PAGE A4, KEIZERTIMES, MAY 8, 2015 KeizerOpinion KEIZERTIMES.COM Endorsements It is not the norm to have con- tested election races in Keizer. Voters in Keizer are faced with more than one candidate for several offi ces in the May 19 election—and that’s a good thing. Of the six races only two are uncontested. In one race there is an embarasse- ment of riches—Keizer Fire District Board, Position 5. Betty Hart, a long- time community volunteer (and wife of outgoing board member Mike Hart) faces Jim Taylor, a former three term city councilor. Both candidates have been involved with community and governmental organizations; both have Keizer’s best interests in mind. After the election there will be three new members of the Keizer Fire District board of directors. The dis- trict will ask voters in November to approve a levy to replace aged equip- ment. The nature of fi re districts has changed over the past 20 years—only a small percentage of its calls are ac- tually fi res, most are medical calls. That reality needs to be addressed by the board of directors now and into the future. As expenses such as PERS and health insurance continue to raise it is important to have members of the board who will look beyond past practices and prepare for the future in terms of both personnel and opera- tions. The fi re district is more than just budgets. The board sets the district’s policies and it is important to have members who will be independent enough to push for strategies that will maintain the services the public expects while holding the line on ex- penses. That could include laying the groundwork for collaboration with other fi re departments and districts and the use of equipment on medical calls, which now calls for a fi re truck to accompany a medic unit. Both Taylor and Hart have much experience with budgets. Keizer would be well-served by either on the fi re board however, due to his call for changes in daily operations of expen- sive equipment, we endorse Jim Taylor for position 5. The other contested race for the Keizer Fire District board is for posi- tion 3, pitting James Mulhern against Chet Patterson. Patterson was a co-author of the study that led to Keizer’s incorpora- tion in the early 1980s; he was one of the city’s original fi ve councilors. He brings a strong fi nancial back- ground to the race, having served in various positions in the private sec- tor—including an accountant and an auditor—for more than 20 years. He currently sits on the district’s budget committee. His opponent is a fi refi ghter with the Marion County Fire District #1. He cites his experience as an Emer- gency Medical Technican (EMT) and his work as a union offi cer regarding labor issues. The Keizer Fire and the Marion County Fire #1 (MCFD#1) districts have had their disagreements in the past and continue to paint the rela- tionship with distrust. Nowhere in the voter’s pamphlet does Mr. Mulhern state he works for the Marion County Fire District. Adding him to the Keizer Fire board would add fuel to a political fi re that should be extinguished, not enhanced. There are ways for Mulhern to ex- press his views on cross-district coop- eration, but it is not on the board. When it comes to position 3 the best choice is Chet Patterson. The race for Salem-Keizer School District director, Zone 6, fi nds Chuck Lee running for his third term. His opponent is Timothy Moles. Moles, CEO of Joules Power, Inc., has an impressive resume regarding his years in the U.S. military. Beyond that it is hard to see how his background and his views (teachers in uniforms?) will help the fi nal customers of the school board: our children. Lee, president of Mountain West Career Techincial Institute, a former president of Blanchet Catholic School and a former Keizer City Councilor, brings a resume better matched to the school board position. We do ask Mr. Lee not to seek another polticial of- fi ce if he is elected to a new four-year term. He is effective and having an impact on our students where he is. Our endorsement goes to Chuck Lee. Another contested race for Keizer voters to decide is for Salem Area Mass Transit (SAMT) District direc- tor, subdistrict 2. Colleen Busch is facing Richard Stevenson, both Keizer residents. Both understand the importance of public transportation; Stevenson relies on buses and paratransit. The issues the SAMT directors will face include how to add evening and Saturday bus service. The services were taken away in 2009 due to bud- get constraints. The directors must decide whether to ask for a property tax hike or a payroll tax to pay for the added services. Stevenson supports the payroll tax that is sustainable and permanent; Busch thinks the property tax is the better way to go. Stevenson is currently a mem- ber of the district’s Citizen Advisory Committee. Busch has a long list of community activities in Keizer and she has been a member of the Keizer Fire District budget committee since 2008. It is always a good thing to have people who have extensive budget ex- perience. Therefore, we endorse Colleen Busch for director of subdistrict 2 for the Salem Area Mass Transit District. The Keizertimes supports Measure No. 24-380 which would establish a Marion County Extension and 4H Service District. Agriculture is vitally important to the county’s economy. The measure would implement a 5 cents per $1,000 assessed value to fund the district which would be managed by the Marion County Commission with assistance from citizen advisory committees and volunteers. It is a new tax but it is one that benefi ts our single largest industry. — LAZ Have fun without alcohol Need I say more? There are a lot of non- alcoholic bev- erages. For the benefi t of our children, let us refrain from any alcoholic drinks. Anne Johnson Keizer To the Editor: The annual Keizer Iris Festival is a highlight of the year and good for the family. However, I was disap- pointed that the Brewfest for Keiz- erfest has been added. It would be nice to have entertainment without the aid of alcoholic beverages. In the paper (Keizertimes, April 