FRIDAY, DECEMBER 13, 2019
Baker City, Oregon
4A
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EDITORIAL
Golf course
lease deal
is sensible
Baker City Manager Fred Warner’s proposal to
transfer operation of the city-owned Quail Ridge Golf
Course to the nonprofi t corporation that runs Antho-
ny Lakes Mountain Resort, an idea endorsed by the
City Council Tuesday, makes sense for both parties.
The 18-hole course is an important city asset, a
recreation amenity for local residents and an attrac-
tion for visitors.
But Quail Ridge has in the past also drained
signifi cant amounts of money from the city’s general
fund, which includes much more vital services such
as police and fi re protection. The city has reduced
that general fund transfer — it’s $40,000 this fi s-
cal year, compared with a total of about $150,000 in
the early 2000s. Keeping the course in good shape
and ensuring it’s well-run will reduce the risk of the
course reverting to being a major monetary albatross.
Mike Brooks has done a good job running the
course since he signed a four-year lease with the city
that took effect Jan. 1, 2017. But Warner told coun-
cilors Tuesday that Brooks, though he will remain as
the teaching professional at the course, doesn’t want
to continue as the lease-holder.
Warner’s idea to transfer the lease to the Baker
Community Development Corporation, the nonprofi t
that owns Anthony Lakes, The Trailhead in Baker
City and runs several Forest Service campgrounds, is
a logical choice.
The corporation has ample experience in running
seasonal recreational businesses. And speaking of
seasons, there’s little overlap in the operations of
Quail Ridge, which typically opens in March, weather
permitting, and Anthony Lakes, which closes in early
April.
Although the provisions of the current lease will
continue through 2020 — the contractor pays the city
an annual management fee of $65,000, a monthly fee
of about $5,100 to lease city-owned equipment, and is
responsible for some equipment maintenance — the
City Council should review the deal next year based
on the experiences of the Baker Community Develop-
ment Corporation, with the ultimate goal of eliminat-
ing general fund transfers to the golf course.
Your views
Farmers and ranchers will
miss Greg Walden
As someone who owns and operates
a cattle ranch, I take pride in say-
ing Congressman Walden is working
harder than anyone in D.C. to cut
through the red tape that we farmers
and ranchers live with every day.
Greg has supported the Trump
Administration as they work hard to
renegotiate trade deals and expand
access for our farmers and ranchers to
foreign markets — like the newly nego-
tiated USMCA and the U.S. trade deal
with Japan — a great win for Oregon
agriculture!
In Congress, Greg has passed legisla-
tion that would improve forest manage-
ment and decrease the risk of wildfi re
by utilizing tools like grazing and
thinning to reduce fuel loads on public
lands. Greg has fought hard to ensure
farmers and ranchers can continue to
rely on the protections provided in the
Farm Bill. He has worked tirelessly to
advance legislation time and again that
would federally delist the gray wolf
and give the states the ability to better
manage wolf populations.
I’ve watched Greg as he has spoken
with leaders in the agriculture indus-
tries from Eastern Oregon throughout
his career in Congress. His passion for
the industries is clear in those meet-
ings, and he has always carried the
message he receives in those discus-
sions back to D.C. I have had the plea-
sure of working with him in Oregon
and in Washington, D.C. The farmers
and ranchers of Oregon are going to
miss having Congressman Walden
around, thankfully we still have one
more year!
Matt McElligott
North Powder
Wyden’s call for river
protection shows foresight
As I prepare for the holidays, I take
stock in the things that matter the
most to me. It is clear, that the land-
scape of NE Oregon is one of those
things, writ large. Eastern Oregon’s
magic captured me the moment I
stepped out of our dusty station wagon
in 1961 onto the gravel driveway
of what had just become my fam-
ily’s cattle ranch near Baker City. I
was fi ve and we moved into a house
comprised of three tiny homes built by
early settlers to the area. Those shacks
were skidded down the hill and stuck
together over a precarious, river rock
foundation. The living room had three
doors in a row and the lumpy fl oor
could not tolerate our jump roping. It
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was the most beloved house I have ever
lived in, on land that is wedded to my
soul.
Sen. Ron Wyden recently announced
that he is seeking nominations for new
Wild and Scenic River designations.
He wants input from all Oregonians
and is holding a “Wild and Scenic River
Forum” in Portland. He is also asking
for nominations via email at rivers@
wyden.senate.gov. As rural folks, it can
be diffi cult to make our voices heard
over the din of opinions from larger
population centers. I will be emailing
Sen. Wyden and nominating rivers
in Northeastern Oregon that directly
impact our quality of life and underpin
our growing tourist economy.
Our western culture, wild land-
scapes, and unique lifestyle distinguish
NE Oregon as an enviable place to live
or visit. The most important thing I can
do for the future of our community is
to help preserve our local waterways.
The clean water and critical habitat we
are seeking to protect is the lifeblood of
future generations who want to enjoy
a healthy lifestyle and a sustainable,
outdoor recreation based, economy for
Baker County.
