If you can stomach watching your civic leaders salivate over other people’s money, watch the Coos Bay City Council work session regarding the community enhancement plan. It is has been clear from the very first mention of the community enhancement scheme that Coos Bay and North Bend want access to tax dollars outside of their district and are willing to use their role as enterprise zone sponsors to usurp the rights of other taxing districts in order to get at it. But hey, according to Coos County Commissioner John Sweet, “the North Bay Rural Fire District doesn’t need $16 million…” Apparently, Sweet doesn’t think the county needs much money either because he is in full support of a plan to reallocate county revenue to the betterment of the waterfronts of Coos Bay and North Bend by “redirecting” taxes into the Bay Front Investment Corp.
While it should be noted that Sweet received the majority of his campaign contributions from the Coos Bay/North Bend area all of this comes at extraordinarily little inconvenience to either city. 
“This is all found money,” says Port CEO David Koch talking about the influx of cash within the city boundaries. “Found money.” What a descriptive phrase for this situation, as in unearned, or undeserved.
“What I like about this is it forces a partnership,” continues Koch. “We are forcing a partnership and seeding it with money that forces a closer cooperation between all four agencies in accomplishing the goals of this community. Frankly, I think the Bay Front Investment is the most exciting part…”
On a side note, one of the councilors bragged about downtown Coos Bay’s industrial waterfront. “We are very proud of it,” said Mike Vaughn. “It has always been a draw for us.”
Many times over the last decade we heard all the different shills for Jordan Cove claim that there was no financial benefit for them to support this. Now we can see how the payoffs and kickbacks will get done. This plan lets the motherboard decide who gets money and when they get it. There will have to be a lot of kissing up to get any of it and the shills have been kissing up for years. They are probably already busy writing their grant requests.
If you think about it you can see why Verger gets a seat on that board for all her efforts to direct dredge funding for the channel, that Jordan Cove needs. Caddy will surely replace her someday since she claims so much credit for getting the RR funding that Jordan Cove needs, unless she gets moved to the board right away to get to 7. Keep your eyes on the Coastal Caucus, that’s the power group that they use to influence other state representatives, and Verger is very proud of their power.
The plan is morphing fast. Now that the port is facing concerns from outside the cabal about a three person mother board, they are “considering” a seven member board to allay fears of what a small corrupt board can do. If they make it larger it will just include more of their pro-LNG friends. The tag teams the port has been sending to all these board meetings are all directed from Kitzhabers desk, these are his hand appointed port members directing this heist.
The democrats are proving themselves every bit as competent at stealing tax dollars and resources as the republicans are.
When this scheme to hi-jack the payoff, that Verger, Roblan and Caddy knew would be coming if this bomb gets built, The port was and has been trying real hard to make sure this plan bribes the right people. They wrongly guessed that the new bay front development part of the plan would be the honey on the fly strip to catch this city council. From watching this video the council wants to spend that money on the town not just the water front. Now watch Craddock, Sweet, and Koch adjust the plan to make this city council get on board. At least we get to watch some of our representatives accept the bribe as it morphs its way through these four taxing districts that have been getting stacked with pro-LNG people for the last decade. Its the deals being done behind closed doors that have been guiding this plan through our government, those are the deals that corrupted all of those fine upstanding politicians I mentioned at the top. Corporate money is definitely drifting from the top down and we just get to see the part that makes it past the people higher up the ladder.
These types of corporate takeovers of small towns are very easy to accomplish when bribery is made legal and all the church going politicians and their close friends successfully fool their sheep.
Found money is something you trip over in the parking lot. They should call this what it is, a procedural heist.
You got that right! According to witnesses, NB city manager told the council today that once those taxes are relabeled fees they are private and do not require public accountability.
Thugs,bums and vermin seem particularly drawn to docks, there must be a genetic flaw in those who do? These muscle men and ruby red slippered vermin just won’t leave it alone. Living off the misery of the working man for four decades now, and still strong-arming locals to take what our schools and infrastructure need to continue operating at half-mast, why keep funding these clowns at all? I have never been privileged enough to watch port thuggery in person, I thought that was left to the Italian Mafia———oh,wait a minute???????????
One need only follow the antics of the governor appointed NJ Port Authority so see the potential if we allow this mission creep to continue
Your right it is very heavy with the trickle down point of view. “They’,(the group doing this), appoint their own kings and queens to disperse the wealth as they see fit.
What Arrogance! Our ancestors fought a war with England over this type of crap, We don’t need to let some self appointed group resurrect what failed our ancestors. We live together peacefully when we all obey the rules. Our elected officials have forgotten this. They need to quit selling out our country. With this opportunity to fraud the public, they are transforming themselves to be traitorous and are becoming complicit with war profiteers.
Now this is the same city council that votes for time to watch and consider issues like wind turbines and Medical Marijuana shops for the public. Its unsettling to see them so anxious to have a vote in a few weeks to support this scheme. They don’t seem to have the sense to wait until the project is officially approved before they take the bribe.
Its going to divide the sheep from the goats on that council.
At around 40 minutes in Craddock is being asked about these board members and why it will be a non-profit controlling the money? He squirts past that by telling the questioner to wait there will be even more board members positions explained soon and then he moves on to the exciting subject of making community grant funds available.
The change was very apparent, He was uncomfortable discussing their non-profit board problem. Then almost giddy in comparison when he dodged and started talking about ” The Money”.
What I found fascinating is that 1) CB and NB have the same general disdain for the rural part of the county that many residents accuse Portland and Salem of having for Coos County and rural Oregon. 2) Reagonomics, the belief in the trickle-down-theory is alive and well in CB only they refer to it as “a rising tide raises all boats.” In other words, they believe that what is good for CB will somehow be good for Dora and Lakeside and Coquille and…
It is governance by platitude and dogma
Then Sweet jumps in and dribbles the ball about those numbers are about what those slices get now. Craddock moves it along by saying those are all excellent questions, then he immidiately shows a slide called “the Projection of annual payments”. Who really drafted those numbers? One person did it and the rest just gave it the thumbs up. Koch just named the thumbs up people. Who crunched those numbers and who was paying them?
At 20 minutes in, a question is asked about “who” decided how to divi up this pie. Koch tells us “who” decided how to carve the percentages. Listen to the names.
Craddock, Sweet, Kronsteiner, Whitty, Lansing, Verger, McKowen, and Roblan.
All of these people are co-conspirators in this scheme. I’m sure he left a few names out like Kitzhaber and Barton and the assigned representatives from Jordan Cove.
They should all be viewed as war profiteers. They have all been getting paid tax dollars through their careers and working for the goals of the oil/gas industry for years without the public being aware. Kids have died and more will die because of the policies that these people represent. Blood and death will already be attached to those dollars they are trying to manipulate if Jordan Cove gets built.
How do you pronounce Koch? These people want the world to never know that Jordan Cove is here because every other west coast port (and that includes Canada and Tijuana Mexico) successfully kept them out. Regardless of any tax assessed, they are going nowhere. Since JC is open to a change in the taxing structure, why not pay tax at the rate that the rest of us do?
Does Mike Vaughn love our weed-infested, tumbledown waterfront so much because his “ART” decorates it? I’m talking about that assembly of weirdly shaped pieces of rusty railroad track that now has a ‘FOR SALE’ sign on it.
But perhaps there is a plan behind his pretend-infatuation. Maybe he’s hoping Jordan Cove’s money will pay for the acquisition of that piece of trash. After all, our leaders have wasted money on even stranger things, and Vaughn’s entire history in Coos Bay has consisted of artistic pretentiousness and glomming on to public funds.