PAGE A4, KEIZERTIMES, JANUARY 17, 2020
Opinion
The future is not so rosy
At a work session this week, the
Keizer city councilors received grim
news from City Manager Chris Ep-
pley and Tim Wood, the
city’s fi nance director:
there is no money now or
in the forseeable future to
add desired positions.
Revenues from taxes
and franchise fees are es-
timated to be more than
$100,000 less than fore-
cast. The city is also had to
absorb $130,000 in accrued time off
payments for retiring city employees.
Add that bad news with the city’s
ongoing Public Employees Retire-
ment System (PERS) and health in-
surance obligations and the city will
have to live with a status quo budget
for years to come unless some major
decisions are made. Unfortunately,
the decisions needed are not up to
Keizer.
Due to the voter approved Mea-
sure 50 in 1997, the city is locked
into a tax rate of $2.08 per $1,000
valuation, the lowest of any city of
similar size in Oregon. Keizer cannot
change its tax rate unless state voters
amend the state constitution. Voters
show little appetite to see their prop-
erty tax rate increase, regardless of
where in Oregon they reside.
Keizer’s recently instituted parks
fee and police fee were the city’s
solution to a general budget that
couldn’t keep up with expenditures.
Those fees were established without
the benefi t of a public
vote, though there were
public hearings and
town hall meetings ex-
plaining the need.
The city’s PERS ob-
ligation will continue
to take a hefty percent-
age of Keizer’s general
fund budget for decades
to come. Oregon’s public employee
retirement system is more than $20
billion in debt. Governmental agen-
cies across the state won’t see relief
until at least 2041; that’s more than
20 years more of PERS payments.
This all means that any new staff
positions the city hopes to add will
not be developed or fi lled.
At the work session this week
city department heads presented the
need to add six additional employ-
ees throughout the city, including a
police offi cer. Finance director Tim
Wood reported that adding those six
positions would add $800,000 to the
budget; that is money the city just
doesn’t have now and doesn’t expect
to have for years.
Some may say that the city must
live within its means. That is im-
possible to do when expenditures
continue to rise while revenues stay
editorial
stagnant. Borrowing money is not an
attractive option for the city. Estab-
lishing a third fee to pay for admin-
istrative costs would be a non-starter.
There are few options and all would
need to be sold to the public as a
necessity to have the kind of town
people want.
One option is to make cuts in
city operations (which means lay-
offs) at a time when department
heads say they need more personnel.
How loud would the outcry be from
Keizer citizens if they were informed
that fewer police patrols or decreased
street maintenance would be the
new normal?
Another option would be to fol-
low the example of other Oregon
cities that augment their general
funds with a fi ve-year levy. A local
option levy would require voter ap-
proval. This option for require an all-
hands-on deck campaign to educate
the electorate on the need.
We all want to maintain this city
we call home. Though our budget-
ary hands are tied due to decisions
made over the last decades, Keizer
can continue to be a wonderful place
if we agree we are all in this together.
Tough times call for tough decisions
and, sometimes, a little sacrifi ce.
— LAZ
MLK’s passion for justice was not
synonymous with defeating an enemy
By MICHAEL GERSON
Usually our civic holidays in-
spire us. But sometimes—as in the
case of Martin Luther King Jr. Day
2020—the spirit of a holiday is so at
odds with our current practice that it
judges and indicts us.
That spirit is impossible to sum-
marize in one King quote
from a lifetime of quotable
eloquence. But if I were
forced to try, it would be
this: “Darkness cannot drive
out darkness; only light can
do that. Hate cannot drive
out hate; only love can do
that.”
Is it possible to fi nd a
more routinely violated principle in
our public life? We have a president
who boasts of avenging slights and
criticism with multiplied viciousness.
Donald Trump has political oppo-
nents (including, on occasion, myself)
who feel obliged to attack his breach-
es of decorum, morality and ethics
with an intensity that continues the
country’s rhetorical escalation. Parti-
san media and talk radio make their
money through incitement and an-
swering fi re with fi re.
And much of this confl ict is based
on a trend that threatens to become
a tragedy. Political divisions in Amer-
ica are becoming less ideological
than sociological. Americans are in-
creasingly taking opposition to their
views as an assault on their way of
life. So issues such as gun control or
climate disruption—instead of being
matters requiring debate and offer-
ing the possibility of compromise—
become signifi ers of cultural identity.
Among those who hold this mindset,
losing an election raises the fear of
cultural extinction. The strongest and
loudest political advocates tend to
think their loss might end America as
they know it.
If there is any common ground
left in our political
life, it is the general
belief that hatred is
the only thing that
can drive out hatred.
The depth of our
divisions would not,
of course, surprise
King, who lived in
a time when social
divisions were far deeper, and the
level of political violence far higher.
