Even the subtitle of the paper’s latest diversion is salacious, “Pantry problems shine light on alleged conflicts of interest”. Rather than contribute any more oxygen to all this “investigative reporting” and go through it paragraph by paragraph I will just say that there are some real conflicts of interest at the county right now. ORCCA has grown dramatically and Bill Gates, or Larry Ellison or even Oprah Winfrey didn’t get where they are without making some enemies along the way. Mary Schoen-Clark may or may not be tough to work with but she obviously gets results and her organization has created a hell of a lot more jobs in Coos County than, oh say, SCDC, the Port of Coos Bay or FONSI.
It is perfectly natural to hire consultants that are already familiar if one knows their work is good. It is perfectly natural to build a team of individuals that work well together and as far as I know there is absolutely nothing indictable about a co-worker acting as godparent to your child.
How much money did the paper expend on this story about ORCCA while it ignores the mismanagement and incompetence at the county and the port? Maybe they can’t understand these complex issues enough to articulate them so they resort to tabloid innuendo and pick on a food bank.
Water banking sounds cool but has caused many problems in other areas. Perhaps they can work something out for this area but I am not too optimistic. 1) because of the problems I have read about elsewhere and 2) they are using Ron Yoakim, a resource attorney out of Douglas County to draft the proposal and I have heard some horror stories about his regard or lack thereof for the environment.
Saw the story on Cam’s scheme for water banking.
From Wikipedia.
Despite its goals of minimizing ecological loss, mitigation can be seen as a “loophole” that allows environmental destruction to continue.[1] The lower the cost of credits are, the more cost effective it becomes for buyers to simply mitigate for environmental impacts rather than preserving them. Because ecological success of mitigation work is not guaranteed, there is a greater risk of net environmental loss through failed, ineffective mitigation work intended to compensate for existing functioning natural resources.
Mitigation can also undermine existing preservation efforts. If an environmental asset is set aside for mitigation purposes, that asset can continue to be damaged until a project arises that requires mitigation. At that point, the asset in question may be damaged beyond repair or the cost of mitigation may increase. Even if no further damage has been done, a net loss to society has occurred if the cost of mitigation is higher than if volunteers completed the work.
This will just allow more legal shuffling of public funds and resources out, while opening the door wider for polluters. Wrong way, Peter Peachfuzz. Just another scheme.
Why don’t you guys declare Coos County a “free building permit zone”, just charge a minimal inspection fees to builders, and watch free enterprise put carpenters back to work, which puts everyone to work supporting them. Give the general public 5 years of special breaks, everyone else seems to get them if your connected.
It was also nice to hear sweet loveable Jim Bice go ballistic – twice – today at Messerle and his attempts at absolute control over the county.
Regarding ORC. Every time that you see a quarter page ad for ORC in the daily bird cage liner with an employees photo that says nothing (and that is often), ask how much of your tax dollars are paying for that ad. Nice way to pay Clarkie for his support.
theworldlink is doing exactly what SCDC wants it to do concerning ORCCA.
There’s a lot of axes to grind between them. We all know Jon tells Clark what and when to run the headlines on ORCCA. Wouldn’t it be satisfying to see a similar local paper run an expose on the successful accomplishments and failings that could be attributed to SCDC. What did the tax payers receive for their investment to SCDC?
Although, whether you like the cromite mining or not, those jobs at ORC could probably owe their existence to Jon Barton, he sure worked hard enough to get them some good-ol fashioned tax exemptions for setting up shop in town. What did he receive in return? Maybe he only received their yearly dues to SCDC, you think.