After ORC lawyer Jerry Fish broke off mineral lease negotiations this winter, he stated there may be a lack of trust at Coos County and suggested a cooling off period. “Perhaps after the company has been in operation for some time, and the county has a chance to become more comfortable with the busness, the operations, and the clear benefits to the county of having this new long-term industry providing family wage jobs, the trust will grow. Then we can begin negotiations with a fresh start”.
Since the very recent appointment of Fred Messerle there appears to be a renewed effort to reopen those negotiations being waged at The World. A recent editorial and letters to the editor from the usual mouthpieces at SCDC (South Coast Development Council) and the Bay Area Chamber of Commerrce are selling the prospect hard that acquiescing to the company’s demands are in the best interests of the public. As always, these one sided sales pitches ignore the very valid concerns and points raised by Commissioner Bob Main and termed “onerous” by Fish.
ORC objected to the county not allowing the use of county land as collateral for ORC loans and refused to guarantee the minimum average earning the land would earn via timber proceeds.
Now, all of a sudden there is a big hurry to sign before the interim positions are filled in the democratic way by holding elections. Golly, what is the rush? ORC has approximately six years of leases already sewn up so why not wait eleven months until the first primary election next May?
Messerle’s spouse, Sandy Messerle, is the director of SCDC a strong proponent of ORC and strip mining. Opponents of the strip miners believe there will be a zero net job gain to the county and possibly even a net job loss. Because SCDC has advocated on behalf of ORC, Messerle should probably recuse from voting on these mineral leases.
Further, neither Parry nor Messerle are elected and have received no public mandate from the people to support their views on any long term decisions made on behalf of the county. The law doesn’t restrict what they can vote on but their conscience should tell them to wait until the public have had the chance to vote.
THANK YOU RU !!!
Hold on, it’s going to be a bumpy ride. These guys have a plan, they really did hit the ground running. They have a plan, and we won’t have one damn thing to say about it.
The American voter is waking up, they’re close to having to “eat the paint off their walls” and they are watching. Thank gawd. These clowns won’t fly below our radar now, but the damage they can do can cause a huge amount of disruption.
What the Astoria articles do show is that if the community really does work together creative solutions can be applied successfully and they don’t have to include ONLY extractive industries.
You are right, RU that the paper, when it does report the news, follows it up with an apologist editorial to soften the impact of that news on its favorites. Luckily, the size of their bullhorn appears to be shrinking.
Now we get editorials that the daily bird cage liner apparently believes are needed to justify their reporters crappy writing. There is no comparison between Astoria and Coos Bay. The bird cage liner misleads about cruise lines; they conveniently forget the local Costco; they forget the local Home Depot; they ignore the nearby thousands of Washington residents who cross the bridge for sales tax free Oregon shopping; they ignore people friendly commissioners; voters who throw non responsive commissioners out of office; coordinated efforts of the locals to improve their community; recognition that Astoria is a tourist based community; and the nearby masses of Portland residents taking day trips in good weather.
ORC is here! Unless the market for their product collapses, they are not leaving. When you have one daily paper editor claiming that he worked his entire career of at least 30 years so he would end up at a minimum circulation, second rate, six day per week paper – except holidays – in the boonies of America; and his partner editor who has written about his neighbors and customers as “idiots”; editors who apparently do not understand business but parrot the proganda of ORC to convince the people that the people should lose money so ORC can mine county lands, it’s time for Main and his supporters to educate the people why he thinks as he does. Does not make good business sense to me to willingly lose $30,000 per acre of peoples owned forest annually in return for a $2 acre payment from ORC. Expect Messerle to do whatever is required to make his SCDC queen wife a success. In the past two years she has done nothing except spend your tax dollars. The voters of Coos County would never have elected (unknown) Parry and (known) Messerle. These two fellows have less than one year before the next election. Not too early to locate people who can lead this county into the future.
Their chances of reelection will be severely impaired if they do a lot of radical stuff that doesn’t sit well with the public. Paying for outside consultants to do the job they claimed they could do when they applied is not a good start.
Let’s not forget how much damage Kevin was able to accomplish during his first two years in office… we have to watch them like a hawk
The mad dash to change the number of commissioners and to sign a quick mineral lease would indicate a lack of confidence that Parry or Messerle will win in an election.