PAGE A4, KEIZERTIMES, JANUARY 13, 2017
KeizerOpinion
KEIZERTIMES.COM
Parks? Cops?
Parks and cops? Parks or cops?
One little word can make a huge
difference in the near future of
Keizer. Both are paid for from the
city’s general fund bud-
get. Both are important
to the livability of the
city. But only one—
parks—is the subject
of a survey that will, in
part, ask homeowners
if (and how much) of
a new fee they would
support.
The members of the Keizer
Parks and Recreation Advsiory
Board have worked hard over the
past year to fashion a survey about
parks that is just now being sent to
Keizer homeowners.
The comprehensive survery is
included with Keizer water bills;
half of homeowners are receiving
the survey this month; the other
half will receive it in February. The
survey dives deep with questions
about how people use city parks
and the future of them. The survey
also asks respondents if they would
support a new park fee added to
their bi-monthly water bills; there
are fi ve options, ranging from zero
to $8 per month.
An extra $8 a month is a small
price to pay to vastly improve Keiz-
er’s parks. Some households claim
that their budgets cannot handle
the addition of another nickle let
alone eight dollars. Even at half that
rate—$4 a month—Keizer parks
would receive the maintenance
desperately needed. However, any
neew fee could create a burder for
some households.
The results from the parks sur-
vey will be tabulated, processed and
formed into a report for the Parks
Board which will then make a rec-
ommendation to the city council
whether or not to add a fee to wa-
ter bills and how much, if any.
This is all good for Keizer parks.
But what about cops? Presumably,
if asked to choose between money
for cops or money for parks, most
would opt for public safety. City
leaders would rather it not come
down to a choice between the two.
Again, both are important aspects
of a livable city. But what if a choice
has to be made?
Citizens want their government
to live within its means. Health care
and PERS take an ever-larger bite
out of municipal budgets—two
expenditures that must be fully
funded. Most of the property tax
revenues that will start to come into
the city’s coffers late this year will
mostly be eaten up by increased
PERS obligations. It is hard to live
within your means when your costs
keep rising by double digits each
year.
Unless the city leaders make
some tough, undesirable choices—
such as shedding jobs, or reducing
salaries—Keizer’s budget writers
will have to fi gure out how to al-
locate limited funds to parks and
the police department. The police
department accounts for about
75 percent of the general fund.
Last year approximately
$336,000 was earmarked
for Keizer’s parks—all 19
of them.
The mayor and the
councilors make city pol-
icy in the name of their
constituents. If there was a
time to make their voices
heard, this is the time for
Keizer residents to express their
opinions; the results of the survey
will go a long way to chart the fu-
ture of our parks.
Should Keizer citizens wonder if
the effort to fund parks should not
also be expended on the police de-
partment? According to standards
Keizer should have four to six more
offi cers for the population, current-
ly there are 36 offi cers.
Keizer operates under the con-
traints of 1990’s Measure 5, which
capped Keizer’s property tax at
$2.09 per $1,000 valuation (the
lowest of any full-service city in
the state). When expenditures—
such as PERS and insurance—in-
crease exceed revenues, something
has to give. In its early days Keizer
relied on voter-approved levies for
revenue; that is not attractive these
days. Without the benefi t of an in-
creased tax rate the only option is
fees, thus the idea to add a parks fee
to the water bill.
Funding a police department the
same way is not optimal. Our hearts
tell us we need more offi cers—do
our heads follow? Running a city
or any of its departments is a multi-
layered job. Chief of Police John
Teague must run his department’s
many parts with what he has—re-
gardless if some people think we
have enough staffi ng or not. Public
Works Director Bill Lawyer and the
head of the parks department must
use spit and bandages to maintain
the parks we have.
Keizer’s budget is more than a
matter of cops and parks. This year
honest and deep disucssions need to
be held about what is needed ver-
sus what we want. We have elected
a mayor and six city councilors to
address these hard questions. The
public can offer its opinions all it
can but in the end it is the policy
makers of the city who will have
to devise a plan, then sell it to the
public.
It’s called leadership.
—LAZ
editorial
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Death of Obamacare threatens real Americans
By E.J. DIONNE JR.
Let’s try to get this straight. Don-
ald Trump campaigned as the cham-
pion of lower-paid working people
who deserve better than they have.
Republicans have spent the
Obama presidency com-
plaining about high defi cits
and promising to cut them.
And whenever liber-
als put forward major re-
forms, conservatives say: No,
no, you can’t make radical
changes on the basis of nar-
row partisan majorities. Let’s
take it slow and be very careful. They
love to cite Thomas Jefferson’s dic-
tum, “Great innovations should not be
forced on slender majorities.”
In moving with reckless speed to
repeal the Affordable Care Act, Re-
publicans are violating every one of
these supposed principles. That’s be-
cause the principle that really matters
to them is the one they try to shroud
behind happy talk about effi ciency
and compassion: They want to spend
a whole lot less money helping Amer-
icans get health coverage.
This needs to be made very clear
as their throw-people-over-the-side
juggernaut rolls forward. Any vote
to repeal Obamacare before there is
a comprehensive alternative on the
table that all can study, understand and
debate is a vote to deprive many of
their health insurance. It is a vote to
make the lives of millions of Ameri-
cans demonstrably worse.
And a bunch of politicians who
regularly accuse their progressive op-
ponents of being “out of touch” with
the “real America” need to be exposed
for what they are: a comfortable, af-
fl uent and privileged coterie that does
not need to spend a single second
worrying about whether their kids
can see a doctor or whether they will
get the care they need if a
health disaster strikes.