17, 2015) it stated “a lot of research has been done regarding brewfests.” I did some research, too. Ac- cording to the National Highway Traffi c Safety Administration, 230 passengers under the age of 15 were killed in drunk driving accidents in 2012. Also, the Centers for Disease Control reported that 10,322 people were killed in alcohol-related crashes in 2012. A brief look at America today would remind us that alcohol is, each year, directly related to highway deaths, drownings, domestic violence and suicides. In regards to alcohol, our country puts out approximately $67 billion. letters Betty Hart for Keizer Fire Board To The Editor: With respect to all candidates, we are supporting Betty Hart for Keiz- er Fire Board. She has experience when it comes to the fi re district’s budget and would help represent our interests effectively. Betty has been a long-time vol- unteer in our community, worked on the last two campaigns for the fi re district and participated in the chief selection process. She knows our community and the fi re district. Betty’s background in accounting and fi nance will help her watch our taxpayer dollars. Keizertimes Wheatland Publishing Corp. • 142 Chemawa Road N. • Keizer, Oregon 97303 phone: 503.390.1051 • web: www.keizertimes.com • email: kt@keizertimes.com Lyndon A. Zaitz, Editor & Publisher SUBSCRIPTIONS One year: $25 in Marion County, $33 outside Marion County, $45 outside Oregon PUBLISHED EVERY FRIDAY Publication No: USPS 679-430 POSTMASTER Send address changes to: Keizertimes Circulation 142 Chemawa Road N. Keizer, OR 97303 Periodical postage paid at Salem, Oregon Still getting the hang of retirement By DON VOWELL Retirement must be much harder for people who can afford it. They must actively choose between fritter- ing away valuable resources on leisure pursuits and endless vacation or doing something to better their communi- ty. If you don’t have a lot of money for travel or expensive pastimes your choices are different. You can sit and look out the window between books or you can get up and do something. A fulfi lling retirement is more likely a healthy mix of doing good and doing nothing. Even before retiring I was not sold on the idea that after a 45 year span of supporting myself and then my fam- ily I would suddenly earn release from any responsibility for earning my keep. A portion of my pay for those years was regularly sent to my pension fund but if I manage to live long enough I’ll end up collecting more than I contributed. That continuing support must merit more than just cashing the check. We watched a movie last night that jolted me back to thinking about how best to use my time. Earning your keep is probably about stuff much more important than money. A whole working life of demanding physical labor can make you want to avoid any more of that. It seems legitimate to think that you have earned the right to relax and just enjoy life. All that is required now is learning how to enjoy life. It’s not as simple as I’d hoped. The one thing I’ve consistently en- joyed is taking the camera to visit the wildlife refuges of western Oregon. Rather than seeking the company of others I am surprised to fi nd how much I enjoy being alone except for bugs, birds, and critters with all their noises. It would be overstatement to claim it is a spiritual experience but it is something like that. The cares of the day never follow me around on these walks. I’m getting better at letting go of expectations. Expectations ruin just about everything. If you think back about every time you have been sad, angry, hurt, or felt cheated, it’s because some person, thing, event, experience, or meal didn’t live up to your expec- tations. It doesn’t matter much what a box of soap actually happened, it’s not what you’d hoped for. I began these safaris fi lled with hope that I would fi nd some new rarely sighted bird or thing and come home with a trophy picture. Some- times that led to a slight letdown. Slowly I am learning to just be out there. All of the best moments have been completely unexpected. Noth- ing has helped more than learning to stop and be quiet. It doesn’t seem to take long for the refuge residents to accept that you are not a threat and re- turn to their business. I bet that lesson offers some valuable corollary in how best to insert yourself into any group of strangers. It would stretch credibility to imagine that wandering around the refuges taking pictures gives back to the community in any way. There is a small and kind group of folks that regularly view the pictures online and say they enjoy them. That’s enough for me. In time I will fi nd a more direct way to help people that need it here in town. In the meantime I’ll keep searching for the exact balance between pages read and guilt-o-meter overload. (Don Vowell gets on his soapbox regulary in the Keizertimes.) Publicity campaign won’t change Kochs A few days ago a large photo of a smiling face appeared on the front page of USA Today. It was the very private Charles Koch of Koch Indus- tries who allowed his image, along with an article from a rare interview, to be used and whose purpose, he reported, was to make a case for the improvement of his rather negative image. Whatever the case, Charles and his brother David’s greatest inter- est is to end all but basic government programs: Only national defense, pub- lic safety, enforcing settlements and preventing the spread of communi- cable disease are supported by them. Further, the Koch brothers do not believe in climate change as man caused and will do everything they can to prevent any U.S. action to curtail it. They are, after all, big-time into making money through their oil and gas holdings, with holdings in 62 countries provide them with annual revenue at $115 billion. Hence, with all their money, they have the mon- etary means to have their way. Meanwhile, Charles and David will not support Social Security, Medi- care, public education, programs for the poor and anything else that re- quires tax dollars, seeking a highly constrained