PAGE A4, KEIZERTIMES, MAY 22, 2015
KeizerOpinion
KEIZERTIMES.COM
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K-9 program gets
festival boost
To the Editor:
Copper Creek Mercantile hosted
the 2015 Crown the Hound event
with the Iris Festival.
Raffl e tickets were sold and $2,500
of the proceeds was donated to the
Keizer Police Department’s K-9 pro-
gram.
We thank the following retailers
for selling tickets: Creekside Veteri-
nary Clinc, Big Town Hero, The Cot-
ton Patch, Keizer Sub Shop, Uptown
Music, R. Bauer Insurance and Town
and Country Lanes.
The seven raffl e winners recieved a
year’s supply of pet food. The winners
were: Dawn Thomas, Eileen Taylor,
Kim Lucey, Samantha Paxin, Debbie
West and Jolene.
We congratulate the winners and
thank the above retailers for helping
sell tickets that raised money for the
K-9 program.
Dennis Blackman
Copper Creek Mercantile
Keizer
Chamber responds
To the Editor:
Keizer Chamber of Commerce is a
working partnership of its businesses,
citizens, government and community
volunteers. Simply put, we work as
a team to advance and develop jobs
and economic good in the Keizer
area. To see the headline in the May
15 Keizertimes (Chamber request gets
no vote), and then to read the selected,
bare snippets of on-going discussions
between city offi cials and Chamber
leadership, we are obligated to tell a
better story.
Conversations on re-directing ef-
forts in economic development started
over two years ago. City staff were in-
structed to present a plan. City Man-
ager Chris Eppley asked the Chamber
for help. Could there be a public/
private partnership? The Chamber ex-
ecutive director and city development
director researched the numerous
other partnerships between Chambers
and municipalities. As a result, Keizer
City Council appointed two Keizer
Chamber members (local businesses)
to its newly-formed Economic De-
velopment Commission (EDC).
In support of the EDC, the Keizer
Chamber started engaging with many
Keizer businesses about what barriers
exist for expansion and how to at-
tract new businesses and tourism to
Keizer. We contracted for professional
services and initiated Community
Conversations with existing business-
es, healthcare providers, educators, and
construction contractors. Throughout
the process, city council leaders and
staff were and are involved.
To be clear, the Keizer Chamber
of Commerce does not need city
funds to operate. Our members and
events (Keizer’s Iris Festival) support
By DON VOWELL
In the 1950s it was announced
that a vaccine had been found ef-
fective in preventing poliomyelitis.
Parents were relieved and widespread
vaccination programs were begun.
I remember parading through the
Whittier Elementary library with
my classmates hoping I wouldn’t
be the one to break down in tears.
Mom and dad trusted government to
know best. There is fairly wide belief
that this vaccine was responsible for
virtually eliminating poliomyelitis, a
terrifying disease. Smallpox vaccina-
tion was even more effective at wip-
our budget and ing out a deadly threat.
many commu-
If Internet access had been avail-
nity
activities. able to my parents in 1955 maybe
The Chamber’s they’d have seen an article that the
request for funds Salk vaccine infrequently had serious
to continue to side effects. Smallpox vaccines also
revitalize small had rare bad effects. Instead, a sense
and local businesses, parallels the goals of communal trust and shared re-
of city government and Keizer’s busi- sponsibility prompted them to have
ness community. Councilor Dennis the four of us join all our school-
Koho’s comment at the budget com- mates in getting shots. The greater
mittee presentation is spot on: “I want good was served.
to see us turn it back around some-
Americans trusted their leaders.
how, where the city identifi es what we Through the 1960s a majority trust-
can use the help of the chamber for.” ed their government to do the right
The city’s fi rst fi le cabinet was do- thing always or most of the time.
nated by the Chamber—dba Keizer That level of trust reached a new
Merchant Association—and the motto low of 13 percent very recently. That
“Pride, Spirit & Volunteerism” came corresponds to polling now fi nding
from a merchant who was active in that only 17 percent of respondents
our organization. In fact, merchants believe that corporations/business
of Keizer rallied with others in seven
different public votes to form the city
government for Keizer. Our working
partnership of business, government,
and community volunteers really is By JANET CARLSON &
what the Chamber is all about. Our LORE CHRISTOPHER
goal is to help keep Keizer livable and
The Big Toy at Keizer Rapids
economically strong, and we’re doing Park is about building our commu-
it. The many years of working togeth- nity and improving our children’s
er should be celebrated.
health. As a community, we are con-
Audrey Butler,
cerned about childhood obesity that
Chamber President
has more than doubled in children
Christine Dieker,
and quadrupled in adolescents. The
Executive Director
Big Toy at Keizer Rapids Park will
make possible healthy, active out-
door play for Keizer’s and Marion
County’s children. This is the right
project at the right time to improve
the future of our children and fami-
To the Editor:
lies.
