Golly gee whiz it seems like the determination on the part of Stufflebean to pave 4.7 miles of W Beaver Hill Road are not as originally believed a matter of contention for a mineral lease between the County and ORC. Instead, it appears that earlier planning meetings and land use issues had the County agreeing to pay for improvements to the road to benefit a mineral lease between ORC and Weyerhauser.
Presently, I am too tired to write all the details but it has something to do with condition 13 of a conditional use permit allowing ORC to mine non County property. Give me a day or so and I will try and put down all the facts here and see if we are doomed to pay this $450K or if we have a chance to defer some of these costs, after all ORC is not going to pay their share of road maintenance for at least a year.
I agree 100% Magix, thank you channel 14 !!!!! I really didn’t know how many watched, I thought I was the only one. Whew !
I was thinking about this last night Magix,have you noticed this attempt by the Commission to shut up the public? I know you covered this, but for some out there who weren’t along on Stufflebutt and Witless and their Magical Mystery Tour with us, I will outline The Steps Towards Insignificance”.
Firstly, said obstruction had not been noticed prior to Dec. 31, 2008. Citizens were indeed free to address their Commissioners as they are legally entitled to do.
Then the first public meeting required all questions asked to be vetted by the Board and The Grand PooBaaw, if acceptable they would answer. How’d that one go over for ya ?
The second meeting was the introduction to Wittless’ Egg Timer Extraordinaire. But she was gracious enough to give the poor public citizrns THREE minutes to address the exhaulted.
The third meeting A-Rod sent ‘reinforcements’ wink, wink, and Wittless has now decided the miscreants and malcontents deserved NO BETTER THAN ONE MINUTE TO ADDRESS THE GRAND AND EXHAULTED COMMISSIONERS, AND THEIR GRAND POOBAH.
What the hell will they require next from we plebians? Crawl into the Coos County Courthouse and slip our questions under a door?
OH SILLY ME , THEY ALREADY THOUGHT OF THAT ONE. Damn, these Muskateers are always one step ahead of us ain’t they?
First
Channel 14 has helped spawn a new era of contempt for local public process and we should be forever grateful to them. Meanwhile we still have no one sitting on our councils that appear to know how to calculate a return on investment – otherwise they would not make lame statements like “probably brought more into the area than it took out” when referring to tax dollars spent on public projects. Imagine if he really knew the real ROI… imagine if we knew the real ROI…
These are some of my favorite saying by one of the current airport commissioners.
Lehman: Government bodies operate in this little cone of silence. Sometimes you lose sight of the fact that the public doesn’t understand why you have to buy $1,000 garbage cans.
Lehman: Bottom line is, yeah this was a lot of money, but it’s not property tax dollars that supported it. It probably brought more into the area than it took out.
7/20/08.
Lehman: No local property tax dollars and no state income tax dollars went into the terminal.
Mike Lehman, chairman of the Coos County Airport District Commission, attended a conference where Horizon Air executives indicated North Bend’s air service was at risk of a cutback or even elimination.
This is the one he kept in that cone of silence.
When it can be this bad, there has to be a ray of hope
That is excellent, themguys! It is unfortunate that meetings are often scheduled during the day disenfranchising many from participating in County governance. Truthfully, it is easily a full time job chasing around to attend these meetings and having not followed the mining issue from its inception, I am struggling just to catch up.
To limit people to one minute that drove half an hour or took time off from their jobs to attend is simply rude, disrespectful of the citizenry and essentially negates the point of having a public meeting. We should time the commissioners and cut them off mid sentence in favor of hearing from the public.
Well at least we aren’t alone in demanding to be a part of the process, folks in Montana are dealing with the same issues, this a comment from NW Montana:
My point is this: Our American system allows us an awesome privilege of being involved in our government. With that privilege comes the responsibility of BEING involved. Each of us has a place to be inserted in the process and we don’t belong in every part of it. That is how the checks and balances work. If you take a look at the inside pages of your growth policy you will see my name there. And you better believe that I take what is in there very seriously, and I am going to monitor how it is being used against the residents of Flathead County, and if I think that I need to speak to an issue I will.
den, thank you for your information.
I have NO idea what is going on here, I really don’t.
So ORC’s “people” wrote the terms and conditions of the mining, or the exploration, as Kevin and Nikky were quick to point out the difference between the two.
Roads to where? Weyerhouser? County land, both?
How many Weyerhouser acres, how many county, and how many involved in ORC’s “threat” to mine adjacent to Bandon Dunes, which they will NEVER do, I think that was just ORC with a great big “WE’LL TAKE OUR TOYS AND GO HOME IF WE DON’T GET OUR WAY” waa, waa, waa.
I’m going to have to defer to Inspector Cleuseau (sp) to do this one, they’ve succeeded in pulling the wool, AND the black sand over my eyes.
Jist the way they like it, uh huh, uh huh.
That thing they had on Tue. was not a public hearing. It was just your ordinary public meeting under the open meeting statues. It is no surprise, even-though I am surprised so few know what is happening.
I put in a public document request 2/13/09 that was returned denied on 2/24/09 with all the proper ORS paragraphs quoted. What I asked for were the one or possible two correspondence sent to ORS in Nov. 08 concerning this very subject, “Oregon Resources will have to enter into a new exploration agreement and mining lease with the county before they can apply for the required land use permits.â€
The executive meeting and land deals were quoted for denial, and also the upgrade 2005 ORS concerning attorney-client privilege. For you see, it is the attorneys who control the deals. The commissioners have to due diligence to understand just what is happening . One might wonder, just who might the client, of the attorney be. So if you want open and transparent meeting and information, I am sure waiting for your suggestions.
Trying to keep up with you and Cajun will severely tax my already sorry southern vernacular – and I am already under the weather…
M – git yerself some asfidity, tie it around yer neck, ya’ll never git sick agin.
Am fighting a bug, or succumbing to exhaustion, not sure which, so am a little off my game but…
As promised I am going to try, with the information I have at my fingertips, to document the land use conditions and State proportional use statutes that caused interim County roadmaster, Kevin Stufflebean to commit $450K of road department funds on behalf of ORC and the Weyerhauser mineral mining site.
Check back later tonight
You know M, I am simply baffled by this news. I’ve been trying to follow this for two years, and I have either forgotten or never even heard it was Weyer. land. I guess I just thought it was county land.
Geesh.
Then this in a comment today in the World:
Hat tip to High:
High Minded wrote on Feb 26, 2009 8:59 AM:
I wasn’t at the hearing on Tuesday, but it does sound like the shouting woman was out of line.
But you know what else is out of line, the Commissioners’ decision to limit public comment to 1 minute. This decision comes after the Commissioners met individually with mining officials in early February.
Here’s what Haggerty said on the heald of that meeting, “Oregon Resources will have to enter into a new exploration agreement and mining lease with the county before they can apply for the required land use permits.â€
So what has changed since then, before the public got a chance to comment, why is the land use approval now a done deal?
It is clear that the Commissioners had the public hearing just to pay lip service to the community. They already made up their minds earlier in the month. That’s why they limited public comment to 1 minute; they didn’t care what the public had to say.
Is speaking out of turn any worse than what the Commissioners are doing? I think I prefer a little disruption over outright corruption.