A quick note that commissioner Fred Messerle confirmed the county is actively negotiating a mineral lease with chromite strip miners, Oregon Resources. The commissioner was grilled about accepting campaign contributions indirectly from ORC through the political action committee, Coos County Alliance for Progress and not recusing himself from making decisions. Messerle ignored the inference that his decisions might be swayed in favor of the company but did acknowledge that a lease was being considered.
Have to ponder why ORC continues to pursue the county lease when they are laying off half their workforce. Could it be that the testing data shows the county lands are a bit more rich in precious metals than the current location they are mining? Take a 100K & invest it in your own land to find out exactly what kind of mineral deposits the county is considering giving away. Pull the records & drill the same locations ORC drilled. I think what you find will be disturbing…
Agreed! We don’t have much of a choice but I think one qualifies as both a crook and an idiot
Should I vote for the crook or the idiot? Tough one.
Can we all agree that annointing Messerle and Parry was an experiment that failed? Never again! Farmer Fred must finish this task, with the aid of his pal Parry, before election day. Farmer Fred has lots of balls in the air. He must also finish his Coquille / Bandon swimming hole before he leaves office. Apparently Farmer Fred did not read his pal Walwortth’s recent editorial that PAC mnoney buys the candidate. I do admire that he is trying to help his wife indirectly, The SCDC lady who has collected our tax monies and kept her promise; goning slow and done nothing after three years.
As I have stated in the past should we look at the land leases? Yes
I feel we should not sell or lease the right but sell the mineral it self to the company with the county retaining the rights so we do not have another Kimberly Clark episode. There should be no rush to hurry up and sign any agreement .we need a true independent black sands expert to advise us on the worth of our sands . Then we must weigh what this will do to our renewable resource vs a one time sand. We need to look at how ORC has put back the land that they have mined. We must ask will these land support a sustainable forest on them when replanted ? We must not take the forest out of rotation.We must remember the sands are a one time deal the forest is renewable yes we need jobs but we can not sacrifice one set of jobs for another. As of last year Dan smith of ORC said they had about 8 years of mining and that was without the kimberly Clark land. So let’s move ahead and look at the sands the county must do it do diligence and put together a plan to look at the environmental , financial , job benefits this could create let’s do this right at no time do sell our mineral rights to anybody. Let redirect our efforts to long term sustainable projects.lets quit wAsting time and money on water mitigation banks ,hiring people to look at changing our form of our government . Though two things will cost about $85000 enough to hire a deputy back to make our community a safer place to live. We need to look at the big picture this election let’s vote for the issues and not who can spend the most money. My vote is for Bob, Don , and a write in if we do this we will have our lands open to the public not sold to the lowest bidder