Who said this website does not respond to popular demand? In his retort to my recent article on our County Commissioners’ inability to formulate a Plan B to replace Plan A for solving their financial troubles (Plan A was: suck off Jordan Cove’s tit), Mark McKelvey commented: “I thought there would be a Plan B in there somewhere. Wim, what’s your Plan B?” His response was akin to that of Shannon Coastes who demanded to know, not long ago: “If not Jordan Cove…..then what?” Like Mark, Shannon didn’t seem to have read all of the article she commented on, but compared to Mark she was much more incensed, demanding an answer from “Smartypants” (meaning me) whom she accused of cruelly popping people’s “bubble” about the glorious future promised by her favorite ecodevo fantasy. After responding to Shannon Coastes I have heard from her no more, possibly because common-sense solutions do not appeal to people with excessive (hence never fulfilled) expectations. But like a pastor resigned to preaching to the same sinners every Sunday morning, I will try again. Maybe a few different verses from different Gospels will do the job (no pun intended, of course).
Plan B.1 and Plan B.2
First, we need to realize that the Plan B concept, first verbalized by permanently confused County Commissioner John Sweet, conflates two problems, thus adding to the confusion at the Courthouse. So in order to enable clear thinking we need to separate those two problems which are, in essence: 1. the County’s ominous financial prospects; and 2. our lack of economic development. 
Having made this distinction, we can now formulate two plans which, in good bureaucratic fashion, we will title Plan B.1 and Plan B.2. I can see it in the paper’s Classifieds now: Official Notice of Plan-Making . . .
Plan B.1 will be limited to addressing the County’s impending financial crisis that, like a loaded log truck coming off a mountain, appears unstoppable. Making things worse, the County’s response has been to just sit in the middle of the logging road, gazing at the headlights while tossing money to and fro for no sensible reason, but perhaps hoping that the log truck driver will stop to pick up some of it.
Plan B.2 will address the thorny problem of “economic development” in Coos County, which has been bungled by generations of pompous dunces . . . with disastrous results.
I realize, of course, that to some extent the problems to be addressed by Plan B.2 and Plan B.1. are related. But as we have been able to observe, emphasizing that connection carries great moral hazards, including the kind of inaction exemplified by the Commissioners’ deer-in-the-headlights posture.
Mo’ Money
Having separated the two elements of the problem, we should now know what Plan B.1 must produce: money to pay the bills, particularly the County’s bills. Of course, the reason why B.1 and B.2 are so hopelessly mixed-up in the Commissioners’ minds is that, against all experience accumulated during the last forty years, they are still hoping that some big new industry will come and play Santa Claus. And if Santa does come, they can continue to float along at the Courthouse instead of making painful decisions. But Santa Claus has never yet come, and chances diminish every day that even Jordan Cove will drop in to do its Ho-Ho-Ho thing. The County’s method reminds me of those big billboards for the Oregon Lottery, which include warnings like “Lottery games should not be played for investment purposes.” Those warnings may be ineffective, because the kind of people who think the only way to get ahead is to win the lottery are not big readers. 
But perhaps along the same lines, a big sign could be mounted over the entrance to the Commissioners’ chambers: “Waiting for Santa Claus to Make Up Your Deficit is Unwise.” Something like that.
Even so, there are things that can be done besides hanging up signs; I listed several in my article’s final paragraph: quit spending money on useless frou-frou like “economic development”, lobbyists, pay raises for “equity”, goal-setting seminars and other such trifles, and sue to obtain the revenues from the Coos Bay Wagon lands that, as Don Gurney can document, are rightfully ours. Most important, if our politicians are so desperate for property tax revenues from new businesses, then they are idiots if they exempt them from those taxes by means of Enterprise Zones, or if they let other public bodies siphon them off by means of Urban Renewal Districts. The County Commissioners have the power to abolish whatever EZs and UR Districts their predecessors approved many years ago, and they need to get on with it; time is of the essence because thanks to past dawdling at the Courthouse the benefits won’t arrive instantly. Perhaps the Commissioners could develop some backbone by contemplating California Governor Jerry Brown’s observation a few years ago, when he advocated abolishing all of California’s 425 URDs (called “redevelopment agencies” down there) because they were “futile” and diverted too much tax revenue. In the end, Brown got his way. See http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Jerry-Brown-calls-redevelopment-agencies-futile-2531263.php
“Vital development tools”
The North Spit EZ was formed in 1985, and the North Spit UR District in 1986. Since then both these civic infections have spread, for instance by the Bandon EZ taking in (with the full support of previous County Commissioners) the Bandon Dunes development – after it was already built, which meant that the Commissioners, not Bandon Dunes, played Santa Claus.
As to the efficacy of EZs in general, there is no national evidence that they work, and plenty of local evidence that they don’t recruit any substantial new businesses. Jordan Cove and Oregon Resources and Bandon Dunes have all admitted that EZ tax breaks played no part in their decision to come here. 
Since John Sweet keeps claiming the opposite, he came to office terribly misinformed; these things have all been reported in the paper. Even worse, he seems unwilling or unable to learn the truth. But we have to remember that every government program, no matter how useless, will have its supporters besides those who work for it; in fact, it can be observed that much of what such agencies do is designed to generate such unthinking support.
Nationwide the history of UR Districts goes back further than the EZs, but despite all the drivel spouted by conniving officials about self-financing and revitalization and “vital development tools”, they have been wasteful and no more successful than EZs. Ever since the 1960s, the City of Coos Bay has had one UR district after another, usually to rebuild the mistakes made by the previous one, but always at ludicrous cost. One look at what’s been perpetrated under the UR label brings out the main reason why a certain class of people aspire to public office: it is their chance to look important by throwing other people’s money at things for which they would never have spent their own dime – or else to quietly benefit themselves. The UR Districts in the city of Coos Bay have been prime examples. Coos Bay UR’s main beneficiaries have been architects and contractors, along with the downtown businessmen who populate the City Council. And this brings up the knotty, never investigated problem of UR officials (who are the same as the City Council and Mayor) making financial moves that are so stupid, they must have been either drunk or retarded or on the take.
Since its formation in 1986 the North Spit UR District has been controlled by the Port of Coos Bay, but it was originally approved by the County, since it’s not within any of the cities. Ever since then the Port has been spending multiple millions in property taxes diverted by that UR District, and what do we have to show for it? But the County Commissioners have the power to abolish the North Spit EZ as well as the Spit’s UR District, and given the warning signs of the County’s dire financial future they should have done so years ago, without regard for the customary wailing by the Port and its covetous co-conspirators.
I mentioned earlier that the effects of abolishing these money-wasting tax gimmicks may not be immediate, which makes this an indictment not only of the present set of County Commissioners but of their equally short-sighted predecessors, who have known for many years that the County was headed for a financial train wreck. 
If they had taken that bull by the horns the County could be drawing revenues from those sources now. One key reason for the delay is that UR Districts don’t die as long as they remain in debt, which is why those running them make sure their bonds are never completely paid off, so terminating an URD has to make allowances for that. And while abolishing EZs for businesses not yet built should not be a problem, taking away the EZ’s benefits from existing businesses may run into contract law problems. On the other hand, EZs always exempt new businesses during the construction period, which in the case of JC could be three years. At a minimum that needs to be done away with; but of course that will only pay off if JC actually builds, which looks less likely by the day.
Central Planning – it’s still here!
The second part of our Plan, designated as B.2, seeks to foster economic growth in this stagnant backwater of ours. Again, the careless way in which John Sweet and Mark and Shannon verbalized their questions makes answering them difficult. It’s analogous to Marshall McLuhan’s rule that the Medium is the Message. Questions demanding PLANS imply that PLANS are the only way to solve the problem at hand, regardless of the mountain of evidence proving that it’s been PLANS that caused our problems in the first place. 
