As much as I oppose the privatization of our local government via the community enhancement scheme to direct millions of property tax dollars into two private non-profit corporations so they can gamble with public money on risky businesses I am kind of glad it happened.
1) It demonstrates in a spectacularly graphic way just how easily it is for individuals unconstrained by democratic doctrine and convention or maybe just natively predisposed to sleight-of-hand to abuse the system. 
Who would have ever thought four taxing district councils could totally change our local governance without any vote of the people simply by utilizing a provision within a damned enterprise zone? Chilling!
2) The entire brute force manner in which the plan is being promoted and marketed opens a window into the very tiny and insular world the economic development cabal chooses to inhabit. It never occurred to any of the boosters that claiming “our community has asked Jordan Cove…” is a gross exaggeration or that our community extends beyond the narrow confines of the Bay Area Chamber of Commerce. Nor has it dawned on the cabal that public process is a lot more than just airing something on the public broadcasting station or holding town hall meetings and council work sessions where the mayor chooses whether you can ask a question or not.
There are two very useful articles in The Oregonian relating to this not so new phenomenon of renaming taxes as “fees” and ripping off the state school fund that are well worth reading.
Tax abatements in Hillsboro, Washington County take a toll on school districts statewide
Gain Share: Washington County offered to send money to state school fund, reduce local split
One of the reasons I didn’t vote for John Sweet or Melissa Cribbins is their close ties to this myopic business mindset and the influence that may have on their decisions. In the case of Sweet, at least, my worst fears have been realized as he is totally caught up in this cabal which leads me to a third reason I am glad this scheme is floating around. It motivated Don Gurney to run against Sweet because of the latter’s support to redirect county tax dollars to Coos Bay and North Bend and to privatize public money so the cabal can gamble with other people’s money. (Gurney has other reasons for running which I will address soon.)
Is there any person out there who can splain to me why the elected county tax assessor who is tasked with assuring that we are all taxed fairly and equally leading the effort to get significant tax relief for a Canadian company that, ten years ago, did not seek tax relief, who did not seek an enterprise zone, who did not seek to be part of any Urban Renewal effort, who knows that this is the only place that they are welcome and they are not going elsewhere.
Why is this happening now, before the project is approved? Jordan Cove and their paid-for local politicians just see this as another chess move. They have spent the last decade spending money on local political races, putting in-place all the board members they need in the four taxing districts to make these agreements on their behalf, if they wait the public might get wise and angry and re-place their shills. 2nd they will have a nice handful of local agreements to swing at potential buyers of their new plant. 3rd reason, they don’t give a crap about this local area or what happens to it. They know this is a great deal for any oil/gas company or foreign government that comes along to buy it after it gets built or use these agreements to sell it before construction even begins.
Why this plan is at the forefront is anyone’s guess and if the Port didn’t always have a hidden agenda or was simply more forthcoming with the public the rush might make some sort of sense. One speculation might be that the port is out of money, (which might explain Hamner’s exit), and has to demonstrate or create the illusion of a raison d’être. Since the port obviously doesn’t believe the public will buy in it if it knows the truth, we should dismiss the whole out-of-hand.
The motherboard is not going to have to spend as much of that blood money on the local infrastructure as people think, because of the exodus that will happen.
Property values will drop, the towns of NB/CB will be dying and less dollars will need to be spent on them. The motherboard has told us they intend to stash a lot of it for the “future”. It won’t be hard to save and collect interest on money you don’t have to spend.
The local k-12 schools should read those stories you have hot-linked, then they can get an glimpse of the screwing their in for. SOCC is really gonna take it hard. No parent in their right mind will send their child to SOCC after that bomb gets built. It will wind up closing along with a lot of those local schools that want a piece of the pie. People are going to leave and very few will replace them and those that do are going to be less savory to the local economy and more trouble for law enforcement.
The North Bend School district is wanting a new school from this bribe. They won’t need it, there will be plenty of empty buildings at the SWOCC campus and not as many kids to deal with.
Since we are seizing the taxpayers money for private organizations use without accountability, I thought it only proper to form an organization to get my piece of the pie.
CCAP was taken; so, I chose DILTSY (stands for Do I Look Terribly Senile Youguys?).
Diltsy definition is easily confused – and that’s just what these folks hope happens to us.