The Oregonian coverage of the CEP (community enhancement plan) includes the disparity about whether Jordan Cove wants the enterprise zone exemptions or not. Jordan Cove’s project manager Bob Braddock, who has publicly claimed otherwise, now states the company has always intended to claim the standard five year EZone benefits. Proponents of the enhancement plan use this five year abatement as the basis of their argument for extending the abatement by 15 years and converting taxes to community service fees.
Bob Braddock, project manager for Jordan Cove, claims he never said, anywhere, that the project wouldn’t take the standard enterprise zone tax break. “We were always going to take that and we’re going to now,” he said. “I view that as a contingency and I will not give that up.”
Indeed, in a recording of a public meeting for the pipeline in 2012, Braddock told attendees that Jordan Cove is located in an enterprise zone, and has a “statutory …right to the exemption.”
But he told the crowd that “while we have that exemption, we will be paying the taxes that we otherwise would have been paying. Because of the scale of the project, that’s amounts to a minimum of $30 million a year.”
Jordan Cove’s application with federal regulators also claims it will be paying $30 million annually in lieu of property taxes, but projected revenues under the Community Enhancement Plan never reach that level, and start out at only $12 million a year. While those projections are only estimates, they show Jordan Cove getting a tax break of more than $200 million.
The paper also mentions the expected high cost to the cities and county of servicing 2,000 itinerant construction workers should the project go through. The CEP makes virtually no provisions for addressing these costs at all.
Test
It sure does feel good to be able to read about what is going on in our part of Oregon, isn’t it? Comforting to know, those of us who have smelled this rat for a decade or more, are joined by other thinkers in the state. This is what happens when a newspaper hires reporters instead of stenographers who can’t think deeper than a period. My opinion only, of course, these are just a couple of comments on the Oregonian site. The adults are still in charge there, thank gawd.
“It’s amazing what kind of pathological creativity can happen when power hungry lawmakers get caught up in a financial feeding frenzy of free money. And the best part is they don’t have to account to anyone or produce a balanced budget. ”
“It would be tragic if it weren’t so hilarious. I just don’t think the public is going to sit still anymore for this abysmal and unscrupulous kind of thinking or behavior by elected and civic official’s.”
“If the public does stand by and let these shenanigan’s continue, then it would be tragic.”
“Corruption and Coos Bay politicians are old friends.”
It only took me a couple of months here to figure this out, but without an open, honest local press, the rats have had forty years of operating out of site and sound of the population (those yahoos’ Whitty refers to. I, one of those ‘yahoos’, personally am going to enjoy the hell out of watching these same rats jump through the Porthole in front of every yahoo in Coos County and beyond. I do think they’ve screwed their own pooches on this Circle Jerk. My opinion only boys and girls. You aren’t even pretending to play above board this time.
This is the second comment from the Oregonian article referencing Halliburton on the North Spit, anyone know anything about this?
Pay no attention to the abiotic methane already leaking from Haliburton’s fracking site, right there next to the ‘import’ terminal. I mean the Extort Terminal.
Thus endeth the trick.
According to one of the Coos Bay council people who speak loud in crowded restaurants, I is a “dense idiot” for expressing an opinion. Perhaps I can upgrade to Yahoo.
“Meanwhile, John Whitty, an 81-year old lawyer who helped draft bylaws and file papers for the plan’s educational foundation, says he’s been excoriated by the local paper as a member of a “self-appointed aristocracy,” while public meetings have offered “every yahoo in the county an opportunity to get up and snipe at us.” Well, nice to meet you too Mr. Whitty, seems to me it’s about GDAMN time you took some heat from WE THE YAHOOS, you had cover for decades, and like the rest of the parasites sucking the public teats in Coos County, you’ve pretty much operated behind the scenes. Now I understand why. it must be a Tough Tittie for you now. Good, my personal opinions only of course. There’s usually a reason why people like this operate “in the dark”, now we see why.
Typical. Someone doesn’t like being called an aristocrat and then calls most of the county “yahoos”. Classy
Now if I could only find somebody that sells the Oregonian in the CB / NB area.