Success, as defined by Webster’s Dictionary is “the favorable or prosperous termination of attempts or endeavors.” The measure of success must then factor in the loftiness of goals and the effort required to achieve them, i.e. successfully brewing a cup of coffee or changing the world. A recent newsletter put out by SCDC a local economic development agency ignores its failure to implement any of the SDAT recommendations and instead defines success thusly-

We have seen amazing success stories in the past year – Oregon Resources Corporation, a $110 million investment on the South Coast, with 80 newly created direct jobs, and over 135 indirect new and retained jobs,
spread across a multitude of local companies…the re-opening of the South Coast’s rail line…and new air service flights to Portland from Southwest Oregon Regional Airport

Though SCDC had little or nothing to do with ORC locating in Coos County to mine chromite the company’s investment in a single purpose facility that can be dismantled and moved elsewhere is subsidized by the taxpayers in the form of a five year property tax abatement. Those jobs, some paying less than $15 hour will cost the taxpayer an estimated $3 million. Despite this investment Coos County has suffered a net loss of 240 jobs just since November 2010.

Most flights are subsidized and the cost of bringing the Coos Bay Rail Line, single track with limited capacity, up to snuff is still undetermined and it is hard to see how a net job loss meets the definition of success by anyone’s measurement much less an agency tasked with job creation but that hasn’t stopped SCDC and its chairman of the board, Jon Barton, from attacking its critics and implying they are too stupid to understand complex concepts.

As with every situation involving significant change, there will be those who speak out loudly against that which they don’t understand..[Emphasis mine]

There you have it, if anyone finds flaws in their logic, or fault with their reasoning or present contradictory statistical and empirical data opposing their claims then those people just “don’t understand”. Barton, in a recent letter takes the State Attorney General, John Kroger, to task for enforcing the law and protecting Oregonians by curtailing federal agencies from superseding state rights and ignoring rules that might infringe upon the rights of Oregon property owners. He characterizes Kroger doing his job protecting Oregonians as an ideological move, and accuses the AG of “…ignoring the 13% unemployment rate on Oregon’s south coast and the fact that 26% for the populace is below the federal poverty level and half the children in our schools qualify for subsidized lunches or that our entire infrastructure, schools, roads, government buildings, is crumbling away with no money to fix it…” and sacrificing jobs in order to “save the planet.”

Notwithstanding the failure of any of the economic development schemes promoted by SCDC; coal export, LNG, chromite, etc… all located in urban renewal or enterprise zones, to contribute anything toward repairing crumbling infrastructure and underfunded schools, it seems that Barton is completely oblivious to the damage environmental degradation has on the economy. The trees are all cut down and the streams damaged so that salmon can’t spawn and for someone touting the area as a “resource extraction economy” (SDAT suggested that stop) surely he ought to be able to see the benefit of taking care of that resource so it can continue to produce. The goose won’t be laying golden eggs without some nourishment and health care.
[See what a coal export terminal looks like]

Imagination is defined as “the act or power of forming a mental image of something not present to the senses or never before wholly perceived in reality.” What if we imagined a South Coast without the Port Commission and SCDC, would any of us really notice much? After all, both seem firmly entrenched in perpetuating finite 19th century industries with no place in the future. Would we actually notice if they both just went away? Economic development in Coos County is only constrained by a failure of imagination.

SCDC can’t imagine community owned projects like environmentally responsible forests, fisheries, organic agriculture and energy production. They can’t see past an old paradigm of centralized control and profiteering that has so plundered rural America like the conduct of Weyco and GP. They believe because there was once a prosperous carriage and buggy manufacturer, or a steam engine repair shop or a ball and musket factory that it should all be the same again. They can’t imagine an estuarine used for anything else than bulk export and even then they can’t beat nature’s own topographical and meteorological impediments to such a scheme.

The gate posts at the forward operating base where my son was stationed in Ramadi in 2004 were covered with axioms to remind every convoy before each outing of the dangers they faced. “Complacency Kills” warned one and “Adapt or Die” urged another. In Joseph Tainter’s, The Collapse of Complex Societies, it is postulated that great empires like the Romans did not collapse as suspected as a result of resource depletion, rather they fell because their leaders failed to adapt to diminishing resources. Adapt or die.

The world is changing and Coos County cannot expect or even want things to ever be the way they were, look where rampant unrestrained extraction has left us, and should instead embrace a future of diversity and change and sustainability. Alas, SCDC and the Port have been unable or unwilling to implement the recommendations of the Sustainable Design Assessment Team and so, to quote Jon Barton, if we don’t remove the stifling influence of these two agencies and their affiliates, if they don’t just “get out of the way” of a 22nd century greener future, Coos County will soon “become wards of this state.”

Coos County does not have to limit its potential to the fossilized vision of SCDC, the Port and the Chamber of Commerce. The county is not constrained by their failure of imagination, but only by the funds they extract from the economy to invest in foolish backward looking schemes. The county does not have to buy into an unsightly LNG terminal on the North Spit that will bring no more prosperity to Coos County than similar terminals have done elsewhere. The county does not have to be constrained by the lack of imagination demonstrated by Jon Barton and Sandy Messerle pushing coal and gas.

Instead the citizens can develop their own jobs plan and form their own community projects and let their imaginations run wild with the unlimited possibility of a renewable future.

Beirut dares to imagine and implementBeirut imagines and implements a bright future.

Multipurpose wind turbines for wide scale distributed energy.

Economic leakage is a term used to describe money that looks as if it is benefiting a particular area is actually going elsewhere. The JOB Messiahs documents not only a long history of economic failure but helps point the spotlight on how these schemes keep the county mired in poverty and decline by wasting resources on projects that support economic leakage.

For the New Year, imagine the county without a port and SCDC intruding on economic development and let small business, the real economic backbone of the country, envision an affordable and sustainable future.