King was not optimistic about hu-
man nature. He strongly rejected the
false idealism of white liberals who
thought that education and econom-
ic development could overcome ra-
cial divisions under the guidance of
benevolent experts. “This particular
sort of optimism,” King said, “has
been discredited by the brutal logic
of events. Instead of assured progress
in wisdom and decency man faces
the ever present possibility of swift
relapse not merely to animalism but
to such calculated cruelty as no other
animal can practice.”
For King, the passion for justice
was not synonymous with defeating
an enemy. Infl uenced by thinkers
such as Jesus, Henry David Thoreau
and Gandhi, King believed that mor-
al goals must be pursued by moral
methods—by means that bring credit
other
opinions
to the principle itself. In this way, suf-
fering for a cause can be more pow-
erful than killing for a cause. Violence
leads to escalation and makes future
reconciliation very diffi cult. Unmer-
ited suffering, in King’s view, can re-
veal the moral bankruptcy of racists
while maintaining the possibility of
future reconciliation.
“Nonviolence, according to King,
was based on the belief,” said histo-
rian Albert J. Raboteau, “that accep-
tance of suffering was redemptive,
because suffering could transform
both the sufferer and the oppressor
… and it was grounded in the confi -
dence that justice would, in the end,
triumph over injustice … By accept-
ing the violence of the oppressor,
without retaliation and even without
hatred, the demonstrators, he insist-
ed, could transform the oppressor’s
heart.”
“I think I have discovered the
highest good,” said King. “It is love.
This principle stands at the center of
the cosmos.” And he found this true
for a specifi c reason. “Agape [mean-
ing God-like love] means a recogni-
tion of the fact that all life is interre-
lated,” King wrote. “All humanity is
involved in a single process, and all
men are brothers. To the degree that
I harm my brother, no matter what
he is doing to me, to that extent I am
harming myself.”
Many will fi nd this impractical.
But in the midst of our zero-sum
politics, it is worth asking: How prac-
tical and successful is the theory that
hate can drive out hate?
(Washington Post Writers Group)
The danger in fewer regulations
The understanding part eludes me;
I simply do not get itj. We, the Amer-
ican people, have now experienced
three years of consequential efforts
to rollback environmental oversight
in all construction projects that will
now, directly, and into the immediate
future impact our health, safety
and survival.
The new year is merely a
few days old and already Pres-
ident Donald Trump has taken
action to clear the way and
speed up development of more
commercial projects by signifi -
cantly cutting back on federal
review of their effects on the
environment. Trump says “our nation
cannot compete and prosper if a bu-
reaucratic system holds us back from
building what we need.” However,
the projects he references are simply
big money-makers for businesses and
corporations whose profi ts remain at-
tractively good-enough, even if there’s
as much attention to regulations by
controls as to making-money.
What Trump calls for greatly
narrows the scope and effects of a
half-century-old National Environ-
mental Policy Act, signed into law
by former President
Richard Nixon ex-
actly 50 years ago.
That law, now tar-
geted for elimination,
has required federal
agencies to consid-
er whether a project
would harm the air,
land, water and wild-
life. It also has demanded that the
public be afforded the right of input,
review and opportunity to object
where high risk is anticipated.
The bottom line in this matter is
that the proposed rollback will gut
environmental protections and take
gene h.
mcintyre
Keizertimes
Wheatland Publishing Corp. • 142 Chemawa Road N. • Keizer, Oregon 97303
phone: 503.390.1051 • web: www.keizertimes.com • email: kt@keizertimes.com
EDITOR & PUBLISHER
Lyndon Zaitz
publisher@keizertimes.com
2019-2020 President
Oregon Newspaper Publishers
Association
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away the public’s right to know about
and comment on potential project
harm. The affected projects would
include those out-of-pocket taxpay-
er-funded public and private projects;
yet, American citizens negatively im-
pacted by them will have no recourse.
It has been said and repeated of-
ten of late that there’s a new order of
doing things in the U.S. What this
means in practice is an end to reg-
ulations and protections by taking a
virtual sledgehammer to decades of
progress during which time the im-
position of environmental controls
has become the way we do things
here. Meanwhile, it’s not bad enough
that our planet is warming-up con-
siderably, resulting in climate chang-
es that bring more and more of the
worst wind storms, fl ooding, higher
tides and massive destruction of prop-
erty and loss of life, but that we delib-
erately add to the problem by a feder-
al administration that views matters
through a prism of dollar signs.
The very viability for human life
on Earth is in the balance when en-
vironmental regulations are thrown
out and profi t becomes the only
recognized American value worthy
of consideration. Apparently, we
shall face imminent failure of the
planet to support human life before
any hue and cry effort is made loud
enough to force changes that will
save humankind. And then, what’s
direly needed, may come too late.
( Gene H. McIntyre lives in Keizer
and shares his opinion frequently in
the Keizertimes.)
