LET TERS
STOLEN ATTRIBUTES
I am an older woman now, not the
little girl who played in the fountain on
the Broadway Street pedestrian mall, but
I still feel just as safe and happy when I go
downtown. I am a member of two knitting
clubs that meet in the evenings less than a
block from Kesey Square, and as I walk to
my destination, I see interesting people. I
like to pet their dogs and ask them about
their lives.
I have seen so many of the wonderful
things that make Eugene the special place
it is stolen from us in the name of progress,
and I am just tired of it. Tear out the
beautiful pedestrian mall so cars can drive
and park. Get rid of the bars so business
will come back. The Eugene Celebration
— nope, bad for business.
And what did all that get us, the
citizens of Eugene? Barmuda and a
sleazy backroom sellout to put higher-end
apartments on top of Kesey Square.
Mechelle Coburn Roeske
Eugene
WHY NOT DIVEST?
The UO is caught in a conflict of
interests between the students and faculty
and the administration. The disagreement
is on the issue of whether or not the
university should divest, in other words,
remove their investments in fossil fuel
companies.
The Climate Justice League, an
environmental activist group on campus, is
currently engaged in a sit-in in an attempt
to urge newly inducted President Michael
Schill to publicly support divestment.
Although the UO Foundation, a separate
corporate entity, manages donor money,
a statement from President Schill would
show that the university as a whole is in
support of this.
The Divest UO campaign has been
polling students and faculty for more than
a year, and the results are in. The majority
of students and faculty support divestment,
with over 1,100 student signatures and the
UO Senate voting unanimously in favor
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of a resolution suggesting full divestment
within six months. This resolution was
passed on Jan. 14, 2015, yet neither the
UO Foundation nor President Schill have
done anything.
With only half of a percent invested in
fossil fuel companies totaling $4 million,
it is surprising that a school so renowned
for its sustainability programs is unwilling
to divest. The administration, who state
in the university mission statement that
they “value our shared change to steward
resources sustainably and responsibly”
and that they “enhance the social, cultural,
physical and economic wellbeing of
our students, Oregon, the nation and the
world,” are contradicting themselves by
fighting divestment so vehemently.
Joel Benner
Eugene
THE REAL NUMBERS
I want to apologize to the readers for
a typo in my urban renewal Viewpoint
March 3. I drew attention to the fact that
Eugene’s rent expenses more than doubled
between 2011 and 2014, and stated that
during City Manager Jon Ruiz’s first three
years, rental expense increased more than
$60,000 — a paltry sum compared to the
real hit for the taxpayers.
I intended to write “more than
$600,000.” It’s easy to lose track of all
those zeros when our public officials are
subsidizing developers.
I have since looked up the numbers,
and it appears that even a $600,000 annual
increase is an understatement. In fact,
between 2011 and 2014, Eugene’s annual
rent expense increased from $665,631
to $1,431,442, an increase of more than
$775,000.
No wonder we are paying extra for
library services.
Paul Nicholson
Eugene
CARBON-FREE BIRDING
Globetrotting Noah Strycker [“The
Sky’s the Limit” 3/3] might wonder about
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the education he is sending out to young
people who love birds.
Under the guise of nature appreciation
he traipses, carbon-heavy, around the
Earth, thoughtless of his own footprint. The
facts are in: Species are in massive decline
in no small part due to our own penchant
to move about freely — however we can
afford, with however much petroleum.
Strycker loves the sport, he loves the
movement and he loves the math. I’m not
sure he loves, respects, nor has compassion
for the birds. Funds to education from
heavy carbon taxes might in some way
ameliorate his exploits.
Happily, there are different ways to
bird. I appreciated John Cooney from
KLCC’s The Natural World for often
marveling about species and experiences
right in front of us.
There is a trending movement to
carbon-free birding. I’d love to see an EW
article extolling that: a birding method that
embraces/supports not just the math, the
game, the sport, but the species — and the
biosphere that supports them.
Phil Henderson
Eugene
LIMITS ARE NOT ENOUGH
In the 1970s, some Oregon timber
companies started spraying powerful
herbicides from the air over their clearcuts.
Rural downwinders led efforts to ban this
abuse and stopped the sprays over federal
forests in the 1980s, but were unsuccessful
at ending this on corporate timberlands.
Now, Oregon’s environmental groups
are split between the downwinders who
want an end to the poisoning and urban
groups who merely seek better regulation.
In 2015, Beyond Toxics pushed a bill
in Salem to ask the state to determine
acceptable buffers even though helicopter
sprays drift for miles and mass spraying
of forests poisons wildlife. A better bill,
not championed by the establishment
environmentalists, would have banned
aerial sprays. Neither bill became law.
Oregon Wild and Mountain Rose Herbs
staff are chief petitioners for a statewide
ballot initiative to limit some sprays of
poison over corporate clearcuts. This
effort is marketed as a ban but would have
loopholes large enough to fly helicopters
through. Their initiative would still permit
sprays over streams where salmon have
been wiped out, where cities do not get
their drinking water and where the state
determines schools and homes are a “safe”
distance away.
It is not too late to rewrite this initiative
to prohibit all aerial spraying to protect
wildlife and downwinder communities.
A Lane County initiative sponsored by
Freedom from Aerial Herbicides would
ban aerial sprays, not regulate them. See
FreedomFromAerialHerbicides.org.
Downwinders do not consent to being
sprayed. Allowing the state to designate
supposedly acceptable buffers just
perpetuates the abuse.
Mark Robinowitz
sustaineugene.org
Eugene
SLIMY BILL
Thanks and sincere appreciation to
Lane County Reps. John Lively, Val
Hoyle, Paul Holvey and Caddy McKeown
for having the integrity and sense of civic
responsibility to vote “no” on SB 1573
(see Slant March 3). This is in contrast to
all the rest of the Lane County legislative
delegation.
SB 1573, written by the Oregon
Homebuilders Association and sponsored
by Springfield Sen. Lee Beyer, revokes
long-standing voting rights for nearly
600,000 Oregon citizens. It was the
product of backroom deals and special
interest influence since it first reared its
slimy head in 2015.
Unfortunately, this bill, which EW
accurately called “exceptionally flawed,”
passed by narrow votes in both chambers
of the Legislature.
Jerry Ritter
Springfield