PAGE A4, KEIZERTIMES, FEBRUARY 10, 2017
KeizerOpinion
KEIZERTIMES.COM
Call it a day for EDC
Is it time to put a stake through
the heart of the city’s Economic
Development Commission?
The commission, established by
the Keizer City Council in 2014,
has not met on its original
quarterly schedule; many
times there are up to fi ve
members absent from ses-
sions. This is no way to run
a city commission.
The Economic De-
velopment Commission,
headed by Mayor Cathy
Clark, serves in an advisory capacity
to the city council and is charged
with providing recommendations
regarding economic development
in the city.
The commission is supposed to
establish a network of communica-
tions between resources and talents
within the city, identify resources
and talents in the community, create
development incentives and remedy
regulatory barriers to job creation.
There were suggestions at some
of the meetings to do an invento-
ry of vacant commercial spaces on
Keizer’s main thoroughfares. This
would give the city vital informa-
tion about space available to busi-
nesses that want to locate to Keizer.
There was to be an effort to iden-
tify all the stakeholders and proper-
ty owners up and down River Road
in an effort to speak directly with
those who have the fi nal say about
their property. That task hasn’t been
tackled by the commission.
Of course it is hard to accom-
plish goals when a third of your
commissioners are absent from the
quarterly meetings. Some members
have missed more meetings than
other members.
In our view, if a person accepts
appointment to a city commit-
tee, task force or commission, they
should have a better than 50 percent
attendance record. It is a commit-
ment to sit on one of the many city
bodies; it comes with
the responsibility, as well,
that each member will
be attentive, productive
and present.
Being a member of a
city body may be a nice
additional to one’s re-
sume, but that’s hardly a
reason to take up a seat that another
person could inhabit. If an appoin-
tee to a city body is unable to fulfi ll
their duties, that appointee needs to
politely and professional step aside
in favor of someone else who is ea-
ger to be part of the process.
In the case of the Economic
Development Commission there
seems to be a lack of interest. Was
the commission created with a
vague mission? Government offi -
cials constantly talk about economic
development. Here was a body that
was to focus on that exclusively and
it was shown little love.
Sunset the Economic Develop-
ment Commission and go back to
the drawing board. The original
commission was to be composed
of a good fi x of business owners,
property owners, developers and ar-
chitects. That plan got skewed over
the past three years in the life of the
commission.
If the city is serious about eco-
nomic development then it needs to
be serious about the support, fund-
ing and power it gives what could
be a very important body for the
future of the city of Keizer.
—LAZ
The best
aren’t getting
the best
awarded in each, total-
ing $14 in awards per
weight class, $1,330 for
the tournament. While
$1,330 sounds like a lot
for awards, it is only 4.46
percent of registration
fees.
Many tournaments such as the
Buckle Belt Challenge, Rumble
at the Rock, and Best of the West
tournaments award singlets, fi ght
shorts, and belts, a $50-$100 value.
These tournaments are spending at
least four times per weight class as
OWA.
My wrestler and his teammates
put in many hours for these tour-
naments, their parents spend lots of
time and money, and they should
be rewarded when they are deemed
the best. I hope OWA decides to
properly award their champions
with better trophies.
Gennifer Nelson
Newport
editorial
letters
To the Editor:
The trophies awarded
at tournaments hosted by
Oregon Wrestling Association don’t
refl ect the titles the winners earned
as champions. The recent OWA
tournament I attended with my
wrestler was the Oregon Kids Folk-
style Championships. The fi rst- and
second-place trophies were simple
plaques with no information such
as weight class. Also, OWA didn’t
order enough so many were mailed.
The plaques were $5 before inscrip-
tion and lower-placing medals 99¢.
This year there were 1,193 wres-
tlers. Each paid registration fees
of $25, totaling $29,825. In ad-
dition, fl oor passes were sold at
$25. There were 95 weight classes.
Two plaques and four medals were
What are we afraid of?
What are you afraid of? Many of
us feel over-taxed and under-pro-
tected by our government so fi rst we
should learn the real threats to our
country before deciding where to in-
vest in increased safety.
If safety means not dy-
ing then we should also
know the causes of death
in America. Center for
Disease Control (CDC)
statistics from 2014 show
the vast majority of deaths
in America were caused by
some medical condition.
Most of us manage to avoid being
killed accidentally or by someone
with malice aforethought and in-
evitably die from medical conditions,
many of those the inescapable result
of getting old. The price of birth is
death. We don’t need to spend much
here. Eat right and exercise—it’s hard
to even imagine the money saved by
reducing heart disease and obesity-
related disease. What are you afraid
of?
Halfway down the CDC list ap-
pears the fi rst non-medical cause
of death—accidental death. Drug
overdoses have now eclipsed traffi c
deaths as number one cause of acci-
dental deaths. I wish I knew where
an increase in funding would help to
reduce drug use. If we were able to
resist using our phones for any rea-
son while driving that would cost
nothing and save plenty of lives, and
the same drugs that cause overdose
deaths contribute to traffi c deaths.
What are you afraid of?
