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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (May 16, 2016)
OPINION 6A Founded in 1873 STEPHEN A. FORRESTER, Editor & Publisher LAURA SELLERS, Managing Editor BETTY SMITH, Advertising Manager THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, MAY 16, 2016 100th anniversary of the Seaside High School: now can we move? SOUTHERN EXPOSURE CARL EARL, Systems Manager JOHN D. BRUIJN, Production Manager DEBRA BLOOM, Business Manager HEATHER RAMSDELL, Circulation Manager Sealed landill became a mecca Soccer association is among our best nonproits A mong the good things to celebrate in Clatsop County are two former landills — Astoria’s and Warrenton’s. Turnaround of the Warrenton landill came irst. In 1986 it was sealed. The city offered the site to the nascent Lower Columbia Youth Soccer Assn. Over some 25 years, the league has created a soccer complex that is renowned across Oregon. The soccer association Construction contributed. epitomizes the beneits of One of Bengel’s anecdotes is partnership and leverag- about Phil Gaffney, superin- ing. The league’s irst soc- tendent at Big Rock. Having cer ield had numerous grown up playing on the benefactors. The Oregon soccer ields, he’s returned Community Foundation as a volunteer to upgrade the was one of them. In fact, the complex. foundation’s gift to the soc- Now the league is over- cer association was among capitalized, as Jerry Boisvert its irst into this county. put it. And that may allow it Now the league has done to help the city of Warrenton it again, as it responds to create more outdoor recre- a request from the city ation destinations. of Warrenton for a play- Creation of the soccer ground. Erick Bengel’s story league and its fields made Tuesday described the array life richer for generations of the playground’s bene- of Clatsop County boys factors, including the city, and girls. The league’s which provided $25,000 in ingenuity and energy a pass-through grant from are an example for all of a foundation. Nygaard Clatsop County’s nonprofit Logging and Big River organizations. B y R.J. M aRx T here were eight students in the graduating class of 1915. The school budget totaled $12,650. Today that number would just about pay for a season’s worth of volleyballs. Of the 1916-17 budget, the lion’s share — $4,000 — was for teacher’s salaries, $1,275 for maps, apparatus, stoves, curtains and other necessaries. “After the irst year of school the levy will not be as high as it is this sea- son as the building is new and must be equipped with all that is necessary to make a modern school and one that every voter and taxpayer in the district may be proud of,” the Seaside Signal wrote. A half century In 1966, the district consolidated three districts: Seaside, Gearhart and Cannon Beach. “All of the districts are growing and additional facilities will be needed,” wrote the Signal. The uniied district debuted in Sep- tember 1967 with 1,475 students, 501 at the high school. In decades to come, with increased enrollment, buildings past their pro- jected life span and evidence of a mor- tal seismic threat, the need for a new school building became a perennial topic of conversation. In 1970, 400 voters in the school dis- trict illed out building questionnaires. “Construct a Clatsop County High School,” was the suggestion in one reply. “Replace Central and remodel Broadway,” “Consolidate with Warren- ton-Lewis and Clark area” and “build a new high school in Clatsop Plains,” were others. Only 20 of 400 respondents voted for a “do nothing” plan. Throughout the next two decades successions of administrators, board members and the community sought solutions. In 1986-87 voters had the chance to approve a plan that would allow the district to develop ideas for a new high school. Plans for a 25-year bond issue included purchase of a new site and building of an 800-student high school. R.J. Marx/The Daily Astorian Seaside High School students participate in a tsunami evacuation drill. That year’s $12.3 million plan would have alleviated space problems at the elementary level as well, partic- ularly in Gearhart and Cannon Beach. That was a lot of money — a “rib-eye” purchase, the Signal wrote. The verdict from the voters was crushing — 2,913 to 570. It was at about this time that Oregon State University marine biologist Curt Peterson and researcher Mark Darienzo began piecing together the links between the Juan de Fuca plate and seis- mic activity along the coast, referred to then as “tectonic subsistence.” This information was to have a pro- found inluence on all efforts to replace at-risk schools. ing board, according to Henderson, to consider other options, such as build- ing a smaller campus on the hill or one to house just elementary