So let’s see what Re-
publican senators from
states whose constituents
particularly
benefi ted
from Obamacare decide
to do.
That means you, Sen.
Pat Toomey (R-Penn.).
The Urban Institute studied the im-
pact of the partial repeal of the ACA
through the budget reconciliation
process —precisely what Republi-
cans are proposing to do. By 2019, the
study found, this would increase the
number of uninsured in Pennsylvania
by 956,000 over what it would be if
we simply kept the law.
That also means you, Sens. Lamar
Alexander and Bob Corker. In Ten-
nessee, 526,000 more people would
be uninsured. (Corker, it should be
said, acknowledged last Friday that
“repeal and replacement should take
place simultaneously.”) Senate Majori-
ty Leader Mitch McConnell is threat-
ening to hike the uninsured fi gure in
Kentucky by 200 percent, or 486,000
people.
Now Republicans will dispute data
of this sort and claim that their “re-
placement” of Obamacare will take
care of these folks. It will be, Trump
has said, “something terrifi c.” OK, if
it’s so terrifi c, let’s see it and discuss it
before we threaten the insurance cov-
erage of so many of our fellow citi-
other
views
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(Washington Post Writers Group)
Dem or GOP? Doesn’t matter, just fi x it
It would be a reassuring devel-
opment if Oregon legislators could
collectively announce the truth
about the amount available in the
treasury for state use in the upcom-
ing biennium.
Additionally, instead of once
again casting aspersions and more
blame on Democrats by
Republicans and vice
versa that, after announc-
ing what’s available for
state programs, they let us
taxpayers know what each
party wants to do with
what money is available,
the amounts each will try to get al-
located here and there, invite feed-
back from their respective constitu-
ents, and provide all to the media for
circulation.
Instead, we receive mixed sig-
nals from the media sources that
reports on the grousing or cheering
of those going to Salem. Meanwhile,
there are plenty of mixed signals to
go around. Just two of them follow
here.
The Oregonian, in discussing mon-
ey available to support public educa-
tion and referencing what Governor
Kate Brown has announced, report-
ed in its Dec. 25 edition “It’s unclear
how much money will go to either
proposed (education funding) plan
with a $1.7 billion defi cit bearing
down on the state and threatening to
devastate educational funding.”
Two days before The Oregonian’s
piece on the subject, District 25 Rep.
Bill Post, wrote in the Keizertimes,
that “the truth is, we have a windfall
of state revenues, to the tune of an
8.5 percent increase over the last bi-
ennium (and that’s after a 14 percent
increase in revenue in the previous
biennium, making a total of 22.5
percent increase in revenue since
2013).”
Governor Brown, a Democrat,
and Representative Bill Post, a Re-
publican, are obviously operat-
ing from two different worlds on
the same planet. Yet, they are both
players at the Capitol and should
be working together—with some
give and take—to the benefi t of all
Oregonians. So it comes
across as just asking the
same old question: Who
am I to believe?
Reality is that the rhet-
oric goes on with fi ghting
over the “true” numbers
and “the truth is” kind of
statements made by self-proclaimed
masters of the universe in each party.
It all adds up to a population of
too often discouraged and disil-
lusioned—primarily Main Street
citizens—who look seldom to our
elected offi cials for much of any-
thing except, maybe, the “entertain-
ment” of political pugilistics. Those
among them who can lie the best,
it would seem, get sent back to the
Capitol year-after-year to repeat the
same dance dictated mainly by the
gene h.
mcintyre
Keizertimes
zens.
But they don’t want to do this be-
cause they have no plan to replace it
with, only fragments of partial solu-
tions and a lot of empty words. Their
un-Jeffersonian haste is part of a cov-
er-up, a con game in which voters are
told to give up something concrete
in exchange for—well, we’ll tell you
later, maybe.
Oh, yes, and as for the defi cit, the
very bill McConnell is putting for-
ward would swell it to $1 trillion—
that’s with a “tr”—by the end of the
decade. This is quite an achievement.
In one vote, the Republican Congress
would deprive millions of lower-in-
come Americans of their health care
while saddling the next generation
with a whole new debt load. At least
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., has been will-
ing to do some elementary math on
the matter of defi cits. He’s one of four
Republican Senators, including Cork-
er, who have questioned the party’s
current path.
If Democrats don’t see the fi ght
against this truly monstrous way of
legislating as both a moral battle and a
political gift, they should just pack up
and fi nd themselves another country.
But what the nation needs most
right now are Republicans willing to
face up to how devious and manipula-
tive this process is and how damaging
their votes could be to some of their
most faithful supporters. These GOP
loyalists believed them when they
promised to replace Obamacare. Show
them the “terrifi c” replacement fi rst.
special interests who arrive with
bags of campaign chest money and
private perks, demanding personal
favors in return. Unfortunately,
with many pressing state issues to
address and resolve, we run-of-the-
mill types on the receiving end get
little to nothing back for the many
tax bucks we are forced to pay.
When Measure 97 failed in the
November election, Oregon media
widely urged the legislature to “Do
something!” It is expected here that
since our state leaders would rather
fi ght than do something together
in statesmanship fashion, there will
continue to be a major shortfall in
funds with absolutely no way, other
than the futility of going after PERS’
retirees again, to do something about
it. As Oregon legislators a few years
back were so fond of repeating, all
the while giggling in their inimita-
ble childish delight, when coopera-
tion was called for, that will happen
“When pigs fl y!”
(Gene H. McIntyre’s column ap-
pears weekly in the Keizertimes.)