognize this red-headed, clean-cut young Scorpio? Then again, “Steve” could be an 80-year-old, blue- haired church lady from Coburg. The word “dipshit” went out of style decades ago. • Quotable regarding Iraq: We have been led “into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honor. … Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows ... We are today not far from a disaster.” — T. E. Lawrence, August 1920 • Worried about measles? A viewpoint on measles by Dr. Sarah Hendrickson, Lane County’s public health officer, came in too late for this issue, but can be found at www.eugeneweekly.com 8 JUNE 7, 2007 news briefs BUTTE BOMBERS Bombing down a steep hill at 50 mph in the dark on a bicycle sized for a 5-year-old may sound crazy. But not if you’re Josh Dallman, 27. “It’s a total rush,” says Dallman of screaming along inches from the ground. Dallman and a handful of friends have started a fledgling “Eugene Bomb aka U- Bomb” mini-bike club in Eugene to pursue the “extreme” downhill sport (www.eu- genebomb.com). They’re not totally nuts. They wear full motorcycle helmets, gloves and some pads. They go late at night and favor quiet streets to avoid traffic, and they scope the pavement for hazards such as potholes and uneven pavement. Dead-end Cleveland Street in southwest Eugene is a favorite with an “unbelievable drop,” Dallman said. But the website, complete with maps and ratings of the best bombs, also lists 30th Avenue and Willamette Street down from Spencer Butte. There are accidents. Dallman’s friend hit a “gnarly” hole going 35 mph and broke his foot. “The pothole gobbled him up,” Dallman said. He said he heard that an ear- lier group of hill bombers near Laurelwood Golf Course disbanded after a rider broke a limb. Dallman said he developed his bomb- ing first in Portland, where a “Zoobomb” group uses the Max train as a chairlift to bomb a hill down from the Portland Zoo. On June 17, Dallman said he and a friend (the one with the healing foot) plan to bike 100 miles to Portland on their tiny bikes and then join a 100 mile Zoobomb century there of 8 to 14 hours of hill bombing. Dallman says he does worry about speeding tickets in Eugene. The police “have definitely checked us out, but they’ve never harassed us,” he said. The group tries to be courteous to neighbors on the quiet residential streets to avoid com- plaints, he said. “Safety third is our slogan,” Dallman said. The first two rules being “bomb and bomb,” he said. But Dallman said, “We try to be pretty safe, because we’re going 50 mph.” He laughed, “We take it pretty seri- ously, it’s definitely a religious experience when you go down.” — Alan Pittman ‘FIXING’ MEASURE 37 The Oregon Legislature is preparing to refer to voters in the fall a measure that would scale back rural development under Measure 37, according to Jim Just of the Goal One Coalition, a statewide land-use watchdog group with an office in Eugene (www.goal1.org). “While Republicans and property rights groups are vociferously opposed to the ‘fix,’ in re- ality the voters would once again be asked to en- dorse an extreme and rad- ical regulatory takings measure,” says Just. “But this time, if ratified, Democrats and pro- gressive forces would own it.” Just says one of the overlooked provi- sions of the “fix” is the complete exemp- tion of farm and forest practices from the 10 percent (25 percent over five years) “loss-of-value threshold that triggers com- pensation.” This means, he says, that “it will be impossible in Oregon to address global warming by regulating farm and forest practices to increase or maximize CO2 sequestration or by limiting energy-