To people enamored of PLANS, if yesterday’s PLANS didn’t do the trick, then today’s or tomorrow’s PLANS will bring us that economic Nirvana. But in Coos county we’ve swallowed so many PLANS, they are coming out of our ears. PLANS and Planning (the latter of which is a mere euphemism for being lorded over by arrogant dweebs) have ruined us, as should have been expected by anybody familiar with the history of totalitarian economies – those run by know-it-all central planners, like Russia, China, East Germany, and more. An excellent appraisal of Planning could be Will Rogers’ assessment of both Prohibition and Communism: “It’s a good idea, but it won’t work.”
The supreme irony is that many of those who today are running Coos county’s central economic planning agencies – FONSI, SCDC, CCD-BDC, Regional Strategies, the Chamber, B.S. Oregon, etcetera – were not even born when all this planning foolishness started, back in the seventies. No matter; while promoting Coos Bay’s latest industrial plan they act as if they just invented the wheel. 
People like, say, Eric Farm from Menasha who imagine themselves representatives of free enterprise and the market economy, so they can devote their business expertise to the common good. In reality many large corporations have bureaucratic souls: just like government agencies they attract and nurture drones infused with groupthink. And every time the groupthinkers, acting as board members of some ecodevo outfit like the Port or B.S. Oregon, open their mouths, they show they are the exact opposite of free market practitioners. At their very core they are conceited central planners who are busy repeating the mistakes made by a couple of earlier generations. And they never stop to consider the wise words from the Good Book: “By their fruits ye shall know them”, but oh my, their fruits do stink.
People and economic growth
There is general agreement that one good indicator of economic health is a growing population, which we haven’t had in decades. As I documented in The JOB Messiahs’ final chapter, between 1980 and 2009 Coos county’s population (not counting Bandon, which grew by 1,000 people) diminished by 2000, or about 3% of our 63,000 residents. That Bandon’s 1,000 increase made up for half the county’s 2,000 decrease should have been no consolation but a lesson, because unlike the rest of the county Bandon has benefited greatly from NOT engaging in industrial central planning. Bandon simply capitalized on its natural attractions, thereby drawing a lot of new, wealthy residents, all of whom spent money and some of whom started new businesses: Hardin Optical, Bandon Dunes, the Continuum Center, a specialty lumber business, and others. Even more important than what happened in Bandon is that our net countywide population decline of 1.5%, even if it doesn’t sound like much, looks shockingly bad when you consider that every other coastal county – in fact, all other counties in western Oregon – saw substantial growth during that time, ranging from 12% in Douglas county to 114% in Portland’s Washington county. And Portland was even outdone by the Bend area east of the mountains, with Deschutes county growing by 175%. See the nearby chart.
I lay responsibility for this demographic-economic disaster squarely at the feet of
Coos county’s ecodevangelists whose countless irresponsible industrial schemes continued to discourage in-migration during those three decades. I’m not saying they did it on purpose; their very nature is to combine arrogance – as in feeling entitled to lord it over us – with ignorance – as in being too stupid to see that bad plans, even if they never come to fruition, do have consequences.
So let me put it simply. Why would a retiring couple looking for a nice spot to spend their declining years come to Coos Bay when the place seems constantly in danger of becoming an industrial hellhole? Better to be safe and buy a home in Bandon or Brookings or Florence or most any other coastal town that has given up its industrial illusions. And this is what happened. During my many years in the restaurant business I talked to tons of people who came to Coos Bay for one reason or another – medical or legal services, shopping, eating German food – but they lived in one of the places I just mentioned. When I asked why, for convenience, they didn’t settle in Coos Bay, with its fine natural and commercial amenities and cheaper real estate to boot, the subject of Coos Bay’s tired industrial look came up, along with concerns about the latest industrialization scheme. One lady used words that hurt a bit. Coos Bay, she told me, had “no soul”. Call that airy-fairy all you want, but perceptions do shape reality. And we got into this fix because an inbred clique of impatient, ignorant, loudmouthed people pushed us into it, and they are still running in that squirrel cage.
With regard to the chance of our local population growing, Mark McKelvey has stated on this website:
“I wouldn’t expect a great influx of people and investment to Coos County the day after the JCEP is denied. That didn’t happen in the 80s or the 90s or the 2000s or the 2010s. It’s not gonna happen now. The opposite is actually the case. We’ll see more people and investment come to Coos County if the JCEP is approved. . . .
Why didn’t that happen from 1979 to 2005? Our “permanent slump” precedes any talk of JC.”
To fully grasp what he was saying I had to read this several times. But what he appeared to say – and correct me if I’m wrong — was that if JC is denied its licenses and doesn’t build here, we will not see an influx of new people because we didn’t get such an influx during past decades, well before JC came on the scene. On the other hand, he predicts a human influx if JC does build. (I assume he’s not talking about the workmen during the temporary construction boom.) And he said all this to counter those who have predicted that JC’s presence, after the construction period, will further shrink our population by discouraging people from settling here, for multiple reasons including navigation restrictions, increased air pollution, and above all the fear of being burned alive due to some major mishap including, but not limited to, the overdue 9.0 earthquake and tsunami.
But when Mark claims that our lack of in-migration before JC proves that our population will grow once JC is here and operating, he is blithely ignoring our history. He should have explained why during all our decades of decline, vigorous growth was occurring in practically every other town on this coast, not to mention throughout western Oregon. In short, he’s created a straw man, or he waved a red herring. Or he mixed up apples and oranges; take your pick.
To reiterate, why have all those other places in our state grown while we declined? Because they were not acting on the illusion that their harbor or their county had some vast, unrealized industrial potential. Instead they concentrated on making their towns attractive and welcoming, so people came, bought homes, spent money, started small businesses that grew; and in the end their economies were in better shape than in the old days, when the lu
mber mills constantly suspended production or got hit by strikes or closed overnight, in every case leaving the townspeople holding the bag.
Among the people from Florence I met at my restaurant was a man, originally from Hungary, who had a manufacturing business, making precision parts for military helicopters. Now who would have thought such a thing could happen in a town the size of Florence? In fact, it’s exactly what the leading dim bulbs of Coos Bay have always claimed to want. But for Florence it was not the result of some heroic ecodevo program but of a natural process of in-migration.
On to Plan B.2
Mark M demanded a Plan B. I promised a Plan B.1 and B.2. But the only Plan B.2 I’m ready to offer is a sketchy one, consisting of goals, possibilities and ideas. If we formulate a Plan B.2 that is too specific, we are walking in the footsteps of the ecodevo crowd with their rigid, groupthink-formed habits, and we will surely fail.
The first and most essential part of Plan B.2 is: whatever is done with public funds in Coos Bay should make this a more attractive place to visit and live in. Economic development is bound to occur when people with money and/or ambition move into an area, but this doesn’t take armies of ecodevo bureaucrats. Almost always, new residents have seen the place before, as tourists or travelers, and found it attractive. And we seem to forget that we have it all – gorgeous scenery, a mild climate, fresh air, recreation, the most extensive shopping and medical services on the coast, inexpensive real estate – but we’ve done a bang-up job of hiding it. Did you know that homes in Florence and Bandon sell for 25% more than in Coos Bay? Does that tell you anything? These are simple business questions. To turn all this around as Mark and his allies do, and claim this will happen as a result of the latest industrial scheme, is denying all the evidence of history – solid local history.
At the very core of the attractiveness factor is the waterfront. 
People love seeing waterfronts, living near waterfronts, using waterfronts for recreation and sightseeing. And the grossest, most destructive violation of our already-derelict waterfront is the Port’s rusty railroad that was needed only for the survival of its own expensive bureaucracy, not for any valid business reasons. One of the best things that could happen to Coos Bay is for the Port to tear up the railroad to sell the track materials – there is value there – and then sell the entire line’s real estate to a Rails to Trails organization that will convert it to an uniquely scenic bike path, from Eugene to Coos Bay and possibly on to Coquille. Excluded from the sale could be certain parcels such as the downtown Coos Bay switching yard, which holds tremendous development potential as a waterfront “Old Town”. Now THAT would put Coos Bay on the map.
