VIEWPOINTS
Saturday, October 31, 2015
Quick takes
PGG to sell grain department
Dang, just put up the going out of
business forever sign now why don’t ya.
— Scott Jacobson
As a former employee: not surprising.
— Damon Long
You can thank Capital Hill capitalism for
this. Corporate America is just devouring us
one community at a time.
— Skip Cripe
End of an era?
— Stephanie Cheyenne Vize
Most property taxes jump
On my little 50x100 foot lot. Just the
land increased in value $6,000. Hmm. In
town. That’s not the rest, just the lot.
— John Ware
Nope, the value on my house is more
than last year and it seems to be a new way
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of everything is going up.
— Jovanna Centre
Teen gets bubonic plague
Pretty scary with hunting season here.
Second case I’ve heard of this year.
— Sherry A McClellan
Be careful and wear lots of insect repel-
lent.
— Mayra Verduzco
Drive-through flu shots
This was a wonderful way of doing it. I
hope they do this again next year. Thanks
for the great job of doing it this way.
— Donna Russell De Graw
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family, ever.
— Kassidee K. Hutchison
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won’t simply thin the herd of the people
who can’t science. Kids, elders and people
with compromised immune systems are
threatened by the jut-jawed ignorance as
well.
— Liz McLellan
One of the great lessons of the Twitter age is
that much can be summed up in just a few words.
Here are some of this week’s takes. Tweet yours
@Tim_Trainor or email editor@eastoregonian.
com, and keep them to 140 characters.
O
n Spokane’s west side, the Houston
Fire was growing fast. If a wind
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the world at bay at the entrance to Erika
and Andrea Zaman’s lane would do no
good. Just in time, Andrea blasted back
from the airport, scooped up her sitter and
the two kids. The sitter’s mom took them
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hard to turn the blaze away.
This past summer was
tense. I live just four miles
from what became known
as the Houston Fire, and I
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might gallop along our
street, leaving me little to
do but climb a ladder to the
roof with a garden hose,
wet down the house and
hope for the best.
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near Yacolt, Washington,
ravaged 370 square miles.
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largest in state history until
2014, when the Carlton
Complex Fire assailed
Brewster and Pateros in the north-central
part of the state. At 391 square miles,
the Carlton out-burned the Yacolt Fire,
destroying 353 homes and causing $100
million in damage.
This year, in yet another symptom
of the impacts of climate change, the
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them both by growing to 400 square miles.
Some climate skeptics — the deniers
— claim that warming and turmoil are
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else — oceanic oscillations, volcanic
eruptions, even sunspots — as probable
triggers. They cite anything outside of
human-brewed pollution as a cause.
Those who deny we are experiencing
anthropogenic climate change want to
damn all contradictory opinions, even the
newest research from the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration.
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the West start earlier, burn hotter, grow
in acreage and last longer. Spent fuels
heat the planet, drive regional droughts
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trees. The causes are reciprocal. Pollution
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pollution. And yet, ironically, global forests
are ideal carbon sinks for renegade carbon.
I like to call them absorption organs.
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absorbing CO2, though, our forests are
turning rapidly into ash.
Climate disruption is a kind of ice age
in reverse. As the planet warms and polar
ice caps melt at hastening rates, weird
weather increasingly becomes the norm.
Page 5A
Have coffee and conversation with the city
C
offee with the
City kicked
off on Oct. 5
with a good number
of citizens and city
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answering questions and
sharing ideas. Sitting
down for coffee is a way
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to foster more personal
Corbett
relationships between
Comment
citizens and the people
who work or volunteer
on their behalf at the City.
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at the Buckin’ Bean on NW Despain thanks
to the generosity of owners Winston and
Kirbie Hill. Issues raised by citizens ranged
from street sweeping to fee increases. We
talked with people who appreciated the
chance to visit and heard from others who
really wanted to get some frustrations off
their chest. Everyone left feeling they were
heard.
We face a number of obstacles in
reaching our residents with in depth
information about issues that matter to
them. People are busy and get their news
from a wide variety of sources. Stopping
by a city council meeting or making an
appointment to talk with a city staff person
is not convenient or
realistic for most people’s
schedules. The Internet
gives constituents more
options for news but we
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for misinformation to
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do a better job of getting
information to you — the
people we serve.
While the City has
long communicated with
residents via our Facebook
page and website, we
really like the opportunity
to build relationships with
face to face conversations.
It is important to us to put
a face to a name, build
trust within our community
and make sure we provide more venues in
which people can get accurate information.
