Wednesday evening at the regular Coquille School Board meeting, Margaret Barber, Bill Lansing and Steve Jansen presented the now infamous community enhancement plan. After the same power point presentation given at other venues I asked Jansen and Lansing what taxes would be paid if there was no urban renewal district or enterprise zone. Neither knew the answer. They had no idea that establishing a $3 million a year endowment in Coos County would deprive the state school fund of half a billion dollars.

scratch2What that tells us is that we have a small collection of people making what amounts to a billion dollar decision involving public money without knowing the barest, most rudimentary facts and without thinking the whole thing through. This is a consequence of avoiding the public process we are entitled to when determining the use of public funds. The plan wants to take public money and place it into private corporations so the funds can be used to gamble on waterfront development. The plan contends the state can’t “develop a world-class education delivery system” but Bill Lansing, Joanne Verger and John Whitty can but only if the funds are under the “shield” of a private corporation.

Lansing is of the opinion that Coos County loses 50% of all tax money to the state school fund. “That money is gone,” says Lansing. The cost of keeping our kids in school varies across the state from $5,600 to $28,000 with a statewide average of $9,700 per studdent. There are 8,468 students in Coos County and using $9.7K, (the local figure may be closer to $7K), for sake of example, county schools require $82 million a year to educate our kids. Thanks to special assessments and enterprise zone exemptions Coos County only takes in a fraction of taxable potential or approximately $26 million per year and according to Jansen, 42% goes into the school fund. Even if we use the lesser figure of $7K per student the state back fills our property tax shortfall at least $50 million annually.

The Jordan Cove project has a long way to go yet before it is approved much less constructed. To date we still don’t have a draft EIS, a final EIS and are probably two years out from a Final Record of Decision which will include economic impacts. The community enhancement plan will deprive the state school fund of almost $23 million annually and shortchange local taxing districts. It ignores the economic impacts the project will have on the area. Any plan at this point is premature.

Nevertheless, in the name of education all this effort is being exerted so a private corporation can divvy out $3 million a year in public money to local schools in the form of grants. Lansing says they want to add Reedsport and Langlois school districts into the mix. At approximately 9,500 students that works out to a little over $300 per student.

Lansing and I have engaged in a somewhat testy email exchange in which I explained that I had no doubt of his sincerity unfortunately I am not convinced the “plan” even meets the definition of plan nor do I have confidence the people chosen by other people who don’t have the authority to choose anyone to manage these schemes have the programmatic overview necessary to ensure any success. He accused me of being “horribly confused” adding “this is not an environmental issue.” Perhaps not directly from Lansing’s point of view, but if he understood that any project brings with it economic impacts which are typically addressed as part of the EIS and affects the consideration of reasonable alternatives as required by NEPA he would realize the promoters of this scheme to save a bunch of Canadian shareholders hundreds of millions of dollars is very premature.

We have civic leaders making major, billion dollar decisions without all the facts. Hell, they aren’t even asking questions…