The second part of Plan B.2 is: Trust the people, change some laws. We can no longer afford to be dominated by a know-it-all clique that is unresponsive to reality, ignores the will of the people, and impedes sound, sustainable development.
One initiative proposal that we are already likely to vote on this spring is an anti-LNG measure asserting local rights. Once it passes – or even before that election – the usual suspects are likely to contest it in court, but regardless of the outcome the publicity is likely to do Coos county a great deal of good among the kind of people we would like to come here.
It is also vital to get rid of the mass of ecodevo agencies that have hurt rather than help us. But instead of doing so directly, they will probably melt away if we do a wide-ranging restructuring of the Port of Coos Bay, from top to bottom. This is because for many years the Port has been the lead agency for economic development, setting the pace for all the others, and a more dismal achievement record would be hard to find. Essential parts of such a restructuring effort should be the return of the people’s voting rights that were stolen from them in 1986, and to change the Port’s mission from the mindless, endless promotion of industrial nuisances to things that enhance local livability. I have thought a great deal about how this could be done, because the political swindlers who persuaded the voters to give away their civil rights back in 1986 promised that a simple local initiative ballot measure could do that trick. Since then the discovery of legal precedents to the contrary has revealed that as just another of the many lies told during that electoral atrocity. According to these precedents it would take a statewide ballot measure, which is impossible to achieve. As an initiative measure it would require more signatures than there are people living in Coos county; and even if that was achieved you could hardly expect the rest of the state’s voters to take an interest in what happens in Coos Bay.
This is a knotty problem, but there are ways to handle it. One would be to ignore the legally chancy problem of whether the restoration of the Port voters’ rights would be a state or a local issue and take our chances in court, arguing that the people themselves should be able to change their government, as the Oregon constitution says. But a better way, in my opinion, would be to sidestep it entirely by creating a local initiative (in the CB Port District) which would combine two parts, or else two initiatives that would be interdependent, together containing those two parts. One part would simply abolish the Port as it exists today, reduce its $1.5 million tax base to zero, and transfer its assets and obligations into a trust. The other would create a new Port with an elected Board of Commissioners (or a temporary appointed one of short duration), a new, lower tax base and a re-written charter, which would absorb the former Port’s assets and financial obligations. Obviously this would have to include a provision for electing all future Port Commissioners; an essential part of our problems has been the Port’s Governor-appointed Board that has shown such outrageous disdain for the Port District’s voters.
Don’t miss it, Larry has put on his bestest pink tu tuu on, and kissed the arse of Miss Not So Nice, and Mr. SweetPants – again. Praising these two for working on “the first ever comprehensive plan for Coos County”. Gee, Miss Not So Nice is in her second term, and the ‘news’paper praises her attempts to gather together a comprehensive plan ? Now? Why now Cribbins? Bored? Why, after all these years, should We The Voters/Taxpayers/Victims be praising this current BOC for just now noticing? WTF is going on? Praise all around for the facts that these two Job Messiahs have NOT had a plan, do NOT have a plan now, and you can bet your bottom dollar, it won’t be the Architects plan, remember that John and Mellissa? Remember? I’m sure others on this site remember too. Finally, fifteen years into the 21st century, and these Chamber/SCDC/Port leaders are finally, amid great praise and adolation, telling us they do not know what the hell they are doing?????
Only in Coos County would ANYONE try such a thing. Look at what that Editorial from the Ruby Red Slipper crowd has in todays’ World. If you can stomach it. MPOO. Shame on you L.
Please tell us Mark, when are you going to be up for re-election as the Coos County Democratic Chairman? I want to see how that works out for you. So please tell us when that is due to happen.
Is it one year away or more than two? That will be a time frame that we should all watch with interest.
I won’t be surprised if you don’t answer.
I believe Mark’s reign is over effective the end of the month. My understanding is that he opted not to seek reelection
Makes perfect sense. He just recently upped his attacks on you and this site. Must have figured he could work his attack style for JC more freely if he had less responsibility for others reputations, and that way we can’t hold the whole party accountable for his behavior.
Its too little too late. He has already exposed how corrupt the democrats have become. He has been the only local voice from inside communicating the true position of these democrats representing Jordan Cove. For that we all owe him our thanks. He has been very informative and not very secretive on behalf of the democrats.
TR, you should follow me on Twitter. That’s where all the good stuff is.
You guys just crack me up. Yes, my “reign” is drawing to a close. Whatever will you talk about now? — Anything but Plan B!
GOD bless America, Tiny Tim and the 200 feet of soft sand below JCEP; being unelected will give the man more time for his diarrhea of the keyboard posted here
Mark always claims that I’m mistaken or not telling the truth, but he never gets specific. He hopes tossing a wet blanket without specifics will do the job of discrediting what I have said. That hasn’t worked out for him so far. We all know that the time of the democrats is at half life, but its fading fast. He just can’t see that he’s helping to make that reality arrive sooner by his postings.
lol, I bet there are more than a few democrats that wish you would just shut up, before you take them with you over the cliff.
Here’s one for you, TR. You said,
“Populations are growing north and south of Coos Bay while we remain stagnant.”
The Census data I posted shows that is clearly wrong. Specific enough?
Pope Francis: Climate change is real and humans are causing it.
Mark said, I like when he said, “Poor people need jobs to have dignity.
He has taken that phrase completely out of context and turned it into a statement of approval from the pope for more FF development. He will make himself believe that the pope is on the same page and in lockstep with these local democrats.
That’s what we’re up against. That’s the type of reasoning the democrats are employing.
Remember there is a third choice for Oregonians. The Pacific Green Party is where former democrats are assembling their voting power. See you there.
(pulling teeth here) So you elect Greens across Coos County. OK, fine. Then what’s the Green Plan for Coos County? What do they DO?
http://www.pacificgreens.org/what_we_stand_for
Chew on this and sharpen your knives, but don’t expect me to start defending the policies of a party that is not yet in power. That’s what you want me to do, when its you that has to defend the status quo and the traitorous democrats. Your party is the one in trouble and you just want to kick the other guy to distract the public away from what your doing. Your as transparent as glass, you’ve done that way to many times on this site. When are you next up for election? That will be a very telling moment for the locals.
I think the Green Party’s Ten Principles are very nice. But how does that translate into specific action in Coos County? Nobody votes for anybody unless they have a plan to do something. The question is: What would the Green Party do for/in Coos County? You have no idea.
By the way, Democrats are not “in trouble” in Oregon. They control every branch of government with supermajorities. You may not approve of them, but Oregon does.
A few more election cycles on your current path and we will be able to change your last two words to read, Oregon has
Mark’s remarks show why the democrats are struggling to keep voters. They believe in climate change, they believe man is mostly responsible for the change, but they don’t want to stop promoting new FF infrastructure until they get every last cent out of the ground.
If anyone wonders where Mark gets this need for greed you just have to look upstream, he’s reflecting the attitudes of all of Oregon’s elected democrats and they are in step with the national party. We’ve watched MarkM turn the local democrats 180 degrees since he was installed as the local chairman. He has been promoting coal exports and LNG exports to provide cover for Arnie. Caddy, Wyden, DeFazio, Merkley and Kitzhaber. They are all working very hard to satisfy the goals of the FF barons. That party is blinded by their own greed and group think for FF’s is the only path forward they will allow. In this they are in link step with the republicans.
You can see that those FF jobs are the only ones that matter to them, even when they know the public already knows that following them will make things worse for the rest of humanity..Kitzhaber has finally came out of the closet up north and now his team is blatantly pushing for LNG exports as well as coal exports and propane exports. Its opening a lot of eyes up north, the gig is up, the people of Oregon now know that these are the only jobs being offered up by the democrats, they are trying to get these ff projects in the dirt before they are tossed out of office. The party is in serious trouble, the conflicts of interest are too stark and apparent even to their own members. It may seem like they are losing public support very slowly, but after its all done they will be stunned by the speed of their demise.