Keizer author at
community library
Keizerite Christel Jonge Vos was born and raised in Berlin, Germany,
where she experienced the effects of World War II, the Berlin Air Lift and the
Berlin Wall fi rst-hand.
On Friday, Jan. 17, Jonge Vos will share her experiences while reading from
her poems and book, Scenes from a Life, at the Keizer Community Library.
The library is located in the Keizer Cultural Center, 980 Chemawa Road
N.E.
The event runs from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. Jonge Vos holds a master’s degree in
music, earned from Lewis & Clark College, in Portland, Ore., she has played
in numerous concerts in the Portland area and has authored four books with
a fi fth one on the way.
In 1981, she founded The German Language Center, offering individually
designed German language instruction and translation to companies con-
ducting business in Germany.
cuffed
in Keizer
Jose Luis
Brown-Ceballos
Arrested Jan. 9 for:
Restraining order
violation
Previous convictions:
Assault, menacing,
burglary
Zackery Robert
Francisco
Arrested Jan. 9 for:
Drug possession (meth)
Sundharia
Hummingbird
Lifesong
Pending charges:
Rape
Arrested Jan. 8 for:
Harrassment
Previous convictions:
Drug delivery, burglary,
failure to register as a sex
offender
Previous convictions:
Drug possession (meth),
criminal mischief
Anthony
Wesley Good
Arrested Jan. 12 for:
Parole violation
Previous convictions:
Failure to report as
a sex offender, drug
possession, fl eeing a
police offi cer
police scanner
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 1
SATURDAY, JANUARY 4
2:19 a.m. - Driving under the infl uence
of intoxicants in the 1000 block of Clear-
view Avenue NE.
3:25 p.m. - Failure to perform duties of
driver when property was damaged at the
intersection of River Road N. and Che-
mawa Road N.
5:02 p.m. - Arrested for vandalism, un-
lawful possession of methamphetamine
and unlawful entry to vehicle in the 5000
block of Verda Lane NE.
2:51 a.m. - Criminal trespassing in the
4000 block of River Road N.
8:35 a.m. - Criminal trespassing in the
4000 block of River Road N.
12:02 p.m. - Theft in the 5000 block of
River Road N.
5:50 p.m. - Traffi c accident at the inter-
section of McLeod Lane NE. and Che-
mawa Road NE.
11:19 p.m. - Driving under the infl uence
and traffi c accident in the 5000 block of
River Road N.
THURSDAY, JANUARY 2
12 a.m. - Theft from motor vehicle in the
700 block of Maine Avenue NE.
3:14 a.m. - Delivery of heroin, unlawful
possession of methamphetamine, arrest
for arraignment warrant and identity
theft in the 4000 block of River Road N.
11:47 a.m. - Shoplifting in the 5000
block Inland Shores Way N.
4 p.m. - Motor vehicle theft in the 2000
block of Kennedy Circle NE.
6:56 p.m. - Motor vehicle theft in the
700 block of Bever Drive NE.
7 p.m. - Motor vehicle theft in the 800
block of Plymouth Drive NE.
7:51 p.m. - Theft from motor vehicle in
the 5000 block of McLeod Lane NE.
FRIDAY, JANUARY 3
12:30 p.m. - Bicycle theft in the 4000
block of River Road N.
12:34 p.m. - Menacing display of weap-
ons and unlawful use of weapon at the
intersection of Cherry Avenue NE. and
Bever Drive NE.
3:49 p.m. - Violation of release agreement
in the 5000 block of River Road N.
4:09 p.m. - Traffi c accident at the inter-
section of River Road N. and Dietz Av-
enue NE.
10:16 p.m. - Arrested for driving under
the infl uence and traffi c accident in the
5000 block of River Road N.
SUNDAY, JANUARY 5
12:33 p.m. - Theft of services in the 300
block of Hazelbrook Drive NE.
7:10 p.m. - Unlawful possession meth-
amphetamine, bench warrant and parole
violation in the 3000 block of River
Road N.
7:27 p.m. - Criminal trespassing in the
5000 block of River Road N.
MONDAY, JANUARY 6
2:04 p.m. - Theft in the 3000 block of
River Road N.
TUESDAY, JANUARY 7
7:58 p.m. - Traffi c accident in the 1000
block of Trent Avenue N.
9:19 p.m. - Traffi c accident at the inter-
section of Ulali Drive NE. and Stadium
Drive NE.
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 8
9:46 a.m. - Criminal mischief in the 4000
block of River Road N.
6:35 p.m. - Criminal trespassing in the
5000 block of River Road N.
8 p.m. - Failure to perform duties of driv-
er when property was damaged in the
6000 block of Keizer Station Boulevard.
8:38 p.m. - Arrested for criminal mischief,
probation violation and resisting arrest in
the 6000 block of Veranda Court N
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