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was borrowed from a successful national
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has been shown that barriers are removed
by meeting in the casual atmosphere of
a coffee shop. There is no agenda, no
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are representatives from
the city pouring coffee and
listening to neighbors who
want to talk about issues
they are concerned about.
In these monthly sessions
we may be able to easily
resolve a problem and we
can always answer your
questions.
Next month, we’ll host
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on Southgate to talk with
people at McDonald’s on
Nov. 2 from 8 a.m. to 10
a.m. I hope you’ll join us
and remember — coffee
is on us. These sessions
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Monday of every month at
different locations around the city. Future
locations can be found by visiting the city’s
website, Facebook page, or by calling City
Hall at 541-966-0201.
The Internet
gives
constituents
more options
for news,
but we find
it also paves
the way for
misinformation
to “go viral.”
Ŷ
Robb Corbett is Pendleton city manager.
Gas tax a chance to save Pendleton roads
I
n the last article I
said we would be on
to infrastructure for
the city. It seems only
appropriate to start with
the streets since the city
is asking for a nickel a
gallon on fuel to help
maintain them. The state
Al
tax street fund provides
Plute
for the maintenance of
Comment
over 71 miles of paved
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miles of oil mat roads, three miles of gravel
roads and a mile of dirt road, expenses for
city streetlights and the inclement weather
services necessary to keep the streets, public
stairways, parking lots, bridges and public
sidewalks passable.
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2016 provides for ongoing maintenance
and preservation projects related to arterial
and collector streets. Preservation projects
are about 10 percent of the level necessary
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condition. There will be a large capital outlay
based on carryover from previous years.
The street assessment report completed May
2013 has the deferred maintenance of the
streets at close to $16 million and the cost
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By PAUL LINDHOLDT
High Country News
East Oregonian
The anthropogenic argument on climate
change holds that petrochemicals generate
planetary grief — that carbon pollution
spreads misery beyond the rural-urban
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We mine oil and gas under the planet’s
surface, we eradicate the cleansing
vegetation that surrounds the mines, we
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stuff in districts known as cancer alleys,
we contaminate the environment in
unsustainable ways when we combust
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scientist Tim Flannery.
Aware Americans
would like to curtail
carbon generation in
every way. They would
put the brakes on the
coal being transported
by trains and burnt to
make electricity, slow
the highly combustible
oil being pumped from
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the homes popping up
so far from urban cores
and thereby necessitating
long commutes, create
incentives for carmakers to
manufacture models that exceed miles-per-
gallon averages in the low 20s.
For weeks on end this summer, assailed
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inland Northwest kept hoping for rain.
When at last a summer shower arrived,
raindrops atomized the dust and made
every parched thing pungent. People fairly
spun with bliss; it had been so long, they
did not know what they’d been missing.
In the shadow of the Houston Fire,
residents returned home the same day.
They were luckier than many people have
been these last two years. No houses or
lives were lost. Andrea, Erika and their
children breathed relief, thanked the brave
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ran the AC.
A week later, I biked the road that had
split the 60-acre burn site. The scent of
ash and chemicals tainted the air. One
barn had been leveled, another scorched.
Bulldozers had punched roads through the
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barbed wire slumped where posts once
held it. On both sides of rural Grove Road,
blackened trees and grasslands spread as
far as the eye could see, and on the asphalt
and the pastures lay red stains from the
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Ŷ
Paul Lindholdt is a contributor to
Writers on the Range, a column service
of High Country News (hcn.org). He
lives and bikes in Spokane, Washington,
and is a professor of English at Eastern
Washington University.
Meanwhile,
every year
wildfires in
the West start
earlier, burn
hotter, grow
in acreage
and last
longer.
to maintain our street system at its current
pavement condition is about $700,000 per
year. Our streets will continue to get worse
and the deferred amount
will be $16.6 million and it
will keep going up unless
we can get ahead of it.
The beginning working
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is $847,300. The city
receives income from state
and federal taxes, which
amounts to approximately
$1.2 million. The two
combined amounts to a
total of $2.1 million.
Operating expenses are
budgeted at $553,380.
Street lights: $195,000.
Improvements to city streets were: $1
million.
Contingency fund: $191,415.
This year’s street budget was
approximately $2 million. This was because
they used $655,885 of the beginning
working capital. This enabled us to spend
$1 million on street repairs. We won’t be
able to do that next year and the budget will
go back to spending $300,000 on arterial
and collector streets. Residential streets will
receive nothing unless the nickel a gallon
fee on fuel passes. We will open next year’s
budget with $191,415 in working capital
dedicated to streets and
that will be added to the
state and federal fuel tax
income received. Again,
none of this money will be
used for residential streets.