Kitzhaber and the democrats have awakened the Portland area by recently promoting coal exports and propane exports. Oregonians felt proud when they thought their state was going to be a leader and trend setter in renewable energy production. The democrats have finally made it clear to the rest of the state that they will help promote more renewable energy only after all the FF goals are reached. Like Mark said earlier, its always been Jordan Cove and, not instead of Jordan Cove.
He will not change course, they money influence is too strong, the greed too rampant. That party is stuck in quicksand and we can’t pull them out, we’ve tried, when we do think we’re pulling them out, they jump right back in. They have proven that enough money can make a traitor out of most anyone.
I see a lot of mistaken assumptions in that mish-mash, but I don’t see a Plan B for Coos County.
What’s your Plan B, TR?
I’ve played that game with you before. Your just looking for a target to shoot at.
You should just keep on pushing for Jordan Cove, because no matter what jobs are presented to you, you will twist it until those “jobs” will only work in conjunction with your precious LNG jobs. Your fully exposed and you don’t even have the common sense to realize it. Your just going to keep putting more cement in your own boots. I hope your having fun doing it, it sure is costing you a lot to do it, and you don’t seem to know that.
The truth is, you know what you are against, but you have no idea what you are FOR.
I really like this guy
Me too. I like when he said, “Poor people need jobs to have dignity.”
“To me, that means we need to do it better, not drop it entirely, especially if developing an Old Town is our goal. “May I ask, who is the architect that designed the new “museum” going up on the waterfront in Coos Bay? I’m just curious if that architect was included in the plan to develop an “old town?”
What part of history does that Crystal Cathedral North represent? Has anyone seen that building? Which committee approved that thing, and why?
I hadn’t really watched the construction, but man oh man, is this the ‘old town’ concept as seen through the eyes of the Job Messiahs? What IS the style of this new museum? It’s a very confusing project to see, please Mark, do tell us what concept the city fathers are gaming for, here On The Waterfront?
Seriously? Take a look at that thing. I was shocked to see what it became. History? What history? It’s as bad as the Mini Taj Mahall they fostered out in Empire, you know, the one sitting empty, with trash and chain link fencing, which Coos Bay must think terribly inviting, hell, they are putting it EVERYWHERE , I think We The People poured over $100,000.00 into THAT building, because it complied with their Old Fishing Village concept? How so? Why don’t these clowns fess up to their past mistakes, instead of repeating them all over the county? I swear, I’ve lived in three states as an adult, and always followed local politics, and I have NEVER seen a community continue with failed policies and leaders, like right here in CC. It’s absolutely an amazing situation to follow, year after year. How these locals put up with these failures is something I just cannot figure out. Imagine Roblan called The Education Czar, when I moved here, I was told the man walked on water. Well, I’m thankful my kids got an education elsewhere, look at the sad, sorry state of education in this county under these dimocrats’ ‘leadership’, and I use that term loosely. Unbelievable to observe. Only one group of people to blame for the condition of Coos County, and those people are still calling the shots. Sadly.
Well, Miss Queen of the Off Topic Remark, never having seen the building for yourself I’m sure you know best, but I took a tour of the new museum last week and I thought it was absolutely beautiful. It’s a real “Of the People, By the People” thing too. No government funding involved. Until you can build something better yourself, you’d probably best leave your sniping to yourself. Shows your pettiness.
Maybe you’d care to do the thread a favor and critique something useful, like Wim’s plans.
Let me try again, since you’ve seen it, what part of that building denotes the contents inside? And what planning process was it included in? A plan of some kind? I’ve not seen that style on the waterfronts of Bandon, Florence, Newport, Lincoln City, you know Mark, those communities who have worked to allow their areas to flourish, making them attractive, I saw no rusted trails of graffiti covered rail cars, nor did I see any multi-million dollar Visitor Center/Chamber of Consorts/ SCDC buildings either. Just lots and lots of happy locals and visitors, out enjoying the areas. What does one see whilst passing through CB or NB Mark? What have you and the others done to entice investment in anything other than rust and oil and contaminated soils? YOU and your buds ARE the ones who brought us to this point in time. M didn’t, I didn’t, YOU and your welfare-queen buddies who think the only thing this county can do is to suck off another pipe. It’s over, even in Coos Co., the run is almost over, this is just the last twisted, dirty scheme of an out of touch industry, and it’s sychophants among us.
I don’t know, Kay. 🙁 Why don’t you go to a board meeting and ask. You could use some fresh air. You sound very unhappy. I feel sorry for you.
Save that pity for yourself, Mark. In less than a decade you will be renowned for being on the wrong side of history
You don’t have to worry about me, Mary. If I were you I’d start thinking about publishing a Plan B. The People are going to want to know what they are voting for when they consider your petition.
“There’s a popular saying on the left that organized labor would build their own gallows if they were offered the jobs, and nowhere is this more true than in labor’s support for the environmentally disastrous Keystone XL, Enbridge Sandpiper and Bakken oil pipelines.” We could add Jordan Cove to this list!
http://truth-out.org/news/item/28602-building-their-own-gallows
“Renewable energy and energy efficiency are a better jobs bet: they create over six times as many jobs as gas per unit of power generated or saved, and around three times as many jobs for the same amount invested3.
“Huge potential in the North West: exploiting the region’s huge renewable energy potential and saving energy in the region’s homes could support another 24,000 jobs4.”
http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2015/01/19/doubts-over-fracking-jobs-claims-new-report-says-24000-jobs-clean-energy-north
That’s great news! Who are the investors? When do we meet with them? We want to make sure they take advantage of their EZ breaks, right?
Wim, you took issue with my inelegant passage,
“I wouldn’t expect a great influx of people and investment to Coos County the day after the JCEP is denied. That didn’t happen in the 80s or the 90s or the 2000s or the 2010s. It’s not gonna happen now. The opposite is actually the case. We’ll see more people and investment come to Coos County if the JCEP is approved. . . .
Why didn’t that happen from 1979 to 2005? Our ‘permanent slump’ precedes any talk of JC.”
You said it so much better yourself when you wrote, “Economic development is bound to occur when people with money and/or ambition move into an area.” Well done. I agree.
Also, I want to offer a correction to my earlier post. I claimed you said Old Town Florence, “was not the result of some heroic ecodevo program but of a natural process of in-migration.” You were actually talking about the helicopter part manufacturer. Sorry. I suspect the sentiment is correct though. If you actually offer FURA credit for helping to make Florence’s Old Town possible, I withdraw the point. Just more ground for us to find agreement!
Its OK folks. We’ve seen him do this before. He has decided to make an argument with Wim over statistics and timelines that he believes he can use to bolster the democrats decision to go all in for Jordan Cove. He’s very comfortable doing this. He also hopes to best Wim with his own words, another favorite endeavor of his. When this is all done, remember that this democrat is leading the local chapter and he is mirroring the position and goals of all our elected officials, who are all democrats.
Exactly. There’s no need to read what I wrote and think. Just relax. It will be OK . . . .
Oh I disagree. Everyone should read what you write as they keep in mind what you are trying to do. You somehow still think you can sway people who read this blog to get behind you and these democrats you represent, to fall in line and quit objecting to JCEP. The democrats have decided to represent the fossil fuel industry and you want everyone to be OK with that. I want everyone to see what the democrats have become and you are showing it loud and clear. The democrats have you as their local point person and that will make every democrat in the county just as responsible for this traitorous enterprise as you are, unless they remove you as their spokesperson or leave the party. So I think what your doing is ultimately a good thing. Your helping to separate the sheep from the goats.
Oh man! I forgot to add that building the JCEP does not in any way, shape, or form preclude any of Wim’s proposals, even the ones I don’t like. It’s ALWAYS been “Jordon Cove AND . . . .” not “Jordan Cove OR . . .”
