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The INDEPENDENT, February 4, 2010
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
Printed on recycled paper with vegetable based dyes
Opinion
What’s your council doing?
At the Febrary 1 Vernonia City Council meeting, Mayor
Sally Harrison said she liked, in fact she said she’d frame,
our January 21 editorial. That was the last nice thing she
said about The Independent or Clark McGaugh, the publish-
er. Now someone recently told us that “All government is
corrupt.” That being the case, it should come as no surprise
to see the council using their, and their audience’s, precious
time to take potshots at the newspaper.
What is a surprise is that council would, once again, ap-
pear to believe that name calling and saying nasty or even
crude things will somehow make us be nice and write what
amounts to the “Vernonia City Council” party line. They’ve
tried it before and apparently it didn’t pan out so why not try
again. This is the second time the Mayor has stepped down
from the podium to ‘blast away’ at the paper.
Albert Einstein, noted physicist, gave this definition of in-
sanity, “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again
and expecting different results.” Perhaps council and city
staff could try a new idea, cooperating with us and giving us
information so we can do our job of “holding government ac-
countable” without the need for all their drama.
And Planning Commission?
It seems to be pervasive. The Vernonia Planning Com-
mission worked on a sign ordinance. When they had it the
way they wanted it to be, they held a public hearing and no-
body came. Later, most people said they didn’t know about
it; they were busy that night; they had no idea that some-
thing ‘big’ was on the agenda, etc. So, Planning Commis-
sion sends the ordinance to Vernonia City Council for their
public hearing and vote. At that public hearing, held Febru-
ary 19, over 20 business people appear and clearly state
that now that they are aware of the ordinance, they have big
problems with it. Council holds the hearing open to let the
planners look at it again.
At the Planning Commission’s January 21 meeting, the
business owners were called “spoiled children”. Statements
made included, “If they want to play games, we’ll just start
enforcing the current code,” and that the business owners,
“have no respect for the Planning Commission.” The meet-
ing was tape recorded. Not everyone made rude comments,
though Planning Commission Chair Dan Brown and Com-
missioner Sharon Parrow did. Commissioners Nancy Dailey
and Alan MacComb weren’t there. No rude comments at all
from Commissioner Grant Williams. The question that must
come to mind is, “Really, who is behaving like spoiled chil-
dren?”
Does it sound to you, the citizens of Vernonia, like you are
being well represented in council and commission?
What can be done? Attend meetings, write letters to the
editor, vote, tell council how you want them to SERVE you.
Ike Says…
By Dale Webb, member
Nehalem Valley Chapter, Izaak Walton League
The ODF&W Commis-
sion has directed its staff
to present data and pro-
posals to deal with hunting
accidents. While
this
sounds like a good cause,
we need to step back and
examine the facts. What
is driving the recent re-
view was the fatal hunting
accident in December of 2009, when 15-year-old
Matthew Gretzon was shot by his uncle while
hunting for elk near Grande Ronde. The victim
was not wearing Hunter Orange (H.O.). It was
not clear from the accident report that H.O.
would have made a difference, since the uncle
was shooting at an elk and did not see his
nephew due to brush. It is a sad affair and, log-
ically, one would think that pursuing every av-
enue available is needed to help reduce such
needless deaths.
Taken from the Mark Freeman article in the
Dec. 17, 2009 issue of the Medford Mail Tribune:
“I’ve hunted in several other states where orange
is required, and I’ve never understood why it wasn’t
required here,” says commissioner Dan Edge, who
initiated the discussion surrounding Gretzon’s death
during a commission meeting Dec. 10 in Salem.
“We should go through the public process to see
what the hunters think about it,” Edge says. “But it’s
a pretty compelling argument: Almost everyone
killed out there isn’t wearing hunter orange.”
Looking at ODF&W stats for hunting acci-
dents in Oregon since 1998, there have been 68
hunting accident involving firearms, 48 of those
were what are called two-party incidents where
one person shoots another, 20 were self-inflict-
ed. Of that total, 14 accidents were fatal.
Sounds ghastly doesn’t it, shot with a firearm
and dying? All but one of the victims was not
wearing H.O. Digging deeper into each incident,
though, the picture becomes more clouded:
Three incidents point out that wearing H.O.
would have definitely made a difference; in sev-
en deaths it was debatable whether or not wear-
ing H.O. would have made a difference; in three
cases H.O. would not have helped.
40 states require some form of H.O. Nation-
ally, the accident rate involving firearms during
hunting is 52 people per 1,000,000 hunters, and
the death rate is five per million. Oregon stacks
up pretty close to this at 32 accidents per million
hunters, and a death rate of 6.6 per million,
slightly higher than the national rate.
So what do sportspeople think of the possibil-
ity of mandated H.O.? They are pretty well split
on the issue, with some viewing mandated H.O.
as a minor inconvenience, and others viewing
the mandate as an intrusion into personal free-
dom. One interesting comment I read is “The
state is not my mother, I don’t need them to tell
me what to wear.” The comment that stirred my
questioning mind, though, was, “This appears to
be a solution looking for a problem.” With that
Please see page 21