and bare bones govern- ment budget. Their plans come at a time when massive wealth inequality (the Koch brothers, it’s believed, want more inequality) rules America while 99 percent of all new income gener- ated in the U.S. goes into the pock- ets of the nation’s top 1 percent. To get their way, the Koch brothers will donate $900 million to the campaign chests of fi ve Republican presidential aspirants who will in turn do their bidding. Charles and David are now mount- ing an aggres- sive defense of their company and their po- litical advocacy interests as based on a multi-decade effort, they say, to “increase well-being in society.” Further, they say that none of what they’re going about to polish their image has as its intent to make more money which is probably true since they’re billionaires already. They just want the U.S. to become an un- contested, unthreatened plutocracy or where the rich own and control ev- erything. Charles says they receive daily death threats. Now that could be motivated by an effort to gain sym- pathy and garner concern for their lives. However, while it may be true that they receive death threats, two considerations are probably also true: their ruthless, cutthroat ways of do- ing business have undoubtedly earned them enemies that would like revenge while, also, they have to have a securi- ty force guarding them that’s the envy of the White House where the Secret Service has become the modern-day version of the gang that can’t shoot straight. Every American will soon be aware of the Koch brothers efforts to remake themselves into saints. That means advertising on television networks and cable streams as well as at profes- sional sports arenas and during college basketball and football games at 15 universities. They are also giving big bucks to create and support a network of think tanks and policy and political groups to advance their drastic gov- ernment spending cuts. During last year’s election cycle, for instance, they spent $90 million to defeat Democrats and succeeded by their deep pockets in achieving Republican majorities in the Congress. There just may be something to the vilifi cation of the Koch brothers as they work against any and all gov- ernment regulations so that they can do with the environment as they please. They do not want the U.S. gov- ernment or state governments to tax their industries and have hired a team of lobbyists, mainly former Republi- can members of Congress, to promise campaign contributions to those who will fi ght to end all regulations and cut taxes for the wealthy. It’s believed from what this col- umn writer has read that they seek to rule the U.S. from behind the scenes. They’ve made their fortunes by oper- ating in a free society and will now use that freedom to render subservient ev- ery American who opposes them. They’ve got the money while the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on Citizens United has helped them to achieve control because the typical voter does not study the candidates and what they stand for; rather, too many Amer- icans vote by having heard a name or a proposition repeated on TV dozens of times every day, meaning grim conse- quences for most of us and especially the unwary. Please join us in voting for Betty Hart for Keizer Fire Board this May. Patrick and Kristi Sieng Keizer Keizer Volunteer Firefi ghters, Association Board of Directors Keizer one minute that any thinking person is going to sell a gun to a criminal or a deranged person? If a person wants a gun badly enough they only have to go out of state to buy one. Does the law stop people from receiving a gun in the mail from another state? How will the state control this? Several sheriffs have indicated that they will not enforce the law. In my opinion this is just another feel-good bill that the Democrats felt they had to have. This law may be saluted by people in the Portland and Eugene areas and laughed at by people out- side metropolitan areas. If the Re- publicans controlled either cham- ber or the governor’s offi ce, this bill would not become law. It is time to bring a change in the Oregon legis- lature for sensible laws. Bill Quinn Keizer Volunteers endorse Chet Patterson To the Editor: The Keizer Volunteer Firefi ghter’s Association is expressing our en- dorsement for Chet Patterson for the Keizer Fire District Board Position 3. When the Keizer Fire District was formed back in 1948, we relied on volunteers from day one. Over time, many things have changed and now our volunteers work alongside dedicated career professionals in the district. One thing that has not changed, however, is our ability to work with other agencies. Those neighboring agencies who we help and who help us have been invaluable, but an in- tent to redesign how we work to- gether is not only unnecessary, but could damage that relationship and the services that Keizer Fire provides. Chet Patterson understands this. Having been one of the founding city councilors, he has witnessed change. He has instigated and en- dorsed change. He has also resist- ed needless change. Chet Patterson knows Keizer, and he is familiar with the Keizer Fire District. Chet has been personally involved in the district as a father of a previous Ex- plorer and as a member of the Keizer Fire Budget committee. The Keizer Volunteer FireFight- er’s Association strongly recom- mends a vote for Chet Patterson for the KFD Board Position 3. Tony Ling and gene h. mcintyre New checks on guns are unenforceable To the Editor: How stupid can you be? The Democrats in the Oregon legislature just passed a bill that requires a back- ground check on private gun sales. This will increase the work of the state police and licensed dealers and the cost to lawful gun owners. You don’t have to be a genius to see that this law will not be fully enforceable. Many counties do not have the manpower for background checks. How is anyone going to know that a person sold a gun to his lifelong friend or neighbor? Do you think for (Gene H. McIntyre’s column ap- pears weekly in the Keizertimes.)