OK, let’s take a look at those proposals. The first group are designed to raise revenue for Coos County government to pay its bills. Thanks goodness, we sure could use it.
One proposal is to sue the US Federal Government for control of the Coos Wagon Road lands. (There was some talk about Santa Claus too so forgive me if I wasn’t supposed to believe this suggestion is real.) If serious, this proposal reveals a gross misunderstanding of the law. The US govt has done nothing illegal with its handling of the Wagon Roads. There are no grounds to sue. This proposal also belies a fundamental misunderstanding of the difference between policy and politics. Policy is easy; politics are hard. We all have good ideas. Getting them through Congress is another matter entirely. Our current commission understands this. Politics may not be fair, it is definitely frustrating, but that is the reality. The County is more likely to bailed out by Santa Claus than it is by the Wagon Roads, especially as a result of a lawsuit.
Another proposal is to cut spending. These kinds of proposals are always followed by a laundry list of the things that the petitioner does not like and this one is no different – one person’s spending is another person’s essential service. Regardless, there is no way to cut our way to prosperity. There’s not enough to cut. Besides even the best cutting raises no new revenue and that’s the real problem, by your own assessment.
Then there’s the clarion call to eliminate Enterprise Zones and Urban Renewal Districts. As both of these economic tools are created by state law and are widely used in every economic community, this proposal would amount to Coos County unilaterally disarming itself. Other economic districts would quickly descend on anything of value and haul it away. Closing EZs wouldn’t raise much, if any, revenue. It would essentially be a tax increase on business. Because most businesses would subsequently react by cutting employees, raising prices, relocating, or closing, the result would be increased unemployment and decreased economic activity. New businesses would establish in communities with EZs. Since you contend EZs don’t attract new businesses anyway, the absence of EZs is likely to have zero effect on business development. Your “Trust me, it just takes time” posture sounds a lot like “planner-speak.”
Shutting down the Urban Renewal District would generate more revenue for the county and other municipalities, but doing so would make some of your other proposals much more difficult to achieve. Now might be a good time to visit the case of Florence. One of your proposals to “foster economic growth” is to develop the Coos Bay switching yard into an “Old Town.” Coupled with a “Rails to Trails” greenway, “THAT would put Coos Bay on the map.” (Hey, who’s the Job Messiah now?)
I like the part about developing an Old Town, although I would focus on Front St. (I like R-T Greenways too, but they are ubiquitous and poor economic generators.) With a great Old Town, Florence provides us a good model of how to build one. You claim Old Town Florence, “was not the result of some heroic ecodevo program but of a natural process of in-migration.” (You know that’s not a word, right?) Actually you couldn’t be more wrong. Florence has a very active, robust Urban Renewal Agency which has been instrumental in building Old Town infrastructure and beautification projects, the Siuslaw Public Library, the Siuslaw Interpretive Center, and the Siuslaw Performing Arts Center. The Florence Urban Renewal Agency (FURA) has been extremely successful in aiding and attracting local businesses. How do I know? As I said earlier, Florence has grown by 217% since 1980 adding 5,160 new residents during that time. It didn’t just happen on its own. The people of Florence worked very hard and very pointedly to make it so. They had a plan and it worked. If you’re going to use population growth as an indicator of success, you’ve got to give FURA its due.
We could achieve the same thing here; we both agree on that. But we’ll need an effective UR to do it. I don’t see a rich guy strolling into town and saying, “I’m going to build me an Old Town right here!”
That said, I agree that at the state level reform does need to happen to both EZs and URs. They don’t always work as they should. I further agree that in CB/NB UR has often produced disappointing results. Duh. To me, that means we need to do it better, not drop it entirely, especially if developing an Old Town is our goal.
Next up is the election of Port Commissioners. I would agree this is something we should look at. I’m more hopeful than you are about the possibility of a state initiative, but I think your alternative of two local initiatives is interesting. (I do think it’s borderline hilarious that you want to bring another lawsuit! When did you get so suit-happy?) But at the end of the day, the question is – we would do that to do what? What avenues would a local Port Commission pursue that the current one is not? If it’s just sit around, do nothing, and let things grow on their own, I don’t think that would pass muster with Coos County voters. In fact, I think a locally elected board would be just as developmental minded as our appointed one. It might even be many of the same people. Do you think Jody McCaffrey would beat out Eric Farm for a seat? Hmmm. I don’t know about that. (full disclosure: I like them both!)
That brings us to the Sustainability Petition which I think is the last of your proposals. The petition promises Coos County voters a choice, but it really doesn’t. It makes the first choice for them. It says, “You can have anything you want — so long as it isn’t LNG.” If you want to give people the direct power to govern themselves, go ahead. After that you can ask them how they feel about Jordan Cove. Personally I think the voters have already been very clear by proxy in the last several elections. The vast majority of Coos County voters are not only comfortable with the JCEP, they want it built. That is why I think the Sustainability Petition is doomed to fail.
Despite your protests about them Wim, I think you like plans and planning very much. You just don’t like the ones that are being proposed. But at this point you remind me of Macbeth who has “waded in so far that should he wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o’er.” (I’d put that in a little dot-box if I could.)
Thanks for the proposals. I enjoyed looking at them.
RESPONSE to Mark’s second post, of January 19, 2015 at 3:16 PM, 2015, and his correction at 6:19 PM)
Again responding in approximate order: Although you made a lot of comments, you ignored my first point: whatever is done with public funds in Coos Bay should make this a more attractive place to visit and live in. In practice this, my cardinal rule, could cover a lot of ground. It certainly includes unglamorous public infrastructure like sewers and streets, which we have to have, but it also requires respect for the visual aspects of our scenic area. Under such a rule, nasty or dangerous industries would not be prohibited per se but they would not be welcomed with showers of public money, nor could our “leaders” use the public purse to buy an unsightly railroad that was never needed in the first place, and ruin our waterfront’s chances of redevelopment.
With regard to gaining revenues from the Coos Bay Wagon Road lands, I should have mentioned that I’m no expert on that but I relied on my conversations with Don Gurney, who is very knowledgeable about this rather arcane subject. He also has a track record of helping to generate County revenues from public forest lands. Talk to him if you want to know more.
Next, about cutting county expenditures, I agree that cuts are at best a partial solution, since the real looming problem is a substantial revenue shortfall. But that’s no reason to dismiss any consideration of such cuts; it seems flippant, even irresponsible. You also denigrate the idea of cuts as the expression of “. . . a laundry list of the things that the petitioner does not like and this one is no different – one person’s spending is another person’s essential service.” Really? Giving $25,000 to SCDC is to gain an “essential service”? Or what about the $14,000 that the County Commissioners have already spent for a schoolmarmy consultant to run “goal setting” meetings that seem to assume that the participants have just graduated from kindergarten? It’s history repeating itself: the last set of Commissioners was barely elected when they hatched a plan to pay an administrator to do their work for them, and the present set, being equally clueless, is spending good money to learn how to set priorities, when even those who voted for them must have assumed they knew how.
Enterprise Zones: They’re Everywhere!
Next, you denigrate my “. . . clarion call to eliminate Enterprise Zones and Urban Renewal Districts. As both of these economic tools are created by state law and are widely used in every economic community, this proposal would amount to Coos County unilaterally disarming itself. Other economic districts would quickly descend on anything of value and haul it away.”
I’m puzzled by the inclusion of Urban Renewal into your idea of economic disarmament, but especially about your last three words. How would other “economic districts” haul away an industrial plant that’s already built? Stalin ordered entire heavy industries to be moved to other parts of the USSR, but things don’t work that way here – yet. It’s irrelevant anyway, since the few industries that were interested in coming to Coos Bay were not motivated by EZ incentives but because Coos Bay offered something unique that they wanted to use. Those industries included, by their own admission, Bandon Dunes, ORC and Jordan Cove. What they wanted, “other economic districts” could not offer: a beautiful stretch of dunes, or a good deposit of chromite ore, or craven politicians ready to sacrifice their constituents’ peace of mind and safety for a corporate payoff.
