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About The Siuslaw news. (Florence, Lane County, Or.) 1960-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 16, 2021)
4A | SATURDAY EDITION | JANUARY 16, 2021 Siuslaw News P.O. Box 10 Florence, OR 97439 NED HICKSON , EDITOR | 541-902-3520 | NHICKSON @ THESIUSLAWNEWS . COM Opinion The First Amendment C ongress shall make no law respect- ing an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Govern- ment for a redress of grievances. “I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.” —Thomas Jefferson (1800) USPS# 497-660 Copyright 2021 © Siuslaw News Siuslaw News Published every Wednesday and Saturday at 148 Maple St. in Florence, Lane County, Oregon. A member of the National Newspaper Association and Oregon Newspaper Publishers Association. Periodicals postage paid at Florence, Ore. Postmaster, send address changes to: Siuslaw News, P.O. Box 10, Florence, OR 97439; phone 541-997-3441; fax 541-997-7979. All press releases may be sent to PressReleases@TheSiuslawNews.com. Jenna Bartlett Ned Hickson Cathy Dietz Ron Annis For Advertising: ext. 318 Publisher, ext. 318 Editor, ext. 313 Office Supervisor, ext. 312 Production Supervisor For Classifieds: ext. 320 DEADLINES: Wednesday Issue—General news, Monday noon; Budgets, four days prior to publication; Regular classified ads, Monday 1 p.m.; Display ads, Monday noon; Dis- play classified ads, Friday 5 p.m. Saturday Issue—General news, Thursday noon; Budgets, two days prior to pub- lication; Regular classified ads, Thursday 1 p.m.; Display ads, Thursday noon; Display classified ads, Wednesday 5 p.m. Soundings, Tuesday 5 p.m. NEWSPAPER SUBSCRIPTION RATES: In Lane County — 1-year subscription, $79; 6-month in-county, $56; 10-week subscription, $25; Out of Lane County — 1-year subscription, $102; 6-month out- of-county, $69; 10-week subscription, $35; Out of State — 1-year subscription, $134; E-Edition Online Only (Anywhere) — 1-year subscription, $65. Mail subscription includes E-Edition. Website and E-Edition: TheSiuslawNews.com Siuslaw News LETTERS ‘City in Motion’ still seems stuck by council Recently, the Siuslaw News ran an extensive investigative series about how our town became so politically divided. If anyone has any doubts about the accuracy of the series, all one has to do is take a look at the recent appointment process of a new councilor on our Florence City Council. Jo Beaudreau and Maggie Bagon applied for the vacant seat on the council. Since they each received a large percentage of votes in Novem- ber’s election, it was clear that they have the support of a large percent- age of Florence voters. One would think that they would be excellent choices to be on the council. Another candidate, someone who is a fairly new resident, hav- ing moved here from California, received the least amount of votes and clearly did not gain much sup- port from voters. Yet somehow she ended up with the job. Since she is neighbors with the mayor and Councilor Woody Woodbury, it is impossible not to suspect the type of cronyism that was outlined in the newspaper’s se- ries. In view of tensions at the national and local level, it is really unfortu- nate that Councilor Woodbury and Mayor Henry either didn’t think about — or care about — the op- tics of their vote and didn’t recuse themselves from voting for their neighbor. Recusal would have gone a long way towards legitimizing the pro- cess and would have demonstrated a desire to heal some of the frac- tures in our community. Florence, “a city in motion,” feels stuck to me. —Kim Shields Florence Protect Florence from the homeless I recently traveled to Eugene. Imagine my surprise when I found out Eugene located its new city dump at the intersection of Beltline and Highway 126 ... Oh wait, that is not a dump, it is a transient campground where they apparently allow transients to freely dump all of their trash. This is absolutely absurd, shame- ful and disgusting. Oregon leaders profess to be concerned about the environment, yet they allow the state be trashed by these people. In addition, has anyone thought to have Lane County Health De- partment inspect to see what a filthy environment they are creat- ing? It worries about COVID-19 yet allows this to happen. How can anyone with common sense allow this behavior to go un- checked? Again, you see failed pro- grams creating more problems. There is no doubt the mayors and governor would not allow this in their neighborhoods, yet burden the rest of Oregon citizens with it. I went into the Walmart next to the site to purchase socks. To my surprise, all undergarments and socks are now under lock and key. They remove the items you want and ask you to pick them up at a specified checkout. I asked about the need to lock these up and I was told since the transient camp- ground started, they have had $110,000 of this type of merchan- dise stolen. How can anyone in a leadership position cater to this minority at the expense of all the taxpaying cit- izens? This is an absolute embarrass- ment. They are destroying this once beautiful Oregon. Eugene is becoming a trash dump. This is sickening. Anyone who travels to Florence via High- way 126 must pass this pitiful ex- ample of state and city manage- ment. You are starting to see this in many Oregon cities, including Flor- ence. Along the Munsel bike trail, we are seeing trash being left by the transients. We chose Oregon for our retire- ment for its beauty and now must question our decision to move here. Please perform your civic duty and protect beautiful Oregon. Please Mayor Henry, protect Florence. —Paul and Colleen Cunningham Florence Missed opportunity by council to heal wounds Mayor Joe Henry and the Flor- ence City Council had the oppor- tunity to begin to heal the tremen- dous divide in Florence through the choice of a candidate to fill Geraldine Lucio’s (Prociw) vacant council seat. They could have chosen one of the two women who followed the proper procedures, filed their pa- pers, and had broad support in the final votes during this past Novem- ber election. Instead, on a 3-1 vote, the council chose the write-in candidate who began a campaign late, received less that 1,000 votes from the com- munity and appears clearly