I’m tired of being considered an
Keizer Rapids Parks began with
extremist because I support gun con- the vision of connecting Keizer and
trol—major gun control. Let me ask the broader region with the Willa-
you, “Why do we even need guns?”
mette River. Seventeen federal, state
There was a time when gun owner- and local partners joined together,
ship made some sense— when people creating a 150-acre expanse of nat-
needed them to provide food or pro- ural beauty for residents to enjoy.
tection for themselves and their fami- Opening in 2006, the park features
lies or for the common defense. Such hiking trails, bike paths, a disc golf
needs do not exist today.
area, boat ramp, Keizer Rotary Am-
It is time to grow up, put away our phitheater, and dog park. At Keizer
macho toys and recognize that the Rapids Park you can already expe-
ready availability of guns is the prob- rience free concerts throughout the
lem and not the solution—to any- summer, RIVERfair, and Shake-
thing.
speare in the Park. And now, start-
Art Burr
ing June 14, Keizer Rapids Park will
Keizer
proudly launch a destination play
area refl ecting our region’s unique
history and culture.
letters
Gun control is not an
extreme view
Endorsements
for sale?
To the Editor:
I fi nd it very questionable that your
newspaper ( and I use the word loose-
ly ) endorsed Colleen Busch the same
day that candidate purchased a half
page advertisement. You also withheld
an endorsement mailed to your staff
on behalf of the other candidate. Did
Mr. Stevenson need to take a half page
ad to get equal treatment from your
publication?
Richard Stevenson
Keizer
Wheatland Publishing Corp. • 142 Chemawa Road N. • Keizer, Oregon 97303
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Lyndon A. Zaitz, Editor & Publisher
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County, $33 outside Marion
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important to me than my family.
Something has made us each believe
the other clueless.
Cognitive dissonance—the men-
tal discomfort of facing inconsistency
of one’s thoughts, beliefs, perceptions,
and behaviors. In a result described
as backfi re, when confronted by facts
disproving something you believe
it sometimes reinforces that belief.
Pictures of the president’s birth cer-
tifi cate, and endless bi-partisan Beng-
hazi investigations only serve to show
the dark depth of the deception. I
won’t pretend that I am immune to
cognitive dissonance, only that I am
not so wed to my beliefs that I am
immune to their change.
In looking for writings about why
people believe as they do I found an
interesting test embedded in an ar-
ticle. Most parents have strong beliefs
about spanking. Do you think you
would change your beliefs if research
shows you to be wrong? In the end
you won’t have to. Spanking can be
effective on children under 7, if used
infrequently and in private. Research
also shows that positive reinforce-
ment, timeouts, and other strategies
work just as well and don’t require
violence. Choose the facts that fi t
your personal morality and carry on.
More than
3,400 chil-
dren
from
every Keizer
elementary
school
en-
gaged in fo-
cus
groups
where they drew pictures of what
they wanted in a Big Toy play area.
Landscape architects then took
those drawings and spent hours
compiling the children’s ideas, re-
sulting in a playground design that
features Keizer’s and Oregon’s histo-
ry. Big Toy components include the
Oregon Wallace House log cabin,
Smith Rock climbing wall, an east-
ern Oregon dinosaur dig, Salem-
Keizer Volcanoes slide, paddle boat,
and Willamette Valley fi re trucks
with misters. Adaptive play equip-
ment expands the Big Toy’s appeal
to youth of all abilities and all ages.
The Big Toy at Keizer Rapids Park
has strong support from area Rotary
clubs, Chambers of Commerce, fi re
departments, Salem-Keizer Transit,
neighborhood associations, and area
businesses. We are grateful for fi nan-
cial support from the City of Keizer,
Keizer Rotary Club, Marion Coun-
ty, Oregon Community Foundation,
Keizer Parks Foundation, and many,
many organizations and individuals
who adopted components, bought a
fence picket, or simply made a do-
nation.
What we need now is manpower.
On June 10 to14, more than 700 vol-
unteers will build this 15,000 square
foot playground. We expect to com-
plete the build in just fi ve days. No
skills needed. We have skilled con-
struction captains who will train and
oversee each four-hour shift. In ad-
dition to construction help, we need
volunteers for children’s activities,
art, and child care. We need help
feeding 200 volunteers three meals
each day. There is something for ev-
eryone to do.
Then join us at the soft opening
in the late afternoon of June 14 or
at a free concert honoring our vol-
unteers at the Keizer Rotary Am-
phitheater on June 27. You, your
friends, your children, and your
grandchildren can enjoy the new
Big Toy playground, along with
other park amenities, all through the
summer. For more information, or
to sign up for the community build,
visit www.keizerbigtoy.org.
services. In the
end, from their
view, all the ef-
fort at the Capi-
tol yielded only
modest savings
(as some re-
forms will stand
but not the denial of the 2 percent
COLA) forcing policy makers “to
confront the very problem they and
their predecessors worked so hard to
tackle in 2013.”
What is the size and shape of the
problem? There’s the gap between
the system’s obligations to retirees
and its on-hand assets. The court’s
decision reads that there’s an added
cost to the state’s 2017-19 budget.
There’s a projected loss to schools,
state and local government because
of money that will need to be divert-
ed to cover higher PERS costs.
Really now, there must be other
ways to address the shortfall between
what the state has promised its retir-
ees and its fi nancial resources. One
entertaining feature of the moaning
and groaning that’s underway now
that the court has ruled is what Mr.
