Last month we speculated that ORC looked to be short on cash and had exhausted its borrowing capacity. Today the company laid off “14 full-time and 17 temporary employees”. New CEO, Wayne Knott, blamed the layoffs on diminishing global demand for chromite sands.
ORC was granted a two year extension of the enterprise zone property tax exemptions in 2010. The exemptions are contingent upon jobs and higher than average wages. In other words, the taxpayer picks up part of the tab for companies putting people to work within a certain geographic area, a way of socializing the risk while privatizing the profits.
More than ever, the county should take a wait and see attitude before signing any mineral leases with Coos County especially if the company plans to use them as collateral for more loans.
Wow, this is rich. Al, who over the past year has been burning up the World’s comment boards about how ORC was “bringing family-wage, long-term jobs that will create safe communities and good schools” (yes, he said that) is now trying to distract everyone with *facts* about Solid Waste? I see no facts about Solid Waste, only the alleged comments about an employee who may have abused drugs. As always, unsubstantiated and fluffed with words that Al thinks add up to “facts”. I don’t think Al really knows what the word “fact” means. And he sure couldn’t get rid of the BHDS employees fast enough but he has the gall to come here and whine for the ORC employees?
Al, you’ve had your lips so firmly affixed to Cam/Fred/Jon’s backsides for so long that their shit is coming out of your mouth. When you were faced with real facts, such as; 1) ORC is a temporary position for all locals that work there, they will be gone when the chromite is up, 2) they haven’t been able to comply with any of the light permitting requirements and have been in mitigation most of the time (all the while trashing our lands & water), 3) the locals hired were administrative & labor, no management positions, 4) the BOC at the time botched the deal basically handing a limited resource to an Australian company for a pittance to the county, 5) the company has been “exploring” here since 1989, but only in the last couple of years has hired local labor….and your response is “ORC is bringing family-wage, long-term jobs that will create safe communities and good schools”?
What exactly has ORC done for the community? Give me a real fact, something that you said they would bring to our schools/safety/environment/employment that we can thank ORC for….not the blustery, insensible bullshit from your earlier comments….a *REAL* GOOD THING that the county gained by allowing ORC to treat us like a 2-dollar whore. You know, the kind of whore that would let someone take tens of millions worth of a natural resource for $300k a year in road maintenance?
Thanks, Salmonologist, your comments mirror my thoughts exactly
Gee, are we now going to see quarter page ads in the daily with photos of the laid off workers?
LOL!
I suspect the gold is still sitting in the bottom clean-out. Get rid of Dan Smith & people close to the vest & they waltz in & drop their drawers & shovel in the gold. A good way to side step the stockholders. Don’t forget, your Port President has his fingers deep in this. West Coast Contractors employees where probably the ones laid off. What did they get another boondoggle like New Port to go work on?
Yes, we saw that coming when IDM banished him to Siberia last spring. http://mgx.com/blogs/2012/05/21/dan-smith-replaced-as-orc-chief-operating-officer/
Now, did the little potty mouthed geologist go with him?
I see where Dan Smith was one of those axed. He had a good ride while it lasted
Well, whatever they are mining, be it gold or chromium, they aren’t making any money.
Good points on the gold price. Last time I heard the refined chromium was going for $480 a TON. ORC is/was kicking $1700 an ounce gold out of the way to get to that precious chromium. You bet. The same separator is used for both. Makes you wanna go Hmmmm.
Gold has jumped over $1700/oz so I guess ORC will be rehiring on Monday.
May I remind the readers, the plant ORC brought here and assembled, is state of the art separators which indeed were designed to “separate gold and other precious metals”. But they simply weren’t looking for gold. My question always has been, who watched to see how much gold they did take out, and where is it?
Platinum as well.
“Aw jist kain’t quit ya Mary” little al, who really, really, really doesn’t like this blog, nor the people on it.
She won’t rise to your height al, unless she’s barefoot.
That’s your response to my Solid Waste facts? Follow up one fabrication with another? A rather feeble attempt to discredit, Mary. You’re going to have to do better than that if this blog is ever going to reach the lofty standards of a National Enquirer or Star Magazine.
P.S. concluding that ORC’s issues are the result of a poor businessplan is stunningly naive. Businessplans don’t come with crystal balls, Mary. You, of all people, should know this. They can’t anticipate Greece, Spain or Portugal. They can’t anticipate hopelessly incompetent and ineffective administrations. They can’t anticipate a sluggish global economy. Stating that the businessplan wasn’t done properly is an over-simplification of a complex and multi-faceted problem. ORC is simply responding to market conditions as scores of companies have had to do and will continue to do. Autodesk laid off workers today. H-P, American Airlines, IBM, Pepsi, Best Buy, Boeing, Yahoo, Kraft, Cisco, United Airlines – even Google – laid people off this year. All the biproduct of a bad businessplan, or simply a bad economy?
Yes, what we are seeing here is that even with taxpayer assistance, the ORC business plan was not done properly.
Where was Al’s sympathy when four workers were laid off at solid waste?
Let’s get back to the topic at hand, whether ORC owes property taxes
More from Al, the man who called public employees parasites that “live off the backs of others”. Where was Al’s sympathy when Kevin laid off 22 road workers so he could afford to pave W Beaver Hill road for ORC because he “believes in ORC”?
Al is the only one telling lies here and he isn’t even good at it.
OK Mary – that may have been the most erroneous comment you have made in some time – and that’s quite an accomplishment for this blog.