Thank you, Ron Wyden, for your
foresight and determination to move
forward with this bill and to enable
rural folks to have a choice in what
waterways will be selected. Now is the
time to make your voice heard for local
rivers that you love.
Robin Coen
Boise
— Jayson Jacoby, Baker City Herald editor
Feds vs. scammers: Not a bet I’d like to make
I was debating the other day
whether to shell out 26 bucks for
a new book, but then I checked
my email and discovered that my
fi nancial worries are over, and
probably for the rest of my life.
I was, as you can imagine,
greatly relieved by this most unex-
pected news.
According to the message in my
inbox I have had the great fortune
to be selected to receive a donation
of $2.8 million, which should easily
cover my book needs for the forsee-
able future.
It will also help with the mort-
gage and my other decidedly mod-
est monetary obligations.
The sender of the message, I
learned, had won $40 million in
the “American lottery” and was
donating part of it to fi ve people
and charities in memory of his wife,
who died from cancer.
Which is quite generous, you
have to admit.
The message didn’t say how
many of these fi ve lucky recipients
are people and how many are
charities, so I can’t say precisely
how fortunate I actually was.
I’d like to believe I’m the only
person selected and that the four
others are charities, but I under-
stand how unlikely that is.
JAYSON
JACOBY
Even to be one of fi ve is bucking
the odds, after all.
Lest I carry on this charade for
more paragraphs than is reason-
able, I recognized this email for the
scam it so obviously is.
I no more believed that I had
to come into an unanticipated
windfall than I believed, as another
email the same day assured me,
that I have been “pre-approved for
a $215,500 unsecured business line
of credit at 3.91%.”
Even though the latter missive
was allegedly penned by a “vice
president of portfolio management”
and promised that “you can have
funding as soon as today!”
That exclamation point almost
gets me every time, temporarily
stunning my instinctive distrust
with the sheer excitement that only
that particular punctuation mark
can convey.
This sort of email, and its audible
cousin that clogs our cellphones, is
of course a defi ning characteristic
of our age.
This strikes me as something of
a tradeoff.
In exchange for the ability to
plumb all the world’s information,
instantly and from almost any-
place, we are subjected to a barrage
of slimy, if generally transparent,
scams as predictable in their regu-
larity as afternoon rainshowers in
the tropics.
I’ll concede that my complacency
in this matter stems from not hav-
ing ever been the victim of one of
these schemes.
I’m sure I would be more inclined
to anger than to amused aloof-
ness had I ever opened a bill and
learned, much to my surprise, that
I had recently taken a month-long
cruise or put a down payment on a
Ferrari which was quite clearly not
parked in my garage.
(Actually I don’t own a garage. I
am certain, however, that if a Fer-
rari were parked in my driveway I
could hardly miss it. If nothing else
I’d have less space for the much
more mainstream vehicles I actu-
ally do own.)
Obviously these pitches wouldn’t
be ubiquitous if they didn’t work.
Not that they need to work very
often — the immense volume of
potential victims, in an era when
almost everyone has a cellphone
or an email account and most of us
have both, ensures that even a mi-
nuscule percentage of “success” can
be lucrative to the cretins involved.
It happens that on the same day
I was alerted to the $2.8 million
donation and offered the sort of
credit line my income falls far short
of justifying, I also received two
legitimate emails related to this
topic.
One is from Congressman Greg
Walden, touting the House’s pas-
sage of a bill Walden sponsored, the
Stopping Bad Robocalls Act.
The other is from the IRS, and it
suggests ways to avoid a variety of
online scams.
The press release from Walden’s
offi ce refers to robocalls as a “men-
ace.”
“Today Congress once again took
steps to hang up on these call-
ers,” the release reads. “When you
receive a call, you should be able to
trust that there is a reason for that
call — especially when it is from a
familiar area code.”
Of course Walden is correct.
But I don’t share his confi dence
in the effi cacy of the legislation.
The press release contends that
“Congress listened to the Ameri-
can people and voted to end these
pesky calls.”
“End” seems to me more than a
bit of an exaggeration.
The problem, again, is volume.
Walden’s press release highlights
the scale of the task, noting that
last year 47.8 billion robocalls were
placed nationwide.
Of those, an estimated 14.1
million were made in the 541 area
code.
This number actually seems to
me low, since I’m pretty sure my
cellphone alone received 14 million
such calls.
Regardless, I think it’s all but
impossible that the federal govern-
ment can prevent 47.8 billion of
anything from happening.
The purveyors of robocalls have
proved a formidable foe, and I’ve
seen nothing that convinces me the
scammers aren’t capable of feinting
whenever the feds jab.
Perhaps you recall the Do Not
Call List, a term as misleading as
anything the government has yet
conceived.
The feds’ record in such matters
leaves me to conclude that they’ll
purify our communications system
about the same time I get $2.8 mil-
lion from an email.
Jayson Jacoby is editor
of the Baker City Herald.