SLANT
These shoes are SO COMFORTABLE!
• Look for our election issue and endorsements next week. Ballots will arrive in mailboxes
soon for the May 20 Primary Election. You might not find a lot of sexy stuff on the ballot until the
November General Election, but the primary has potentially a big impact. For those new to
voting in Oregon, nonpartisan races, such as Lane County Commission positions, can be
decided in the May Primary if one candidate gets at least 50 percent plus one vote. The
commission races, of course, are anything but nonpartisan. They have been politically
polarized for as long as we can remember.
• Commission races gone wild! There have been several debates between current
candidates for Lane County Commission in the primary election and there are more upcoming
(see Activist Alert). Some have been more fun (unintentionally we assume) than an episode of
Parks and Recreation. West Lane Commissioner Jay Bozievich perplexed us by repeating both
at the debate hosted by the UO College Republicans and at City Club of Eugene that he is “not
a mother.” We have heard he does have a couple of large poodles, but that indeed does not
make him a mother, unlike his opponent Dawn Lesley, who is a mother as well as an engineer
and a much less divisive candidate. Also unlike Boz, Lesley has not dressed up as a colonial
soldier à la the Tea Party, she told City Club. Boz was probably his most ridiculous when in
response to a question about climate change, he announced “I think we all agree that climates
always change.”
• How great it would be if the UO Foundation would immediately respond to the
overwhelming vote of UO students and divest of its fossil fuel stocks, less than 1 percent of
the portfolio. So far, the foundation has done the opposite. The symbolism of divestment would
be huge, echoing a movement across the country. The fossil-fuel industry is fiercely fighting
public transportation, even helping elect low-level officials opposed to mass transit. The
industry is also funding an ongoing climate change disinformation campaign. Makes us
wonder why the investment arm of our public university has a penny there.
Shown: The Karma
Try on a pair and feel the bliss.
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Facebook.com/footwiseeugene Mon-Sat 10-6 & Sun 11-5
• The Eugene city budget process is wrapping up and the Budget Committee meets again
at 5:30 pm Thursday, May 1, at the Eugene Public Library. The panel will take public testimony
on the FY 2015 proposed budget, but many questions remain unanswered. We’ve never seen
an independent audit of our huge police and fire departments to know if they are overstaffed,
understaffed or just right. We do know that Eugene spends $10 million more a year on police
than Salem, a city of identical size. The city manager keeps claiming 100 positions have been
eliminated, but when we asked how many warm bodies are no longer on the staff we finally got
an answer: four. Has the city hired any new analysts or lawyers? We asked and got no
response. We’re still puzzled by why Eugene has 305 more full-time equivalent employees
than Salem. In the new budget it appears parks maintenance is being paid for in part by raising
stormwater fees, which frees up money for the General Fund. And money from the General
Fund is being siphoned off for a new City Hall instead of asking voters for a bond measure. We
hear some city staffers have gone begging for funds from other departments. Meanwhile we
lose millions in revenue each year to urban renewal districts and tax breaks and subsidies for
private developers. Do all cities operate this way? We appreciate the hard work of the Budget
Committee, but we wonder if its members are given all the information they really need.
• The Eugene Occupier is a smart little free newspaper on the streets of Eugene for spring.
The new issue of Occupy Eugene’s newsletter is once again telling Occupy’s important story.
We remember that the national Occupy movement before the 2012 election imprinted “the 1
percent and the 99 percent” on American voters, certainly helping to defeat Mitt Romney who
epitomized the 1 percent.
• Last week’s Viewpoint by Bob Warren on the uncompromising debate on forest bills got a
web response from Andy Stahl who has been heavily involved in timber policy over the
decades. Stahl takes issue with Warren’s claim that “all timber harvests on federal forests were
halted by a federal court injunction,” Stahl says. “The courts enjoined only future sales of
spotted owl habitat, not on-going old-growth logging of already sold timber. Timber harvesting
on the approximately three years worth of sales continued unabated during the court
injunctions.” Stahl goes on to say logging in Oregon is “two-thirds of what it was before the
spotted owl era,” but employment is even lower because of mechanization. Stahl did not
mention other factors at play: the crash in home construction during the Great Recession,
competing wood products from Canada and the American South and the continued export of
logs from private timberlands. The political battle rages over clear-cutting vs. habitat and if
Warren’s fears come true, conservatives will take both houses of Congress and habitat will lose.
More comments can be found on our website. See wkly.ws/1qm.
SLANT INCLUDES SHORT OPINION PIECES, OBSERVATIONS AND RUMOR-CHASING NOTES COMPILED BY THE EW STAFF.
HEARD ANY GOOD RUMORS LATELY? CONTACT TED TAYLOR AT 484-0519, EDITOR@EUGENEWEEKLY.COM
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