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September 27, 2007 |
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Guest Opinion
Measure 37 Claims Will Turn Baker County Into Another Treasure Valley
By Duane Boyer, Haines, Ore.
I read with interest last week's guest editorial, but felt that the author's time line was a bit off. The open spaces that he was enjoying in his visit to Montana started disappearing in Oregon shortly after a duped public voted for Measure 37, not back in 1973, when it was apparent that Oregon would look like southern California if something was not done to control the rampant, unregulated growth that threatened other areas of the country. Fortunately, the legislature acted at that time, or much of Oregon would already resemble Idaho's Treasure Valley, which has turned from one of the richest agricultural areas in the nation into a polluted, overpopulated, poorly zoned nightmare. (Developers had pending deals for a large percentage of Willamette Valley farmland prior to a past attempt to overturn the land use laws, prematurely counting those "unhatched chickens" in thinking the public would vote out land use planning.)
However, things changed in 2004, when Measure 37, cleverly disguised as one of those "feel good" initiatives that was going to "punish the government" by making them pay the public for financial losses, passed. Of course, its true intention was to gut the existing land use laws, as its authors included an alternative course of action, knowing that the affected local governments could not afford to pay the thousands of claims, so would choose the alternative of just dropping the zoning restrictions. The realtors and developers were lined up to help the claimants exploit their "private property rights" as soon as the measure took effect. (An Oregonians in Action land use forum with David Hunnicutt presenting a Measure 37 update after its passage offered 3 hours of Realtor Credit for attending.)
One local rancher echoed the sentiments of numerous others when he commented that "I sure wouldn't have voted for it if I had known it was going to turn out like this," after watching numerous properties throughout the county being divided into parcels to be sold as rural residential sites. Sadly, a number of large ranch owners in the county have filed Measure 37 claims to allow them to subdivide their ranches into 40 acre parcels. I suspect that their mentality is that when Measure 37 turns Baker County into another Treasure Valley, they can cash out and move someplace where there is still some natural scenery, instead of a landscape covered by extravagant eyesores. But if the latter scenario appeals to you, instead of waiting around for Baker County's "enlightenment," you could head out for one of the many areas in the nation that can meet your needs now, with hundreds of realtors to help you find the place of your dreams, nestled right next to neighbors on all sides, in the homes of their dreams. And you can each climb in your 12 mpg SUVs and caravan the 20 or 30 mile, two hour commute to support your new, exciting lifestyle. Or, if you have already sold out (in more ways than one) and retired, you can find that isolated hilltop on which to build your version of the Eagle's Nest, build your chain link fence around it, with the "No Trespassing" signs every 100 feet, and then curse the day when someone just like you buys the next hill over and does the same thing you did, spoiling your view. (Or maybe we should all jump on the bandwagon being pulled by several Baker City government officials for this area to "be the next Bend.")
For whatever reasons, there seems to be something in our attitudes about our "private property rights" that makes them different from all our other rights. All the other rules that our society lives by don't seem to bother us much at all, or at least we accept them without complaint; we have our car insurance and our hunting and drivers' licenses and our speed limits, but when a government official tells us we can't flush our toilet down the neighbor's well, we start yelling about the infringement of our "private property rights," rights which we seem to think supercede anyone else's.
Zoning laws and rules are really no different than any others, designed to help us all live together, so why do we balk at them while we accept all the others as just a part of our lives? Regarding this fall's election, Measure 49 does little more than provide some guidelines to be consistently applied throughout the state to Measure 37's rules, in an attempt to deal with the problems caused by the hundreds of local governments' interpretations of 37.
In regard to the immigration problem and its effects, perhaps the borders Oregon should be worrying about are its own, because the pressure that is starting to wreak havoc on the state as we have known it is coming from immigrants from other states, not other countries. (How many of those "west side liberals" are native-born Oregonians? Not Many.) We're certainly not losing our open spaces to those flocking in from south of the U. S. border, as most of those folks aren't going to be able to come up with the half million or so dollars asking price for a Measure 37 homesite with their minimum wage jobs. But perhaps there is a bright side to rampant growth. Once the land is all covered with homes, and the farms and ranches are all gone, there won't be any more crops for the immigrants to harvest in this country, so they will have to go elsewhere in the world to help harvest the food grown there, which we then will be able to buy at Walmart, along with all the other imported necessities of life that presently fill their shelves.
Editorial
Move Fall Festival Off Main St. And Into Park
By Brian Addison
Fall Festival would be improved if it were moved off of Main Street. Downtown businesses would see more traffic during Fall Festival if Main Street were left open during the weekend.
Closing Main Street in Baker City is a big deal. Main St. is the main thoroughfare between Highway 7 and I-84 for traffic coming from the direction of Grant County. Baker City’s Main St. is on the state highway system and serves as a truck-route between Highway 7 and I-84. Even on Saturdays.
Keeping Main Street open maintains the flow of traffic and accommodates the commercial and passenger traffic coming through from Highway 7.
Main St. is the route shoppers use to reach downtown businesses, parking included. Even on Saturdays.
Keeping Main Street open protects the interests of Main Street merchants. When doing business on Main Street it’s all about accessibility to the shopper. Shoppers are provided easy access and free parking to downtown businesses and the downtown businesses pay a premium for their high-access store frontage. Some downtown merchants have cited less traffic and less business during the various closures of Main St. through the summer and fall seasons.
Main St. closures should be limited to the largest events of the year including the Hells Canyon Motorcycle Rally Bike Show and the Miners’ Jubilee.
Historic Baker City Fall Festival is not a large enough event to warrant a full closure of the town’s main thoroughfare for much of a Saturday during a fairly busy season in eastern Oregon. The pie-eating contest consisted of several competitors and two tables and could easily have been accommodated in the Geiser-Pollman City Park. The Dutch-Oven Cook-Off takes up very little space and seems like a perfect fit for the Geiser-Pollman City Park around and under the Lions new covered facility. Cowboy poetry goes so much nicer under a crisp, but typically dry eastern Oregon autumn sky than in a building under a roof. It’s autumn and time to celebrate the season. Outdoors.
Organizers of the Fall Festival for next season should keep traffic flowing drawing more people through Main Street. Fall Festival events would be enhanced if they were held in the more intimate surroundings at the Geiser-Pollman City Park. (BA)
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