school students. This century mark is bittersweet. While we welcome the 100th year of Seaside High School, we join in the enthusiasm and urgency for a new high school to take its place. One hundred, 50, 25 years ago there was no hard evidence of the risk we face every day. There is now. The high school stands 14 to 18 feet above sea level, according to geol- ogist Tom Horning. The likely tsunami will lood to elevations of about 40 to 50 feet, nearly to the top of the high school gymnasium roof. Obvious risk “The wave will strike about 15 In 2013, with declining enrollment, minutes after the inception of quak- Cannon Beach Elementary School ing,” Horning said in an email. “It closed after two engineering consul- takes roughly 15 minutes to reach tants found that its gym was likely to safety in the hills from the school, collapse in a quake. assuming that trafic Compelling doesn’t block evac- This research brought the uation and that the realization Gearhart weather is good for century Elementary School, evacuating. The high Seaside High School school structure will mark is and Broadway Ele- be swept away, leaving mentary School were bittersweet. only concrete founda- potential death traps for tions and steps. Any- kids in a disaster scenario. one caught in the building by the tsu- Led by Superintendent Doug nami will die. Anyone caught below Dougherty, the district brought a 50 feet elevation will also likely die. $128.8 million bond measure to fund Very dangerous place.” construction of a new consolidated Taylor Barnes, a Seaside High school campus above the tsunami School senior and student representa- inundation zone. tive on the City Council, among young Supporters of the bond measure leaders seeking to move the school. focused their campaign on children’s Their voices are reaching to Portland, safe, high-tech classrooms, wrote Bon- Salem and points beyond. nie Henderson in her recounting of the “I think this is the year,” Barnes campaign in “The Next Tsunami: Liv- said last week after Seaside’s coun- ing on a Restless Coast.” cil meeting. “Ultimately it’s going to “But the bottom line for many ‘no’ come down to the community mem- voters seemed to be the cost,” Hen- bers. They’re ready. A lot of people are derson wrote. “Even some supporters frustrated. The time is now because we were having a hard time swallowing can’t wait. Whether we’re ready or not, the increase in property taxes that the it needs to be now.” construction of the new campus would R.J. Marx is The Daily Astorian’s have required.” South County reporter and editor of The defeat sent Dougherty and the Seaside Signal and Cannon Beach the school board back to the draw- Gazette. Transportation panel should be open F Let’s talk about Trump and taxes ew state functions gen- erate as much interest, or cost so much money, as transportation. Keeping deliberations about trans- portation policies and prior- ities open to public scrutiny ought to be a top priority for all who truly care about gov- ernment transparency. Taking a page from the Obama administration, which talks a good game on openness but actually suppresses the free low of information, Gov. Kate Brown takes the position that a majority of the Oregon Transportation Commission can meet privately as part of a planning committee with- out any notice. As Hillary Borrud of our Capital Bureau reported, the plan- ning group — appointed by Oregon Transportation Commission Chairwoman Tammy Baney — is discuss- ing what issues a contractor should examine as part of a review of the Department of Transportation. There may very well be politically awkward aspects of the review. How this examination is framed will help determine the agency’s future directions and look at how state highways and other transportation infra- structure currently function. On the line are hundreds of millions of dollars in proj- ect spending the Legislature could approve next year. In light of cities vying with rural areas, gas taxes, peren- nial suspicions about waste and favoritism, debates over motor vehicles versus public transit, and a host of other issues, these discussions obviously should be con- ducted in public. Our open meetings law states: “The Oregon form of government requires an informed public aware of the deliberations and deci- sions of governing bodies and the information upon which such decisions were made.” It does not bode well for Gov. Brown’s views of transparency that she sees no contradiction in her rhetoric and actions on this matter. Editorials that appear on this page are written by Publisher Steve Forrester and Matt Winters, editor of the Chinook Observer and Coast River Business Journal, or staff members from the EO Media Group’s sister newspapers. By PAUL KRUGMAN New York Times News Service his