• 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-