Here’s a tidbit I’ll bet you didn’t know: shortly before we conducted the employee interviews at Solid Waste in the summer of 2011, a SW employee was suspected of being a drug user by a couple of his fellow employees. How did we learn this? Because those fellow employees told us. That suspected drug user jumped on a piece of equipment that he was UNAUTHORIZED to use and UNLICENSED to use and did several thousand dollars worth of damage – for which he was suspended a couple of days. According to those senior employees he could have easily injured himself, some county residents dropping off trash, or other employees. Fortunately, this was not the case. The employees we intereviewed all but demanded that the county install a drug testing policy. In their words: “it’s my life and I don’t want to work in an environment where I have to look over my shoulder all the time.”
It seems to me that the employees – especially senior employees – who are concerned about a new employee coming to work stoned should have a safe work environment. Wouldn’t you agree?
So – let’s be precise. Was there a problem with at least ONE employee out at Solid Waste. Yes. Can you provide proof that I or any other member of the Structure Committee called ALL the employees at Solid Waste drug users? Absolutely not. If so – prove it. Just don’t keep saying it (you’ve state this several times before) – prove it. Was the call for a drug testing policy justified? Absolutely – especially considering the amount of heavy equipment used, other employee’s safety, the dangerous condition of the facility (which we now know was more severe than anyone thought), and the amount of legal exposure to the County. Common sense stuff. Business 101. As basic as it gets.
Themguys – your comments set the intellectual tone for this blog so often, it would be terrific if you would share your real identity with the entire County. Come out from behind your pseudonym and let everyone know the brilliant person behind all those intellectually stimulating comments. I’m sure you have the confidence and courage to do so.
So, iyt looks to me as if they are not fulfilling their bargain. Take the enterprise zone status from them. Scammed again folks!! When will you learn.
“ORC has been and still is a good corporate citizen in our county. Laying off 31 of 100 employees still leaves 69 jobs that weren’t here before they came! This story is a prime example of why we need companies like ORC – to diversify our economic base!!! We need tourism AND industry, natural resource extraction AND manufacturing, retail business AND professional services. Without a variety of economic activities in the area, Coos County will always sufferthe most when downturns happen.”
Meh !
Another teat sucking psychophant for The Job Messiahs. Yes, I meant that.
This county has to wean itself from these flim flam men and their enablers, every damn one of them. This is simply embarrassing.
Since al saved Apple, perhaps he can give the rest of us who are paying for this fiasco a cost analysis on what we heartless bitches are paying for ORC’s folly. This time. Add up all their freebies, including that buried gold, divide it by the workers they “hired” here and tell us what we paid for the pleasure of their business . Oh I forgot, al needs welfare to run his business, so perhaps he’s not the best one to ask. Sorry little one. What wankers we support with our tax dollars, I’d rather my dollars go to a drug addled single mother than these mothas.
“I note there is no comment or sympathy about the those employees who lost their jobs.” – This spoken from the man who very publicly and WRONGFULLY humiliated solid waste staff by accusing them of being drug abusers!
I note there is no comment or sympathy about the those employees who lost their jobs. Several of us predicted this kind of response on this blog.
This blog continues to reveal itself for what it is.
Does anyone remember EVER hearing ANY ORC reps, or their public enablers state that this process they are supplying chromium for was some kind of “experimental” or “new” process? All I remember hearing is what demand there was for this very process which depends on chromium.
Hey Dan, or his potty mouthed young gun care to answer that one? So any way of calculating how much We The People paid into this latest fiasco? Per job? Whoopie, nothing but another pipe dream for the port hole.
We can start at the half million new road. Just think, all that public whining Dan Smith did at the Wednesday Circle Jerk, and our money was paying for his lunch, all the while, as the food we paid for dripped from his chin, he whined and pandered for even more of our money. Aided and abetted by what passes for a ‘news’paper in Coos County.
New motto: “Coos County, where the truth stops at the border.”
Go walk the Coos Bay waterfront. You’ll see Sause equipment lined up all the way. Do you really think he wants to see stupid tourists there? He’d lose his very lucrative parking space, just like the mrs. messer lie, they take center stage, and they don’t want that EVER to change. And with their clout buying votes in Salem, a la tugboat tussles, it won’t.
Look at the hundreds of millions of dollars that flow into this county every year, yet we remain The Anus of Oregon? There is a reason for that, after forty years, four decades of buying their bullshit, they buy a rusted railroad to nowhere, assuring their salaries for at least another decade. They do very well at the Port, and all the leeches which feed from it.
Follow the money folks, never lets you down
Melissa Cribbins got anything to say about it?.
Lets do a top 10 uses for the “Big Tin Shed” they will leave behind…
1. Sweep the dust into the corners & turn it into a “SUPER CENTER” second hand store!
2. Hall of fame for Coos Blight failed businesses. All photos matted on recycled plywood from the heart of down town Coos Bay.
3. Run a loader into it & leave a pile of twisted metal & call it ART!
4. Have the Port partner with Urban Renewal & buy the facility for 100 Million Dollars after Messerle buys it for 2 million dollars.
5.???
Yes, I wish I had more time to follow the airport but I heard The World played enabler again to the public money junkies at the airport district
Add this to the news that the airport board is looking to subsidize flights to Salt Lake City, and one can see that the Job Messiahs are still on the job doing their best to waste taxpayer funds in support of iffy corporate enterprises. I can only guess what it will take to wake the citizens of Coos County to the fact that we are being fleeced for the benefit of a few.
Are they going to fill in that big hole out there? Did they put the gold back yet???
What? I would never have guessed. I’m stunned.