The original idea behind EZs was to give parts of the state with “stagnation and pervasive poverty” like Coos Bay an advantage in recruiting new industries. But as you rightly note, soon after their invention every other place in the state had EZs too, a result typical of political enterprises; so Coos Bay ended up having no advantage at all. Moreover, since for nearly thirty years, Coos Bay’s EZ has not been the decisive factor in decisions to locate sizable new industrial developments, your statement that its abolition “. . . would amount to Coos County unilaterally disarming itself.” is hysterical nonsense. Equally nonsensical is to claim, all in the same breath, that “closing EZs wouldn’t raise much, if any, revenue,” and that doing so “. . . would essentially be a tax increase on business.” So which is it? A tax increase on business would raise revenue, but you have just discovered a rule, until today unknown in the Democrat Party, that any cost increase on business is counterproductive. So why not abolish all business taxes? How about doing away with the minimum wage? I’m sure the Central Committee will like that idea. What all this seems to amount to is a hard-wired unwillingness to terminate any government program, no matter how useless.
Urban Renewal Removal
Next, in my discussion of Urban Renewal Districts you seem to have missed that I was talking about the County-approved ones, mainly the one on the North Spit, which has diverted and wasted large sums of property taxes. The county does not control city-established URDs; those are an entirely separate issue, with their own problems.
On the heels of that, you accuse me of being a central planner or a JOB Messiah in disguise for advocating the conversion of the railroad right-of-way into a “Rails to Trails” bike path, along with turning the Coos Bay switching yard into an “Old Town” development. I don’t see how that makes me a central planner or a JOB Messiah; rather the opposite. As I understand the process of railroad conversion, which was a possibility back in 2007/2008 before the Port decided they had to have the choo-choo, after the track materials are sold the land can be sold to the Trust for Public Lands, which then funds the installation of a bike path through our gorgeous scenery. Such a path, suitable for bikers as well as hikers, could be a catalyst for private development by the private sector, not just here but in places all along the track.
As to the switching yard conversion, I’m not proposing that the Port should build an Old Town itself; like everything else the Port touches, that would probably be a disaster. Instead the Port could simply lease the switching yard property to people interested in building waterfront businesses of the kind you see in Florence or Newport’s Old Towns. Or it could sell the property outright, with conditions that it be developed in that way, with deadlines and a reversal clause if the developers don’t perform. You disagree, again revealing your own top-down planning bias: “. . . we’ll need an effective UR to do it. I don’t see a rich guy strolling into town and saying, “I’m going to build me an Old Town right here!” Well, why not? We had a rich guy strolling into the Bandon dunes already. He spotted an opportunity and went for it. Besides, having observed close-up how URDs and Design Committees work, I’d rather see a number of private lessees or property owners fill the place with buildings; it’s the only way you will get the kind of semi-disconnected diversity of architecture that is part of the charm of such developments.
Catty-Catty
I hesitated to dignify with a response your catty question about in-migration: “You know that’s not a word, right?” No, it’s two words used in combination. One reason for the richness of the English language has been its users’ freedom to make new words, by inventing new ones or combining existing ones or converting nouns to verbs, and so on. In this case my object was clarity. To migrate is to move or resettle, either within a country or from one country to another; the words emigrate and immigrate seem to have been invented to describe moving from a country and moving to a country, respectively. But to use either one of these in connection with a town like Florence seemed ambiguous; hence the addition of “in”, which is not at all unprecedented.
The People’s Vote
I’m glad you are interested in the people regaining their Port’s voting rights. But to call me “suit-happy” on that account is another overstatement, most likely because you don’t know that, back in 1990, an anti-Port group (there were several at the time) wanted to file an initiative in the Port district to return the vote to the district’s voters, which would have surely passed. Initially the County elections office (and the Secretary of State) held that the filing would require signatures amounting to 6% of the port district’s voters, which would have been 880. But the Port – naturally – appealed, and got the Attorney General to rule that the signature requirement for statewide initiatives would apply. This meant the group would have to collect 63,000 signatures, a near-impossible task and most likely a useless one, considering that the statewide voters would have scant interest in voting for it. So the group gave up its quest, although their attorney had offered, for a flat fee of $1,500, to argue the case in the Court of Appeals. Through a so-called Writ of Mandamus he would have asked the court to order that the initiative could he handled as a district measure after all. The group’s attorney, from Eugene, confirmed this to me.
Considering this history, it seems feasible to go to court even today, maybe not for $1,500 but still at reasonable cost. But I also emphasized in my article that we could sidestep that issue by structuring a new initiative, in two parts.
Either way, however, it is dead-certain that the Port, an agency whose first instinct has always been self-preservation, will run to court over it, starting by contesting the filing and the ballot title. They did it then, and they will do it now; so we may as well be prepared.
Your demand for further details about how the new Port would be restructured is premature. I’m talking concepts here, but they include drastically changing the Port’s mission from the perennial “industry über alles”. You predict that an elected board wouldn’t act any different from the present appointed one. You are wrong, once again because you don’t know the history of the 1989/90 pulp mill conflict when the Port got trounced repeatedly, by a majority of incensed voters. It most certainly could happen again, and besides, the new Port Commission would be ruled by a different charter with new priorities.
Thanks for the detailed post, Wim. Before I examine the two lists of proposals (I won’t insult you by calling them “plans”) I want to take a look at your thesis and argument.
You say, “I lay responsibility for this demographic-economic disaster squarely at the feet of Coos county’s ecodevangelists whose countless irresponsible industrial schemes continued to discourage in-migration during those three decades.”
I submit that is in error. I offer this thesis instead: Coos County’s current demographic-economic challenges are the result of the collapse of the timber and fishing industries in the 1980s. To explain why this is so, let’s look at the population numbers you provided.
I can see why you would copy down the figures from the Oregon Blue Book as its presentation neatly and conveniently supports your thesis at first blush. However, some rudimentary analysis of the data leads to a different conclusion. First some context. Census figures show population growth to be historically robust in Coos County. Between 1900 and 1960, Coos County grew by at least 21% each decade, exceeding the growth rate of the state in every decade but the 1950s (when CC grew by 23%). Why? A strong industrial base of mining, shipbuilding, fishing, logging, and timber.
By 1980 Coos Bay had become the Timber Exporting Capital of the World. Everything was awesome. Population crested at 64,047. Then the bottom fell out. Coos County lost 6% of its population by 1990. You contend this is because economic planners screwed the pooch. I think it had more to do with the collapse of the fishing and timber industries. If you are correct we would expect to see a steady decline in population. But we don’t. Coos County gained back 4% of its population in the 2000s and another half-percent since then.
Fortunately for you the Oregon Blue Book choose a 1980-2009 timeline to present county population data. This happens to be the worst possible snapshot for Coos County. In fact, it’s the only timeline that produces a negative result. Observe:
From 1960-2009 Coos County grew by 15%.
From 1970-2009 Coos County grew by 12%.
From 1980-2009 Coos County shrank by 1.5%.
From 1990-2009 Coos County grew by 4%.
From 2000-2009 Coos County grew by 0.3%.
My students would recognize this as “cherry picking” but I don’t blame you for that. I don’t think you did it on purpose, and you meant well. It was too easy to just copy it down.
When seeing the data in its proper context it becomes clear that Coos County has not been on a steady decline at all. Rather, something catastrophic occurred after 1980 to the Coos County economy. That supports my thesis – the timber and fishing industries collapsed.
But why are we talking about counties anyway? Activity in Oregon counties does not accurately reflect what’s happening on the coast. Shouldn’t we be looking at cities instead? You said something about apples and oranges? This may be an example.
