The recent submission to the AIA Sustainable Design Assessment Team (SDAT) spearheaded by South Coast Development Council (SCDC) rightly list the many features of the Coos Bay Area that set it apart from other coastal Oregon cities. The Int’l Port of Coos Bay is the closest deep water port to Asia and the only deep water port between Seattle and San Francisco. The Southwest Oregon Regional Airport is the only commercial airport on the Oregon Coast.
The Bay Area Hospital is a major medical facility and serves much of the coast. The award winning Bandon Dunes Golf Courses draw people into the area increasing the number of executive jet flights from 2 to over 5000 per year (I threw that last part in). Both employ hundreds of people.
The strategic benefits and the natural beauty and world famous golf course and the hunting and fishing and the farms and ranches are not what makes Coos County and the Coos Bay Area famous, unfortunately. Coos County is famous for being a plunderers playground and a text book example of what can go wrong when short term gains as promoted by groups like SCDC overshadow long term benefits. Al Sandine, in his book ‘Plundertown USA: Coos Bay Enters the Global Economy’ likens SCDC to the mill owners and job bosses holding sway over the dependent work force of the early 1900s. Sandine points out that to be a voting member of SCDC costs $10,000 eliminating the common worker as a participant in local development schemes.
David Cay Johnston devotes two full chapters to Coos County in his book ‘Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You With the Bill)’. SCDC receives taxpayer money from the local municipalities and the County but maintains a quasi-governmental/private status apparently enabling it to conduct closed meetings, if it wants to, further excluding the commoners from being ‘in the know’. SCDC, Friends of New and Sustainable Industry (FONSI) and most of the elected leaders in Coos County have presided over and continue to support the plunder of pubic resources and there is probably no more glaring present example than the $30M+ airport and as Johnston notes, a federal subsidy for corporate jet use…
Keiser (owner of Bandon Dunes) is not unique in benefiting from this subsidy…What makes Bandon Dunes distinctive is there is no other beneficiary for the use of the airport at Coos Bay. Commercial passenger traffic has been steady for years at about 100 passengers a day. And those corporate jets, except for maybe three per year, are drawn by the golf links Keiser owns…
Each time an executive takes the company jet to play at Bandon Dunes you pay part of the cost. And the airport improvements, done solely to benefit Bandon Dunes, are also paid for when you buy a commercial airplane ticket or an Oregon lottery ticket.
The total subsidies received just by Bandon Dunes exceed the value of the jobs produced. Given the tens of millions of dollars that have flowed in and through Coos County since I moved here in 2003, why is there nothing to show for it? Why are we hovering at 15% unemployment?
The SDAT intends to send
…multidisciplinary teams of professionals from across the country to provide a road map for communities seeking to improve their sustainability—as defined by a community’s ability to meet the needs of today without reducing the ability of future generations to meet their needs.[emphasis mine]
Coos County has a long and dirty history of enriching the few at the expense of future generations. The old growth timber was cut at rate greater than it could recover from leaving future generations no jobs and little to look forward to beyond pulp mills.
The same mindset that allowed Coos Bay to become dependent on one or two big corporate players for a resource extraction economy is still at work today. SCDC, FONSI, at least two of the three county commissioners and probably most of the professional board members at the local chambers of commerce, urban renewal groups and the Rotary clubs, etc… are maneuvering and lobbying to sell the farm, or in the case of ORC, mineral rights, and sell it on the cheap and the electorate have no one to blame but themselves. These same people presided over the gas pipeline fiasco and the late Ron Opitz, former director of SCDC came from NW Natural, now leasing the pipeline.
So why, with a thirty year record of dismal economic indicators and a 15% unemployment rate, do local leaders continue to make the same decisions? Why do they try and repeat the same failed business model, over and over again? Why do our local leaders allow Coos County to act as a funnel threw which taxpayer money flows straight into foreign corporate bank accounts?
If you read the leaked RNC power point mocking their own donors, prestige, power and fear are primary motivators for donating to the GOP (not that all members of the groups above are Republican). Maybe shucking and jiving with ORC and Jordan Cove and hobnobbing with Bandon Dunes offer some perceived prestige and power in the minds of these people. Enough they would throw caution to the wind and sacrifice the public trust?
Perhaps as Joe Bageant points out in his amazing book ‘Deer Hunting With Jesus’ we have elected people that are little more than functional illiterates and are just plain incapable of the type of critical thinking necessary to be wise stewards of public assets. The SDAT application clearly wasn’t written by a wide swath of the citizenry and reflects a very worm’s eye view of the reasons for Coos County’s ills.
Whatever the reason, Coos County has some elections coming up and needs to make some hard decisions or the continued depression of these last 30 years will likely only get worse.
Glad I clicked on the link that brought me to this story. If your relatively new to this site(like me), then I ask you to ask yourself. Whats changed? The same people with a few new disciples are still moving forward, with help from the governor and his staff, all the locally elected democrats, and the ones we sent to Washington act like they aren’t aware of this battle. WHY?
Wowsa Magix, ya got yerself a poster that knows how to use to/too,there,their !!
Congratulations on that !!!!!
Must be one a them outsiders we hate here in Da Coos.
Send me your email at davidcay@me.com and I will send you an interesting chart on Coos County taxes
Gosh! What an absolute thrill for me when I saw your comment. Thank you so much for your fine work and insight.
The main local paper The World, now owned by Lee Enterprises has a seat on the board of SCDC I’m told. The publisher/editor Clark Walworth is a member of the SCDC, FONSI clique although I don’t know if the cash strapped paper is an honorary SCDC member or if they bought a seat. Many of us have found the selective reporting conducted at The World as indicative of the will of the cliques and not serving the public good.
The reporters themselves are not necessarily happy with editorial restrictions and there have been some signs of late things might be improving as far as real reporting of complex issues but progress is very slow.
The Bandon bookstore is now under new ownership and I have friends checking to see if they will or do carry Free Lunch. The previous owner was married to the manager at the Dunes which may explain why they didn’t carry your book.
Since I moved here in 2003 more than $50M (the number is much larger but I don’t have ready access at the moment) has gone through this county with nothing to show for it but a rarely used airport terminal and a gas pipeline with few customers and still no jobs. No obvious impact to the local economy… so where is the money?
So how thoroughly are these “development” efforts covered in the Coos Bay World and the Bandon Western World? Is there any coverage and, if so, any digging beneath the PR, as you have done here?
Two years ago I found it bizarre that when my book FREE LUNCH came out as an instant national best-seller that, as best I can tell, was blacked out in Coos County. No article, no review, no commentary in the local newspapers; no coverage on local radio.
How many best-sellers open with a story out of Coos County and have a second chapter, both about the local economy?
What does that tell you about the local “news” organizations, which were sent copies? I am sure Mike Keiser would NOT try to stifle coverage because it would go against his political principles, however much he may have disliked my take on the subtle federal and state taxpayer subsidies to his very successful golf courses.
Can you find FREE LUNCH in any bookstores there? Two people told me the one bookstore in Bandon, down in the historic district, did not carry it and one of them told me that they declined to order it.