Last January we reported on the $58 million in 2008 ARRA funds spent in Coos County. Of those funds almost $22 million, equal to $350 per person, was designated for Port related projects that unlike other infrastructure improvements had no impact on the daily quality of life of most citizens.
Widely touted as the “principal economic driver for the counties of Coos, Curry and western Douglas”, at least according to an April 11, FONSI alert, the Port’s long term economic development strategy is unknown and appears to operate absent any defined goals, timeline, benchmarks or oversight or means to evaluate success. The Port spends millions of dollars on economic develop schemes from railroads to channel widening without any assurance of how many jobs the public can expect or when to expect them. The Port makes no effort to define the anticipated cost per job for these efforts.
The public is understandably skeptical and question the guidance of the commissioners who appear to rely solely on the judgment of director Jeff Bishop for these multimillion dollar gambles. Since Bishop’s employment began in 2005, the public has witnessed the Port enter into a highly unorthodox land option secured by $25 million in loans signed by the Port only to terminate it without explanation five years later. The Port borrowed another $5 million, in advance of receiving State lottery funds allocated for dredging knowing they didn’t have a railroad or valid terminal operator, both requirements of the payment.
Now the Port has declared a recently acquired railroad line an emergency in order to facilitate repairs so that an unnamed private wood products company can deliver product from Reedsport to Veneta at the blazing speed of 10MPH no later than June. Bishop has accused detractors who question his leadership and reckless spending of being ‘anti-development’, ‘NIMBYS’ and “parochial and devoid of pragmatism”…
The commissioners rarely ask questions or discuss anything amongst themselves (at least, not at the public meetings) raising concerns amongst citizens regarding the wisdom of their votes. At Thursday’s Port meeting Commissioner Caddy McKeown advised the audience the Port had nothing to do with the Jordan Cove permitting process. While it is true the Port has no control over Jordan Cove’s actions to apply for permits with FERC or Army Corps or, for that matter, any say over whether they export rather than import (Bishop overstepped his bounds on that one) the Port is an intervenor on the FERC application in support of Jordan Cove. The Port has written numerous letters to FERC and submitted comments to FERC in support of the Jordan Cove facility.
The Port has proposed building a slip dock for Jordan Cove and has based its investment of hundreds of thousands of dollars of feasibility studies in the last three years for a container dock upon sharing the development costs with Jordan Cove. Is McKeown unaware of all this? If so, what is she doing on the commission? [more on this in a later post]
The Port, SCDC and FONSI have sold the public on many white elephants in the past with the promise of jobs. These same people argued for the 12” pipeline promising 2,900 jobs! SCDC solicited the AIA to conduct a sustainability assessment of Coos County and then ignored the team’s findings and recommendations. It is no wonder these groups and their individual mouthpieces have lost local influence.
Since 2008 county unemployment increased 2.6%, to 12.7% and poverty levels are at a whopping 15.6%, higher than state and national averages. No one has faith in this small collection of self proclaimed business development experts anymore. As Albert Einstein famously said, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”
George Santayana, who, in his Reason in Common Sense, The Life of Reason, Vol.1, wrote “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Citizens in Coos County have not forgotten all the past failures and have lost faith with Bishop’s parochial view of economic development. Unfortunately, the public now have as much contempt for Bishop as he has for the public.
The concern I have is that this band of ignorant scoundrels is not only wasting money and lying at every turn of the trail; they are also working in the back room to site a LNG Bomb in the path of an earthquake and tsunami. The Port is not up to the task and the lives of the people in Coos Bay/North Bend are swinging in the balance. The banks and timber companies could not care less and the elected Democrats are delivering all that cash to finance this blunder. Their children are not risking flaming death why should they care? Bishop is fearless because he knows no one in power will touch him or the Port. The government of the State of Oregon is rotten with incompetance and corruption and it runs right straight to John Kitzhaber’s desk.
It is too bad, the local democratic central committee didn’t embrace the green candidate for a second run as her platform is probably much more in line with what was once the democratic party agenda… perpetuating the two party system leaves one or the other party supporting mediocre candidates rather than pushing for progress.
In 2000, the Pacific Green Party ran a candidate against Joanne for State Rep, and took an excellent 25% of the vote! I do believe if she had run again in the next election, we might have had a winner. Perhaps the time is right for another try.
It is past time to inject some new fresh blood into the state legislature but first we would have to identify honest, sharp and progressive candidates… obviously willing to run. Further, they would probably have to run as third party candidates because the local democratic party rarely veers away from its incumbents. This will make fundraising early very important.
Themguys, I stopped posting online after the worldlink required registration to comment. It worked, most of us shriveled at the thought of a list of names being acquired by the paper to be used by the enemy(the port of coos bay). Many opponents of this project are still working in the community in the service industries. This makes them vulnerable to the people supporting this crap, as many of the SCDC members are influential enough, or know someone who is capable of making your life hell around here if you work for one of them or their buddy’s business. That being said, I was compelled to comment over your suggestion we contact Roblan and Peter D.
Thats been done over and over. Their response is sickening to the soul. Roblan’s office has always responded that He is trying to make up his mind as he gets the money they need for the railroad and cosponsor bills to make it easier for the pipeline company’s to steal your land. Peter suggested to me to contact someone else, Roseburg Lumber and Weyerhauser, He told me to complain to the sellers of the property. Vergers office gave the same response as Roblans, only her job is to get the money for the dredging they will require. These Representatives are the Democrats, the Republicans scared us more at election time so this is what you get. The best politicians money can buy. The corruption is sickening and goes to the top of our state and beyond. The people doing this don’t care about you or your neighbor, Stealing land to do it does not bother them one little bit. They are all thieves by nature and would not hesitate to destroy you if you get in their way.
It is true, anti-LNG activists are not against development or a cargo terminal for that matter. The people have lost faith in the old guard movers and shakers having the competence to pull off a major development and people seriously doubt the skills of Jeff Bishop, particularly when he gets his facts wrong in a paid advertisement. The Port sucks up a lot of development money that would have been available for sustainable small business but is instead directed toward Bishop’s worm’s eye view of maritime industrial development.
What the port doesn’t understand is that people don’t believe they have the chops to do major development correctly
Why doesn’t Clark Walworth think it not news to report this crap? Shame on him for calling himself a newsman. He couldn’t be further from one. He’s a stenographer with pom poms, period. He will not tell the people of this county, his readers, the truth about any of these truths. He’s in bed with every one of them, and how he continues to print sports and PR for ORC, The Port, etc. makes him a laughing stock at this point. He’s now gone to sports sports sports, I guess that will work as long as the schools can still afford atheletics, shouldn’t be long now, huh? This is beyond sad, this is getting critical.
Someone needs to go to Roblan and Peter D and the rest and stop this insane funding.