On another note,
Sam Byrnes wrote an
article this week. The
one thing I disagree with
Sam on is that he noted
their association would
welcome a statewide tax
but not a local one.
The whole point
of having a local tax is that we receive
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of a fractional one. The present 48 cent
tax a gallon state and federal tax gives
Pendleton approximately $950,000. While
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$550,000. The state would have to raise
the gas tax 24 cents a gallon to yield the
same result of $550,000 for Pendleton. I’d
rather pay a nickel.
Residential
streets will
receive nothing
unless the nickel
a gallon tax on
fuel passes.
Ŷ
Al Plute is a Pendleton city councilor.
Oh, those debating Republicans
O
n his way into the big
Bush, keep pointing hopefully to
presidential debate, Ben Carson
Marco Rubio. During the debate,
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Rubio demonstrated great verbal
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talent when it came to explaining
than planning to be Chris Christie.
why he seems so bad at things
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like, say, managing his personal
of picking someone who cannot do
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working folk who did not leave him
of Ohio at the moment the contest
a fortune.) Also, his stupendous
Gail
began. Kasich had actually been asked
Collins absentee record in the Senate is not
to name his biggest weakness, but
all that much worse than some other
Comment
the thought of Carson’s tax plan and
people who have run for president.
Donald Trump’s immigration plan
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seemed to send him a little off topic.
for this — this was a six-year term and you
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Bush, who seemed as if he had suddenly
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shaken himself from a nap. Bush’s only two
Hard to believe the race is still barely
moments of energy involved Rubio, who he
beginning — one week
seems to hate, and fantasy
until one year until
football, which he really,
presidential Election Day!
really enjoys.
But you can’t say things
Jeb Bush is not going
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to be the Republican
the hell are you people
presidential nominee.
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Neither is, let’s see —
demanded in Iowa, where
Christie, Rand Paul, Carly
he’s no longer in the lead.
Fiorina or any of the other
Perhaps we will look back
supporting cast members.
on this as the moment
Ted Cruz did have a big
when the former star of
moment when he answered
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a question about raising the
state.
debt limit by attacking the
But about Wednesday
questioner. That went over
night’s debate — the topic
so well that by the end
was economics, and the
of the two-hour session,
big takeaway was probably
the left-wing media had
that when there are 10 people onstage,
overtaken government regulators as the
nobody is going to have to explain how
greatest threat to the future of American
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democracy.
complain about government regulations.
Or do you think it could actually be
Carson appears to have a particular genius Carson? The guy who seems to blame gun
on this front. Asked what to do about the
control for the Holocaust?
pharmaceutical industry’s outrageous pricing
One of the theories on why Carson can’t
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win — besides the fact that he’s utterly loopy
some people go overboard when it comes to
— is that even a lot of Republican voters
WU\LQJWRPDNHSUR¿WV´DQGWKHQKHFDUHHQHG will be unnerved by his plans to undermine
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Social Security and Medicare.
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But his ideas aren’t actually all that
Every seasoned politician is good at
different from those of most of the other
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candidates, who want to raise retirement rates
answer to something entirely different.
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But Carson — who isn’t supposed to be a
not too much to ask of our generation after
politician at all — was possibly the champ.
everything our parents and our grandparents
Where do you think he picked that up? It’s a
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little unnerving to think this kind of talent is
Hard to imagine this going over well
useful in the operating room.
in middle-aged America, but the whole
Because Carson’s voice always sounds
party is on the same page. Except for Mike
so moderate, responses that make no sense
Huckabee who — yes! — is still in the race,
whatsoever can sound sort of thoughtful until out there somewhere. And Trump, who says
you replay them in your head. Asked why, as HYHU\WKLQJZLOOEH¿QHDIWHUKHPDNHV³D
an opponent of gay marriage, he serves on
really dynamic economy from what we have
the board of a company that offers domestic
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Somebody has got to be nominated.
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Happy Halloween.
woman and there is no reason that you can’t
Ŷ
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Gail Collins joined The New York Times
then proposed, in his measured tones, that
in 1995 as a member of the editorial board
³WKH3&FXOWXUHLW¶VGHVWUR\LQJWKLVQDWLRQ´ and later as an Op-Ed columnist. In 2001
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she became the ¿rst woman ever appointed
Trump and Carson, and in despair over Jeb
editor of the Times’s editorial page.
Every seasoned
politician
is good at
answering a
difficult question
with the answer
to something
entirely different.