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The INDEPENDENT, September 6, 2007
The
INDEPENDENT
Published on the first and third Thursdays of each month by
The Independent, LLC, 725 Bridge St., Vernonia, OR 97064.
Phone/Fax: 503-429-9410.
Publisher Clark McGaugh, clark@the-independent.net
Editor Rebecca McGaugh, rebecca@the-independent.net
Assoc. Editor Noni Andersen, noni@the-independent.net
Opinion
Apathy reigns supreme in
Vernonia; but who cares?
If anybody who pays taxes in Vernonia is ever inter-
ested in how the City spends your hard-earned money,
it will be hard to find any reliable answers.
The ever-changing budget has become a bad joke.
The city council accepts without comment whatever
they are told by their hand-picked administrator, M.R.
“Dick” Kline.
The budget was a classic exercise in bad govern-
ment. Kline prepared the budget and provided the
budget committee with NO supporting data. He didn’t
even supply promised year-to-date data on expendi-
tures and income. Why? It wasn’t possible because he
changed the financial software during budget prepara-
tion, also changing line items within funds so it was too
difficult to explain.
By now, you may have noticed the $11.50 increase
in your water bill that Kline said is needed because of
bad fiscal management before he was hired. We are
assured that it is only temporary and will be dropped in
about a year. There is also the $12.00 increase to pay
for planning of phase 1 of the sewer upgrades.
If anyone is interested, there are other thumb-your-
nose-at-taxpayers maneuvers.
Do you remember that city-owned 20 acres of resi-
dential property that has been kept as a rainy day
fund? On July 24, Kline signed a contract with Chris
Balmes, a real estate broker in Tualatin, to represent
Vernonia in the sale of that property. Mayor Harrison
selected the Tualatin broker based on city planner Aldie
Howard’s recommendation. She didn’t talk to any local
brokers, saying she thought an out-of-town broker
could do a better job. The council said nothing until last
night, when Councilor Whiteman said he didn’t like the
way the broker was selected and thinks a policy should
be developed to avoid hand picking.
Well, the city had an ordinance that limited purchas-
ing and contracting by the administrator without coun-
cil approval. It was amended last November, giving full
authority to the administrator for purchasing and con-
tracting as long as the item is in the budget.
It was amended, unanimously, by the same five peo-
ple who were sitting at the council table last night.
Incidentally, Kline and Howard don’t live in Vernonia.
They pay for city utilities elsewhere.
Ike Says…
By Dale Webb, member
Nehalem Valley Chapter, Izaak Walton League
Interesting
weather
we’ve been having; the
Westside of the state is
staying moist while the
Eastside is burning up. I
got to enjoy a few days
over east a couple of
weeks ago; this was while
the fires were going
strong. Two things stuck
out – how dry it was, and the lack of water in the
creeks; some had even gone dry.
Dad and I took our annual trip east, starting up
on Aldrich Mountain in the Murderers Creek unit.
We were very anxious to see what the big fire
there had done to our old hunting grounds. Well,
it has changed the scenery, for sure. Most of the
thickets burned completely out and almost all the
trees within the burn died, very few survived.
This is what is called a stand replacement fire.
We have used three different hunting camps
over the years and all three had burned but,
amazingly, one of the camps could be said to
have survived. The ground in the burn is cov-
ered with green, a lot of this is bearded wheat
that USFS has planted to stabilize the soil. We
were told that deer and elk would probably not
use the wheat as food and we did not see any
evidence of foraging. The wheat is supposed to
be sterile and will die out as the natural vegeta-
tion takes hold. Deer numbers in this area are
very low, we only saw two small bucks. Elk num-
bers seem to be better, with lots of tracks in the
area. Be warned, the bee numbers in this unit
are fairly high, we saw a lot of bald face hornets
and some yellow jackets. I brought along a
screened tent where we set up our dining area
so we didn’t have to deal with the bees trying to
eat our meal. Outside the tent the bees were
humming!
Next, we moved over to the Desolation unit
where we hunt deer. Our trip was centered on
predator hunting and Desolation has a lot more
coyotes than up on Aldrich. Actually, it is pretty
easy to figure out where coyotes are, if there are
deer, squirrels or rabbits in the area, there will be
dogs. The weather was very hot so we set up
camp and laid around, suffering out the heat. Fi-
nally, the temp dipped a bit and Dad led the way
over to a water hole in the nearby forest. The
water hole was just about dried up but, there in
the mud, was a nice sized cougar track. Of
course we tried calling the cat in, with no luck. In
fact we stunk at calling in coyotes, too, although
Dad was able to hand call one in to about 10
yards, of course it was behind him and he only
heard it when it took off. With the weather being
so warm, the coyotes are probably hunting hard
at night and lounging around during the day. The
bee numbers were a lot lower in this unit, but we
did still use the screen tent to have bug free din-
ing and snoozing.
If you are headed over East in the next couple
of months there will be a few things to keep in
Please see page 3