Coming in at tenth
as cause of death in
America is suicide. This
looks like a problem
better served by com-
passion than cash. How
does a nation so rich
with opportunity seem
so bleak and hopeless to
more than 40,000 of us each year? It
sounds naïve even to me but it seems
like we could do better just by listen-
ing to each other. You can’t know
someone’s desperation without giv-
ing them that time. What are we
afraid of?
Because reduction in the rate of
all these deaths would require us to
change our behaviors or lifestyles
we fi nd it easier to focus on outside
threats.
We could build a wall along the
Mexican border. The intent here is
probably more fi nancial security than
protection from terrorist violence.
That wall would be more symbolic
than functional—subject to tunnel-
ing, scaling, fl ying over and boating
around. The most frequently men-
a box
of
soap
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(Don Vowell gets on his soapbox
regularly in the Keizertimes.)
Are we ready for the way Trump governs?
Referring to Stephen Bannon as
President Bannon, as in president of
the United States, is quickly being
viewed as no joke. Many among us
are concerned (extremely concerned
is more like it) that the man elected
to be POTUS has already morphed
into the guy called in from
Breitbart to direct Donald
Trump in every Oval Of-
fi ce decision he makes. Fur-
ther, another Trump advisor,
Michael Flynn, can credibly
be recognized as the real
new vice president.
Meanwhile, Bannon, in
a move most troubling and
unprecedented, has been appointed
to the National Security Council. In
this position of highly consequential
decision-making, Bannon’s serving
as the de facto president. After all,
Trump has made it plain that he nei-
ther knows nor understands policy
or government. So, he leans heavily
on others: enter Stephen Bannon,
Michael Flynn and a whole host of
billionaire business folks and military
hawks who seek to control the fate
of those American working fami-
lies and the senior citizens Trump
in campaign mode promised to pro-
tect, aggrandize their already exces-
sive wealth, and lead us into more
warring overseas through the propa-
gandizing of “alternative facts.”
We know from his banters and
pronouncements during the cam-
paign that Trump has shown little
interest in or the understanding of is-
sues such as health care and national
security. He blithely promised to do
things that were never followed up
with the details for implementation.
Meanwhile, the real Trump, the man
behind the pomposities, has been re-
vealed to us by way of his trite and
bombastic tweets that serve only to
disillusion, upset and anger all but
Trump’s base who support any out-
rage he throws out.
What’s as troubling as any-
thing else is that direct access of
and availability to the Oval Offi ce
has been surrendered to a man not
elected to anything but who’s well
known for his anti-Semitic, racist and
anti-immigrant views. These points
of outlook have been among those
an increasing number of Americans
have diligently tried to bury with
the nation’s past. Then,
too, Bannon has made it
clear that his stated goal
is to destroy the govern-
ment we known and to
be made over in authori-
tarian terms where there
are no U.S allies, only
those others in the world
who fear our military
might if they do not do as told.
The White House is notori-
ous for serving as a bubble of isola-
tion around the president, a condi-
tion well known there long before
45. With the ideological political
strategist Bannon as a principal on
the National Security Council, while
the chairman of the Join Chiefs of
Staff and director of national intel-
ligence will be invited when their
attendance is “relevant,” the National
Security Council will simply serve as
an echo chamber of the president’s
views.
The frighteningly narcissistic
Trump distances himself from any
but a few views like those of Bannon
gene h.
mcintyre
Keizertimes
tioned cost estimate is about $14
billion. That $14 billion might save
more lives if spent on careful control
of opioid drugs, or discouraging inat-
tentive driving. What are you afraid
of?
Or we could concentrate our ef-
forts on banning refugees from en-
tering our country. On the CDC list
for cause of death in America there
is no entry for acts of terror by refu-
gees. The Cato Institute reports that
since establishment of the Refugee
Act of 1980 no American has been
killed in a terrorist act by a refugee
that has been through the long and
thorough “vetting” required to get a
visa. Zero.
It is more than faintly ironic that
our President tweets in apocalyptic
terms the dangers of “People pour-
ing in. Bad!” and instructs Homeland
Security to “VERY CAREFULLY”
check refugees already vetted, in-
terviewed, fi nger-printed, DNA-
checked, and fi nally granted a visa
in a rigorous process that can go two
years. This from a president who has
never held a public offi ce and still re-
fuses to release his tax records. Not
much vetting for a man assuming the
most powerful position on the plan-
et. What are you afraid of?
and Flynn. Knowing what we know
about these guys, how can interna-
tional issues be diplomatically man-
aged? Trump’s need for admiration
along with his aversion to critical
assessments, like those from repu-
table members of the press that he
obviously loathes, makes for reckless-
ness in virtually every matter domes-
tic and foreign.
Members of Congress in recent
years have proven only their ability to
serve themselves through acts of par-
tisanship. Only a strongly expressed,
well organized and determined op-
position by millions upon millions
of democracy-loving Americans will
be able to halt what looks already to
be a disastrous course our new Com-
mander-in-Chief is setting out for us.
It’s hoped, although that hope may
be entirely in vane, that red state and
blue state Americans will act in con-
cert to see to it that we as a nation
do not become a country without a
viable future.
(Gene H. McIntyre’s column ap-
pears weekly in the Keizertimes.)
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