seems to be the week for Trump tax mysteries. One mystery is why Donald Trump, unlike every other major party nominee in modern times, is refusing to release his tax returns. The other is why, having decided that he needs experts to clean up his ludicrous tax-cut proposals, he chose to call on the services of the gang that couldn’t think straight. T On the irst mystery: Trump’s excuse, that he can’t release his returns while they’re being audited, is an obvious lie. On the contrary, the fact that he’s being audited (or at least that he says he’s being audited) should make it eas- ier for him to go public — after all, he needn’t fear triggering an audit! Clearly, he must be hiding some- thing. What? It could be how little he pays in taxes, a revelation that hurt Mitt Romney in 2012. But I doubt it; given how Trump rolls, he’d probably boast that his ability to game the tax system shows how smart he is compared to all the losers out there. So my guess, shared by a number of observers, is that the dirty secret hidden in those returns is that he isn’t as rich as he claims to be. In Trump- world, the revelation that he’s only worth a couple of billion — maybe even less than a billion — would be utterly humiliating. So he’ll try to tough it out. Of course, if he does, we’ll never know. Meanwhile, however, we can look at the candidate’s policy proposals. And what has been going on there is just as revealing, in its own way, as his attempt to dodge scrutiny of For those who don’t fol- his personal inances. low such things, Kudlow The story so far: Last fall has a record of being wrong Trump suggested that he about, well, everything. In would break with Repub- 2005 he ridiculed “bubble- lican orthodoxy by raising heads who expect hous- taxes on the wealthy. But ing-price crashes in Las then he unveiled a tax plan Vegas or Naples, Florida, to that would, in fact, lavish bring down the consumer, huge tax cuts on the rich. the rest of the economy, And it would also, accord- and the entire stock mar- Paul ing to nonpartisan analyses, ket” — which was exactly Krugman cause deicits to explode, what happened. In 2007 he adding around $10 trillion to the predicted three years of “Goldilocks” national debt over a decade. prosperity. And on and on. Now, the inconsistency between Moore has a comparable forecast- Trump’s rhetoric and his speciic pro- ing record, but he also has a remark- posals didn’t seem to hurt him in the able inability to get facts straight. Per- Republican primaries. Neither did the haps most famously, he once attempted wild irresponsibility of those speciics, to rebut, well, me with an article detail- perhaps because all the major contend- ing the supposed beneits of state tax ers for the GOP nomination were pro- cuts; incredibly, not one of the many posing huge, budget-busting tax cuts numbers in that article was right. for the rich. True, none of them were So why would Trump turn to these quite as off the charts as the Trump of all people to, ahem, ix his numbers? plan, but such distinctions were prob- It could be a peace offering, an ably lost on primary voters — $4 tril- attempt to reassure insiders by bring- lion, $10 trillion, who cares? ing in Kudlow and Moore, who are Having secured the nomination, inluential members of the Republican however, Trump apparently feels the establishment — which incidentally need to seem more respectable. The tells you a lot about their party. goal, I suspect, is to bring the head- But my guess is that the explana- line numbers down enough to let the tion is simpler: The candidate has no media’s propensity for false equiva- idea who is and isn’t competent. I lence kick in. Hillary Clinton has a mean, it’s not as if he has any inde- plan that actually adds up, while Don- pendent knowledge of economics, or ald Trump has a plan that will cost $4 even knows what he doesn’t know. trillion, but which he claims is dei- For example, he keeps asserting that cit-neutral? Hey, it’s the same thing! America has the world’s highest taxes, Oh, and meanwhile he suggested when we’re actually at the bottom once again that he might raise taxes among advanced nations. on the rich, then walked it back, with So he probably just went with a credulous media eating it all up. couple of guys he’s seen on TV, assum- But what’s really interesting is ing that they must be there because whom, according to Politico, Trump they know their stuff. Now, you might wonder how has brought in to revise his plans: Larry Kudlow of CNBC and Stephen someone that careless and incuri- Moore of the Heritage Foundation. ous was such a huge success in busi- That news had economic analysts spit- ness. But one answer is, how success- ting out their morning coffee all across ful was he, really? What’s in those tax America. returns?