Take Douglas County for example. Your Oregon Blue Book map shows a healthy growth rate in Douglas County of 12%. However, that growth is not evenly shared across the county. Inland Roseburg grew by 29% while coastal Reedsport shrank by 14%! Relative to that, Coos County’s -1.5% doesn’t seem so bad. Now you might point out that in Lane County, which grew by 26%, Eugene grew by 49% while coastal Florence grew by an eye-popping 217%. Wow. Good point. But let’s come back to Florence later. The point is, growth in Oregon’s coastal cities does not correspond to the overall growth of the counties in which they reside. If we want to see how Coos Bay/North Bend is really doing, we should compare it to Oregon’s other coastal cities.
Before we do that we should recognize another apple-orange misstep. As you know when doing statistical analysis it is important to consider the sample size of your data. A small data set has small denominators which can quickly produce big percentage swings from only a slight gross numerator increase. In other words, it doesn’t take many new people to move to a small town to exhibit a big percentage increase. That same number of people moving to a big town may go unnoticed. For our purposes, when considered as a single city which it essentially is, Coos Bay/North Bend at 26,525 is by far and away the largest city on the Oregon Coast, over 2.5 times larger than the runner up, Newport. This makes a big difference when interpreting what the data mean.
So how does CB/NB compare to its Oregon coastal sisters? Pretty well actually. Using the 1980-2009 time frame which shows the absolute worst case data for Coos County, CB/NB has added 2,322 new residents, an increase of over 16%. Huh. Much better than the county. By comparison, Astoria grew by 3%, Tillamook by 18%, Newport by 41%, and Bandon by 43%. A less rosy picture perhaps until you realize that Tillamook only added 719 new residents to achieve its 18% mark, less than one-third of CB/NB’s total. Bandon added less than a thousand.
The gross number increases since 1990, after Coos County’s catastrophic economic event, are even more instructive. CB/NB grew by 1,835 people since 1990, far exceeding Seaside (1,121), Tillamook (709), Gold Beach (594), and Astoria (181), while in the ballpark with Lincoln City (2,022), Brookings (2,070), and Newport (2,163). Florence (4,409 – Wow!) is in another league, but we’ll get there later. The point is this: You claim retired couples looking for a nice spot to spend their declining years are not coming to Coos Bay. The raw data clearly shows that they in fact are doing precisely that. CB/NB is very competitive with Oregon’s other coastal cities for new residents.
In sum, neither your thesis – economic planners mucked up Coos County – nor the assumption upon which it’s built – Coos County has been on an inexorable decline – is correct. The supporting evidence you provide reveals a completely different case. That is, Coos County’s current demographic-economic challenges are the result of the collapse of the timber and fishing industries in the 1980s. Coos County has struggled with mixed success in fits and starts to reclaim, rebuild, and reinvent its economy since then. As you point out, it hasn’t always been pretty. But it’s been far from a disaster.
I’ll let you mull that over before I move on to your plans, er I mean, your proposals.
RESPONSE to Mark’s post of January 19, 2015 at 1:13 PM:
Thanks for your reply, Mark. This is getting to be fun; I just hope the readers of this blog won’t get tired of our dueling statistics or verbiage. I will try to answer your points in the order you made them.
You start out by stating (and I quote, from your third paragraph) that my claim that our declining/stagnating population was caused by the sequence of noisy but always unsuccessful campaigns to attract heavy industry “. . . is in error. I offer this thesis instead” (you write:). “Coos County’s (demographic problems are due to) . . . the collapse of the timber and fishing industries in the 1980s.” So you say that you are right and I’m wrong about the cause of our permanent decline. You say it’s all due to business conditions back in the ‘eighties while I blame the ecodevo crowd’s endless mismanagement, back then and more recently.
Do we have common ground?
On the other hand, the word you use to describe what you consider to be the truth is “thesis”. In English that is something on the order of a proposition, an opinion, idea, belief, etc. It’s not a certainty, but at best a tentative conclusion.
Even so, you sound quite sure of its accuracy, claiming I’m “in error”. That’s why you confuse me when you also tell me further on, in your fifth paragraph: “You contend this is because economic planners screwed the pooch. I think it had more to do with the collapse of the fishing and timber industries.”
Your expression: “had more to do with . . .”, is more evidence that you are not sure your “thesis” can replace mine, after all. Unless these quotes are twin slips of your keyboard, they communicate that deep down you accept that BOTH factors may have caused our decline, so we are a lot closer than we seemed to be in paragraph 3. Your paragraph 5 suggests that your argument is more about how much blame to assign to each factor: 50/50 or 70/30 or 90/10 or whatever. I would accept such a position as far more realistic. After all, in the real world not many events have only one cause. And frankly, I would not oppose describing my own position as a “thesis” also, except of course I think mine has a more solid basis.
But I can’t help thinking that we’re talking apples and oranges again. Certainly, our industrial decline caused us problems and population losses, particularly in the ‘eighties; who could deny it? But time goes on, and when you look around just about every other place was similarly affected back then, but has recovered and grown – except Coos Bay. And to find the reason, you need to identify the differences between those places and us in terms of public policy, since private business policies – like the timber companies’ decision making process about whether to continue or close up shop – are pretty much the same all over. And then we find that Coos county’s self-appointed economic dictators have practiced the kind of industrial recruitment that has not just been a fiasco but a counterproductive one, since it was based on a wrong assessment of the area’s economic potential. As a result, their damn-the-torpedoes methods have precluded many alternative developments that could have done a great deal of good. I realize that, as a Democrat Party activist and aspiring politician, you are predisposed to believe in communal action to improve the world. But if nothing else, our experience with ecodevo activism here in Coos county has shown such confidence is misplaced.
Counties and Cities
You object that Reedsport, a small coastal part of otherwise growing Douglas county, has declined as we have. You are correct, but it doesn’t prove much. The main relevance of Reedsport, a small town and one of few coastal communities that have neither grown nor drawn many tourists and retirees, is as an illustration of the dangers of depending on a large industry that may fold its tent at any time, an experience we’ve had too often in Coos county also.
You also contend that, besides the various coastal counties’ population numbers I showed in my graph, we need to consider city population trends. I don’t disagree, although as a practical matter, in any dispute like this there is no end to the statistics that can be cited. Anyway, when I do that, I don’t find that Coos Bay comes out looking a lot better when compared to other coastal cities. For example, while it’s true (as you point out) that the city of Astoria has not gained much population, Clatsop county has, which means that other communities not far from Astoria have grown considerably. And this could explain why, despite having a stagnant population on paper, to a visitor Astoria presents an entirely different impression than Coos Bay. The place looks far more alive and cared for, clean, attractive, with much less industrial debris along the waterfront, and with visitors year-round; there’s a feeling that things are happening. Contrast this admittedly non-statistical impression with the one I get from my Coos Bay neighborhood while walking my dog. Every block seems to have at least one abandoned house, and I know many of those places have been empty for years. And don’t get me started on our waterfront. These are not irrelevant factors; on the basis of such impressions visitors make decisions every day, and those have consequences.
More or less arguing two sides of an issue, you also claim that Coos county’s population trends are not as bad as I say, and you cite growth numbers during different intervals starting in 1960, 1970, 1980, etc, but always ending in 2009. While doing so you narrowly avoid accusing me of cherry-picking data, which is not only gentlemanly but also wise because I could have returned the compliment; and in fact, almost any practical use of statistics can be dismissed as cherry-picking because generalization and simplification are necessary parts of it. (And when politicians are involved it gets even worse, but let’s not go there either!) In this case, we get a different view when, ignoring both your numbers and mine, we consider each of the past decades in isolation: only the sixties, then the seventies, and so on. And when we do that, we find that the seventies (1970 to 1980) were the last decade that recorded solid population growth in Coos county, from 56,964 in 1970 to 64,047 in 1980, an increase of 11.1%. So when you boast that “From 1970-2009 Coos County grew by 12%”, you are confirming that the sum of the population changes since 1980 has been negligible, 12% being only 0.9% more than 1980’s 11.1% increase over 1970. This still amounts to virtual stagnation if spread over the intervening 35 years since 1980. In short: except for a few minor bumps that cancelled each other out we’ve been stagnant ever since the seventies’ last hurrah, and in sharp contrast to just about everywhere else in Oregon. And that was the point of the graph in my article.