aligned socially and politically with the mayor. Florence is indeed a “City in Mo- tion” but, sadly, is moving in the wrong direction. —Pam Sellars Florence Time to re-think our COVID-19 response plan We have nearly a year in dealing with the pandemic and the reports. Frankly, the gross U.S. and world- wide number of cases and deaths can be overwhelming. The narra- tive seems to be that we are heading for a catastrophe which ebbs and flows almost daily. We’ve learned during this ordeal that the disease seems to be high- ly contagious, is relatively bad for Office: 148 Maple St./PO Box 10 Florence, OR 87439 those 65 and older and/or with un- derlying conditions. But overall, it has a very high re- covery rate. It seemed to me that a key metric would be the number of people hospitalized. If you remem- ber, the initial push for shutdowns of the economy was based on “two weeks to flatten the curve” (this was in March 2020) to save the hospitals from imploding. Since the symptoms of the dis- ease can be pretty benign for most people contracting COVID, mea- suring hospitalizations seems a rea- sonable way to assess relative sever- ity of impact. For this reason, I looked at sta- tistics for all of Lane County from the website of the Department of Public Health, which was current as of Jan. 3, 2021. Keep in mind that Lane County has a population of about 381,000 people. During the entire duration of the pandemic, there has been a total of 414 peo- ple hospitalized — a hospitalization rate of 0.06 percent. Today (1-11-21), there are 17 peo- ple hospitalized with COVID-19 in RiverBend hospital (out of 386 total beds) and this number is updated daily on its website. This hospital probably covers the vast majority of people afflicted. This disease is serious and should be considered as such, but the num- bers cited above are real and based on nearly a year’s experience. The reaction to date has been to effec- tively shut down schools and se- verely restrict a big swath of our local economy. The people who make the rules that can literally affect the lives and livelihoods of thousands of people must be able to craft responses ap- propriate to the situation. A blan- ket “shut’er down” mandate can and will do more damage than good. Time to rethink? —Ralph Nichols Florence Trump’s Troopers A few years ago when Arnold Palmer was blistering the golf courses, the media labeled his many devoted followers as “Arnie’s Army.” In my opinion, the liberal press and electronic news media should come up with the term “Trump’s Troopers” for those supporting the President, because no matter what they throw at President Trump and his devoted followers, the almost 75,000,000 folks that voted for him are not going away anytime soon. There appears to be plenty of evi- dence regarding the fraud that went on to cheat the president out of his reelection. One would have to be both blind and deft to believe otherwise. I am standing by for the retort I will probably get to this letter but it will fall on deaf ears; a spade is a spade and by any other term it is a spade. —Tony Cavarno Florence Office Hours: Monday to Thursday: 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday: 8 a.m. to noon Letters to the Editor policy The Siuslaw News welcomes letters to the editor as part of a community discussion of issues on the local, state and national level. Emailed letters are preferred. Handwritten or typed letters must be signed. All letters need to in- clude full name, address and phone number; only name and city will be printed. Letters should be limited to about 300 words. Letters are subject to editing for length, grammar and clarity. Publica- tion of any letter is not guaranteed and depends on space available and the volume of letters received. Letters that are anonymous, libelous, argumen- tative, sarcastic or contain accusations that are un- sourced or documented will not be published. Letters containing poetry or from outside the Siu- slaw News readership area will only be published at the discretion of the editor. Political/Election Letters: Election-related letters must address pertinent or timely issues of interest to our readers at-large. Letters must 1) Not be a part of letter-writing campaigns on behalf of (or by) candidates; 2) En- sure any information about a candidate is accurate, fair and not from second-hand knowledge or hear- say; and 3) Explain the reasons to support candi- dates based on personal experience and perspective rather than partisanship and campaign-style rhet- oric. Candidates themselves may not use the letters to the editor column to outline their views and plat- forms or to ask for votes; this constitutes paid politi- cal advertising. As with all letters and advertising content, the newspaper, at the sole discretion of the publisher, general manager and editor, reserves the right to re- ject any letter that doesn’t follow the above criteria. Email letters to: nhickson@thesiuslawnews.com WHERE TO WRITE Pres. Donald Trump The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW Washington, D.C. 20500 Comments: 202-456-1111 Switchboard: 202-456-1414 FAX: 202-456-2461 TTY/TDD Comments: 202-456-6213 www.whitehouse.gov Oregon Gov. Kate Brown 160 State Capitol 900 Court St. Salem, Ore. 97301-4047 Governor’s Citizens’ Rep. Message Line: 503-378-4582 www.oregon.gov/gov U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden 221 Dirksen Senate Office Bldg Washington, DC 20510 202-224-5244 541-431-0229 www.wyden.senate.gov U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley 313 Hart Senate Office Bldg Washington, DC 20510 202-224-3753 FAX: 202-228-3997 541-465-6750 www.merkley.senate.gov U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio (4th Dist.) 2134 Rayburn HOB Washington, DC 20515 202-225-6416 541-269-2609 541-465-6732 www.defazio.house.gov State Sen. Arnie Roblan (Dist. 5) 900 Court St. NE - S-417 Salem, OR 97301 503-986-1705 FAX: 503-986-1080 Email: Sen.ArnieRoblan@ oregonlegislature.gov State Rep. Caddy McKeown (Dist. 9) 900 Court St. NE Salem, OR 97301 503-986-1409 Email: rep.caddymckeown @oregonlegislature.gov West Lane County Commissioner Jay Bozievich 125 E. Eighth St. Eugene, OR 97401 541-682-4203 FAX: 541-682-4616 Email: Jay.Bozievich@ co.lane.or.us