Green of the Oregon School Boards
Association (OSBA) has quipped
about retirees doing well while
school kids suffer.
The Oregon School Boards Asso-
ciation should clean up its own house
since it does nothing about local
school boards all over the state, most
recently in Portland, but in Salem-
Keizer and elsewhere in Oregon, too,
that give superintendents and their
central offi ce administrators huge
salary, double-digit increases that
cause raging among taxpayers who
must pay these tabs. The OSBA does
nothing about these outrages while
denouncing 2 percent raises for pub-
lic retirees. Justice would never ar-
rive for PERS retirees if they were at
the mercy of the OSBA.
Then there’s the basic question
in this matter. Why is it that Or-
egon’s legislators and former gover-
nor fi nd the only answer to fi nancial
shortfalls is by going after those who
worked for peanuts for years serving
Oregon’s citizens and must now, by
their logic, pay for yearly increases
in the cost of schools and all public
services? We have a state where the
wealthy are given a pass to pay their
taxes by minimum tax burdens and
can practically write everything off
through manipulation of the tax laws.
Why not reform the tax laws and
make the cost of doing private sector
business in Oregon an equitable sys-
tem of fairness where every taxpayer,
including those who’ve acquired
considerable riches, pays according
to salary in a progressive rather than
regressive taxation system? Now
that’d be real reform.
John Tapogna, the president of
ECONorthwest, an economic con-
sulting company, was said to “cor-
rectly” sum up the court decision by
saying, “Oregon made a generational
mistake in public policy, and the
court has essentially ruled that we
have to live with it.”
No, Tapogna, you don’t have to
live with what the court ruled. You
can put your head together with oth-
er smarty-pants Oregonians to fi nd
solutions other than trying to free
ride for your tax relief on the backs
of former public employees.
a box
of
soap
(Don Vowell gets on his soapbox
regularly in the Keizertimes.)
Big Toy will change future of Keizer
Keizertimes
SUBSCRIPTIONS
always
or
most of the
time do the
right thing. It
seems those
two bodies
are now seen
as one.
As recently as a couple of hours
ago a Facebook acquaintance posted
an article reporting that President
Obama knew about the Benghazi at-
tack several weeks before it happened.
He is still posting articles claiming at
last to show defi nitive evidence that
the president’s birth certifi cate is fake.
As an odd aside this post hopefully
adds that 20,000 “likes” will start the
impeachment process. This friend of
mine, a good employee for his whole
career and a reliable, faultless fam-
ily man, most probably has the same
hopes as I do for the future of this
country our children will share. It
scarcely seems possible that we could
agree on the leadership necessary to
realize those hopes.
We’ve been suffocated with facts.
My Facebook pal believes that
Obama/liberals/Democrats are de-
stroying his country. He has no trou-
ble fi nding a website supplying facts
to bolster his belief. I’ve never asked
him how he accounts for the differ-
ence in our beliefs, assuming he’d
grant that I was, like him, an honest
employee and that nothing was more
POSTMASTER
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142 Chemawa Road N.
Keizer, OR 97303
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Salem, Oregon
guest
column
(Janet Carlson is a Marion Coun-
ty Commissioner; Lore Christopher
is a former mayor of Keizer. Carl-
son can be reached at jcarlson@
co.marion.or.us and Christopher at
chrisfam1@msn.com.)
Keeping a promise to those with PERS
Some Oregon newspaper writers
have contracted ‘beat a dead horse’
syndrome. Those among this group
just cannot give up the effort to fi nd
fault for all the state’s problems in the
retirement benefi ts earned by former
public employees PERS retirees who
worked long enough for the state of
Oregon to have been vested. What
happened to deny those folks extor-
tion rights on PERS retirees was that
the Oregon Supreme Court found
unconstitutional the “grand bargain”
that was legislative action and guber-
natorial sign-off on reforms main-
ly to deny PERS retirees an annual
cost-of-living (COLA) at a whole 2
percent.
Some have written a surrender
to what was undone by the court.
Those newspapers recognize a deal
is a deal and former Governor John
Kitzhaber and a majority of mem-
bers of the Oregon Legislature vio-
lated that deal. The court’s ruling
throws a shadow over the second
half of the current legislative session
that is trying to fi nancially help local
governments and school districts and
address the now increased cost of
PERS contributions that would have
realized relief through the reforms.
Other state newspapers were less
generous, referring to the court as
having “gutted hard-won reforms.”
For some journalists, the court’s 87
page opinion was a “slog,” infer-
ring that the court took too long to
announce its fi nding of unconsti-
tutionality. It quoted, as have other
newspapers, a deputy executive di-
rector of the Oregon School Boards
Association (OSBA), Jim Green,
who was awarded ‘right on’ status by
these folks when he said, “Retirees
did very well. Kids did very poorly.”
PERS retirees are viewed by
some folks as causing a “crippling
burden” on schools and other public
gene h.
mcintyre
(Gene H. McIntyre’s column ap-
pears weekly in the Keizertimes.)
The Keizertimes welcomes
all points of view.
E-mail a Letter to the Editor to:
publisher@keizertimes.com
by noon each Tuesday