While it is no surprise that I do not support Fred Messerle, or the anti-government forces backing him, in their mutual quest to privatize Coos County services, I would have to say that Messerle is by far the most well mannered member of the current commission. As someone how knows how to write a business plan, read a balance sheet and calculate net present value and internal rates of return to evaluate an investment I admit to finding his simplistic and vague folksy responses to questions and his apparent failure to calculate NPV and IRR into some of the numbers he throws out frustrating but he definitely behaves better on the bench than his fellow commissioners.

Parry, of course, is often downright abusive to citizens, in particular Randy Sanne and to a lesser degree myself, and shame on Main and Messerle for allowing him to mistreat constituents the way he has in the past. Parry isn’t just rude and abusive, however, he willfully throws out provably false claims as fact as he did today regarding the tribe and the Coos Bay Wagon Road lands and what the tribe can accomplish in Congress (more in a separate post) and dodges and weaves like a prizefighter, diverting the topic to something else, usually by accusing the speaker of campaigning or bringing up sledgehammers, (sledgehammers? really!) to avoid answering a question… although Messerle dodges questions as well, he just does it without attacking the questioner. Parry’s public conduct is unconscionable and we can be grateful he has chosen not to run for the office but Main and Messerle should be ashamed for allowing Parry to carry on abusing speakers and essentially misleading the public.

As bad as Parry is, however, Bob Main is the absolute worst when it comes to using the bench as a campaign opportunity and turning every public question or comment into an “its all about Bob” opportunity. Today, when I asked for specifics on public statements made by Main and other candidates, namely conflating costs with revenue regarding solid waste, Main repeatedly interrupted me before I could complete a sentence and tried again and again to refocus the spotlight on himself. The problem is, Main has confused costs with revenue publicly several times adding tipping fees assessed commercial haulers at the gate to a figurative bond assessment, (as has Messerle and Sweet that I have overheard so far) but in trying to get to the bottom of the confusion Main repeatedly interrupts and frankly his behavior is very rude and equally evasive.

When asking about solid waste Main was able to segue into the topic of how a recent letter to the editor accused him of acquiring tax forfeit properties while an assessor> When I did my best to ignore that since it had nothing to do with my question of whether there is any savings to the citizens of Coos County to transport trash to remote landfills, ( there isn’t) Messerle either took pity on me or just wanted to move the meeting along by stepping in and claiming the issues I was raisikng would be brought up in a solid waste work session next week.

Main has been interrupting citizens since he took office and I have personally been mocked by Main (I was right and he was wrong so it doesn’t matter) but his conduct on the bench today and previously cannot be winning him any fans on Channel 14. No one should be treated this disrespectfully by paid commissioners when they exercise their civic rights and responsibilities.

While I don’t agree with Messerle’s doom and gloom spin and poorly analyzed financial impact conclusions regarding county services and his obvious aim to privatize, and thereby add profit into the cost of county services, he is nonetheless definitely the best behaved of the three individuals now sitting on the bench. We wouldn’t agree on very much but of the three, Messerle is the only one I would have a cup of coffee with.