Next, you claim that Coos county’s poor population figures obscure the fact that “CB/NB”, obviously the cities of Coos Bay and North Bend combined, has done rather well compared with its “coastal sisters”. And you cite that between 1980 and 2009, while Coos county was doing poorly in the population department, “. . . CB/NB has added 2,322 new residents, an increase of over 16%. Huh. Much better than the county.”
Huh yourself. First of all, your numbers may be unsound because they are based on official city limits. In 1983 voters in the City of Eastside – wisely or not – decided to consolidate with the City of Coos Bay (Following tradition, North Bend said No). That vote added about 1,500 people to Coos Bay’s numbers, and hence must be subtracted from the 2,322 combination CB/NB. Not impressed.
And secondly, to me and my dog, the notion that CB/NB has seen substantial growth, either in population or wealth, is simply counterintuitive. If it were really true, those empty homes would be occupied by people working feverishly to improve them. Instead, what few people CB/NB has gained, possibly at the expense of the surrounding area, must have chosen cheaper shelter: trailers, low-income apartments, rental hovels. Or maybe they kept a tent or a hut in the woods, as has been the case on the Water Board land behind my house for several summers, and now even in winter.
Maybe Income Figures would help?
At the risk of beating a dead horse, I ventured into some other numbers that illustrate our predicament, and are easily available. These are not concerned with population but per capita income (p.c.i.) in Oregon’s 36 counties. According to Wikipedia, per capita income in Oregon varies from #1 on the list, Clackamas county with $31,785, to #36, aptly named Malheur county on the bottom, with $16,335. Coos county is two thirds of the way down the list at #24, with $21,981. The p.c.i. numbers for Clatsop, Lincoln, Curry and Tillamook counties are all higher than for Coos; the only coastal county that is lower is Douglas, but it makes up for that with higher median household and family incomes than Coos. Apparently Douglas county has larger families, or the depressed Reedsport/Gardiner era drags down its numbers, or both.
Zipatlas puts out average p.c.i. figures by zip code, which may provide more realistic numbers than city limits do. In Coos Bay, for example, the zip code 97420 includes, among others, the unincorporated areas of Barview and Bunker Hill, both of which can be described as low-income or poverty-stricken.
With a per capita income of $13,462, the Coos Bay zip code is #267 out of 407 Oregon zip codes, which puts it two thirds down the list as well. All of the following coastal zip codes have a higher p.c.i., starting with Depoe Bay at $17,454 and continuing (in descending order) with Seal Rock, Yachats, Cannon Beach, Seaside, Florence, Warrenton, Astoria, Gold Beach, Waldport, North Bend, Rockaway Beach, Siletz, Newport, Garibaldi, Tillamook, Bandon and Brookings. A few coastal towns have lower c.p.i.’s than Coos Bay. They are Alsea, Lincoln City, Port Orford, Reedsport and Gardiner.
My Final Offer
I believe we agree that Coos county’s downward trend was strongest during the eighties, when the county population fell from 64,047 in 1980 to 60,441 in 1990. You dispute my contention that this happened “because economic planners screwed the pooch”, blaming the decline of timber and other industries instead. Sure enough, they did decline. But the real question is “What took the place of the diminished economic activity, during and after that time?” Because it is plain that just about every other place
in western Oregon has had a comfortable recovery from that dip in the ‘eighties. What made the difference?
With vociferous support from the unions, one of the Democrat Party’s pillars, and from all the ecodevo maniacs in the Port, the Chamber and so on, our leaders turned the ‘eighties into an era of frantic industrial ecodevo efforts. In sheer numbers, the 1980s were the busiest and most useless ecodevo decade since the introduction of that phony profession in the early ‘seventies. Of the 21 chapters in “The JOB Messiahs”, seven (chapters 8 through 14) are devoted to the hyperactive, publicity-craving reign of Port Manager Frank Martin (1983-1988) whose frenetic, constantly publicized initiatives for new industrial recruitment followed each other so fast, everybody’s heads spun – although no one seemed to notice that nothing was being achieved. Additionally, prior to the Martin era, chapters 6 and 7 detail the Port of Coos Bay’s industrial fiascos from 1980 to 1983, i.e. those in Charleston and the fraudulent North Spit coal export terminal. So, since those many but vain exploits fill 9 out of 21 chapters (including some very long ones), the ‘eighties saw the most unbridled, high-speed chasing of industrial rainbows, and all for naught; and the promoters of those fiascos, almost without exception, vocally disdained tourism and the encouragement thereof by means of capitalizing on the area’s natural attractions. In fact, many are on record expressing downright contempt for tourism and retirees. No wonder that by 1989/90, a sizable group of retirees who had moved in, replacing part of the working-age families who had left, revolted against the Port’s latest industrial scheme, the odiferous pulp mill plan that followed close on Frank Martin’s departure. By public initiatives they not only managed to prohibit pulp mills, but they fired two of the Port Commissioners; and they would have fired them all if not for the fraudulent 1968 election engineered by Frank Martin that put them out of their reach. If nothing else, that capstone of the 1980s is ample proof that the kind of people we’d like to attract are not at all fond of the fevered ecodevo dreams of the Port and its allies; and it’s no stretch at all to suppose that this message has traveled to other potential new residents.
But I’ll make you a deal. I’ll agree that today, in 2015, 10% of our laggard economy may still be the result of the delayed effects of the local economic changes between 1980 and 1990, now between 25 and 35 years ago. And an additional 10% may be due to the industrial closures between those days and now. That leaves the remainder, 80%, to the ecodevo crowd to answer for. Fat chance they will, of course; self-preservation is a useless bureaucrat’s first priority. But I’m sorry to see you go to such lengths to defend a class of parasitical, pretentious poseurs.
Sweet John is like the fellow who always searches behind the shower curtain for the killer and has no plan whatsoever if he finds anybody.
Speaking of plans. Both John Sweet and Melissa Cribbins were late for the strategic plan meeting in Coos Bay, Friday. The jar of rocks, pebbles and sand was a dominant theme with the commissioners responsible for defining five big rocks – staff supplied the pebbles and the public, if anyone attended these meetings, supply the sand. It was hard to read the power point but I don’t believe “revenue” had a rock of its own but may have been lumped in with resources. One rock was “economic development and jobs” which confused me because the strategic plan coach, Vanessa Becker, assured everyone the plan is just for the county as an entity. The government entity provides services from public safety, to road maintenance, to public records, etc… which enable commerce but the county isn’t responsible for economic development and job creation.
At any rate, I found the process being employed rather infantile and demeaning and left about halfway through. From what I understand, several others left as well and of the fourteen people attending only three remained to the end. Even John Sweet left early.
Thanks Wim.That was a very thorough reply to MarkM’s “no plan B” challenge. He won’t accept it, no matter how precise or how accurate you are. The map with the population statistics has proven what common sense tells us. Populations are growing north and south of Coos Bay while we remain stagnant and logic tells us that JC is the reason we have stalled in idle while the rest of the Oregon coastline sees growth. The current 10 year depression that JC has caused this area to experience is now what the promoters use to show a need for JC’s jobs. The threat of building JCEP has created a whirlpool that’s sucking the life out of this area. This area will not move forward the way it could and should until JC dies. That won’t happen until the politicians involved feel more threatened by the loss of public support than they feel comforted by corporate donations. These democrats that have delivered JC to us just don’t feel enough heat from the public to change course. They would rather drown in the whirlpool they have created than admit they are wrong, they will bankrupt the county before they will change course.
Kitzhaber is leading these dodo birds right over a cliff and they either can’t see it or they don’t care,Yet.