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The INDEPENDENT, April 17, 2008
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
Mentor Noni Andersen
Opinion
No means yes to columns
On Friday, April 11, Interim City Administrator Aldie
Howard said we were NOT going to get any columns
from the city. Later the same day, we were told that the
columnists had been told to go ahead and give us the
columns. Well, the columns arrived and hopefully will
continue to do so.
What does VCLC cost you?
Revenue and Expenditure reports started being
available in the last month. We got a set on March 8.
These are the first year-to-date numbers we’ve seen
since well before the last budget meetings (in May of
2007). What do they have to say about the Vernonia
Community Learning Center (VCLC)? Well, first some
history. The grand opening was on September 6, 2006.
It was built primarily using a $500,000 CDBG grant.
The grant requires the building to be used for ‘it’s stat-
ed purpose’ for five years, otherwise the grant is in de-
fault and has to be paid back. The clock starts ticking
when the construction is ‘’closed’, meaning the building
is done. Over a year and seven months have passed
since the grand opening and the construction still has
not “closed”. That means the five year clock hasn’t
started ticking. That first year, city council approved a
$25,000 operating loan to tide the VCLC over while it
got up and became self-supporting. The city came up
with the other $29,339 for the first year’s expenses and
an additional ongoing contract fee of $3,200 per month
for a Director (Jesse Jones) to run the VCLC. So far the
VCLC is not self-supporting. City Council approved a
budget for 07/08 of $101,853 (including $37,000 from
grants). $8,370 was expected to come from classes
and center rents. As of 2/28/08, the VCLC had brought
in only $3,813.60 from sources other than the grant.
That averages out to $476.00 per month, not even
enough to make the loan payments for that $25,000
loan. We calculated the monthly expenses of the
VCLC, with Jones contract, at $4,319.85. VCLC is
‘making’ more money now with a number of agencies
renting space there since the flood.
So, the city has budgeted $156,192 for the VCLC’s
first two years while we’ve been paying $11.50 extra on
our water bill to re-build ‘lost’ loan reserves of
$108,000. Maybe the $156,192 allocated to VCLC
could have been better used?
Out Of My Mind…
by Noni Andersen
Shutting down salmon fishing from Cape Fal-
con to the Mexican border will create enormous
economic damage to coastal communities in
Oregon and California. It is not only commercial
fishermen who will lose a large part of their liveli-
hood. Among those harmed will be people who
earn all or part of their income from fishing char-
ter businesses, restaurants, motels, bait shops
and more. In an already shaky national economy,
additional trauma in those areas will likely trigger
a “domino effect,” reducing income for public
services such as libraries, law enforcement,
street repairs and much more.
Rarely mentioned is that both federal and
state governments have known for over 40 years
that California water projects would divert water
from the Sacramento, Feather and American
Rivers, harming both the quantity and quality of
water available for fish and other marine life.
So, if they knew about the eventual results,
why was the water project built? For the benefit
of industrial agriculture, of course. Corporate
farms had long been dominant in the Sacramen-
to and San Joaquin Valleys, and it wasn’t until
1992 that federal policy included water allot-
ments for fish and wildlife.
Why should Oregonians care? Aside from the
obvious – that fish don’t pay attention to county,
state or national boundaries – all federal taxpay-
ers helped pay for the agricultural water projects
in California, as they have in Oregon’s Klamath
Basin. Remember, it was only two years ago that
the Klamath River salmon fishery collapsed.
This isn’t a diatribe against big agriculture.
This is merely commentary on how we, human
beings, repeatedly foul our own nests by acting
as though we have the God-given ability to con-
trol the natural world for our own benefit. We dis-
play this chutzpah, erroneously, in many ways.
Local history is a small example.
In 1996, cold weather, snow and rain com-
bined to create floods that exceeded the previ-
ous “big one” about 100 years earlier. That storm
also triggered landslides throughout western
Oregon, most of them on steep slopes that had
been clearcut within a few years. Did this hard-
earned lesson teach us anything?
Between the floods of 1996 and 2007, we al-
lowed construction of the Blue Heron Hollow
apartment complex and a nearby industrial build-
ing; filled a natural flood plain and built a school
on top of it; added several homes in another nat-
urally low area adjacent to Rock Creek at the end
of Grant Avenue and A Street, allowed more fill
and asphalt in another low area off C Street; ap-
proved development in the flood plain industrial
zone along N. Mist Drive.
A few of those structures were high enough to
avoid flooding. Of course, they displaced enough
water to cause greater harm elsewhere.
Also, between the floods of ‘96 and ‘07, clear-
cutting continued, with a few restrictions. The ex-
perts at the OSU School of Forestry clearcut
steep slopes at Marshfield, near Clatskanie, and
were surprised when landslides damaged or
even destroyed homes.
We humans are slow learners.