Eugene Weekly : Letters : 07.20.06

RETURN THE FAVOR

Measure 37 is not about fairness. It is about greed and opportunity. The opportunity to wholly dismantle the regulations that for more than 30 years have protected Oregon's resource lands and natural beauty from the feeding frenzy of callous exploitation rampant in other states. And its chief financial backers, the timber, real estate and construction companies, have begun to call the debt.

The recent Wildish and Lone Rock Timber Company claims for $15 million and $11 million, respectively, are just a hint of what's to come from Seneca-Jones, Weyerhaeuser and other long-term corporate landholders. It's certainly predictable, but is it fair for a corporation that has made a fortune from public contracts by extracting gravel and then harvesting timber from land it picked up for a dime to capitalize yet again by being permitted to turn resource land into gentleman estates?

Every year one of the local TV stations airs a Wildish video of pristine natural landscapes called "Hasn't God Been Good to Oregon." I'll not presume to speak for God, but without question, the cities of Eugene and Springfield, Lane County and the state have been very good to Wildish. We can only hope that the Wildish family will see fit to return the favor and, for a reasonable price, if not a charitable donation, make their 1,400 acres of oak and fir woodland overlooking the Middle Fork of the Willamette River a part of Buford Park-Mount Pisgah and the public trust.

Robert Emmons, Fall Creek

INACCURATE REPORT

Eugene Weekly is an important alternative source of information and perspective for local issues. However, its credibility is compromised when the information reported is grossly inaccurate. Alan Pittman's article in the July 13 issue titled "LCOG'S Fat" is full of false information and assertions.

The LCOG executive director's salary package is about $123,000, which is 25 percent less than the $164,000 stated in the article. For comparison's sake, this is substantially less than the compensation of the city managers of Eugene and Springfield and the county administrator.

It is misleading to imply that LCOG is less accountable to taxpayers. LCOG does not create or collect taxes. Almost all of the revenue that LCOG receives is for specific contracts, which makes it very accountable to the governments that are receiving the services.

Additionally, the quotation of the total travel budget implied it was excessive. LCOG's single largest travel expense is for Senior & Disabled staff to visit people that need care that do not have mobility, an expense that is necessary to provide needed services to the elderly and disabled.

The concluding sentence of the article stated that "LCOG staff recommended that LCOG threaten to seize control of the required local approval of the West Eugene Parkway." The accurate report is that members of the LCOG Board, all elected officials, assumed their responsibility to ensure that the metro area continues to receive federal money for transportation projects. The board's action was not about the WEP.

The real question is why would a publication that makes Eugene a better place by providing detailed information about local issues try to discredit a public agency by publishing misleading information? LCOG does not have taxing authority and exists to provide cost effective services to local governments as well as the elderly and disabled citizens of Lane County. EW loses credibility by blatantly misreporting information and making unfounded and inaccurate assertions.

Robert Swank & Warren Roe, Eugene

EDITORS NOTE: Salary numbers, including benefits, are from page 40 of LCOG's 2006-07 Work Program and Budget.

FEAR FACTOR

Dear EWEB: What's with the barricades? I thought you were going through a strike, not a siege. Union fangs that produced bloody strikes like the Longshoremen Strike in 1934, the image your fences invoke, were pulled long ago and history tells that provocation was shared by both sides in that era of labor history. I assume you're not up to shenanigans so what is it? Don't you trust the folks you hired? What is the fear that causes to erect barricades?

I was walking past the picket line on the 10th and stopped briefly to talk to your struck employees. My impression is that you have nothing to fear. They are good folks. The guys I met all possessed professional and personal integrity: they are skilled tradesmen and, because of their work, unseen friends, good neighbors and upstanding community members.

Did these integrities cause you to hire them in the first place? After meeting these pickets I'm willing to bet that if something untoward happened on their watch and in your parking lot they would do the right thing and stop it. After all, they are not goons, they are good people.

EWEB, I am also a rate payer. That your workers have been without a contract for six months is inexcusable. That you are quibbling over health benefits is understandable; it is a popular arena for employee employer conflict these days. But EWEB, your market is Eugene. Use something other than the standard business model for drawing your lines in the sand and, dear God/Goddess, naming your battle. Trust your employees. Deal from a position of good faith. Defy popular business models and do what is right for not just your customers but your employees too as happy employees do better work. Above all, re-evaluate your posturing and resolve the dispute to the benefit of your community.

Lowell Noennig, Eugene

SHINE ON

To the person who stole the light off my bicycle on July 14: May its light show you a path to generosity, love and kindness.

Paul Gordon, Eugene

SEARCH FOR MEANING

I think it was in the movie Cabaret, Liza Minnelli's character, a wildly stressed out singer, invited her boyfriend to see one of the places that were special to her. It was where trains ran by and was noisy. She showed him that if one waited until a train was really, really close, one could scream at the top of her lungs and no one would hear. She moved over and invited him to try it. It was her present to him.

I was at Sunday's Oregon Country Fair, when the realization hit me that what I was really looking for was just such a place. Not a place to relax, not a place to listen to fine music, which the fair has in abundance, but instead a place to let out my intense ... well, what she was letting out.

Her country, Germany, was about to be taken over by murderous war criminals, her life was a desperate struggle to find meaning and in her heart she knew it was all downhill from there. Lives were individual battlegrounds, wars to survive.

To paraphrase Bruce Springsteen, my country is in ruins, my eyes don't see glory but despair, and I see the future as, not a present, but a disaster. There is no "we" anymore in my country. Maybe there never was. I doubt my need to scream is an isolated one.

Hugh Massengill, Eugene

SPINNING COMPASS

Yesterday (7/10), I heard an interview with a U.S. military interrogator from Iraq. I was shocked, slapped in the face with alarm at the realities of which he spoke. The soldier replied in monotone yet straightforward explanations of the techniques of torture i.e. vicious dogs snarling and barking close to the blindfolded faces of prisoners, sleep deprivation on top of forced positions held for hours, and worse, much worse.

The military interrogator spoke of his and his co-patriots' loss of their moral compass due to the deviant nature of their work, and their own isolation from friends and family. "Loss of moral compass." These words shook me and reminded me of people's loss of values through isolation and propaganda and the resulting suffering through torture of innocents throughout history including my own people's suffering in the holocaust.

Who is lowered by torture in the pursuit of information? The torturer sacrifices his own humanity. If we allow torture are we a nation that is losing our moral compass? In the terrorizing of those captives and behind every act of torture is the body of people of each nation who condone it by their silence.

A military doctor on the same show stated that suspects are more likely to lie, to say anything to stop being tortured and just as likely or more likely to give information if the interrogation is carried out with a modicum of humane treatment and dialogue.

Torture of another being is terror. Are we fighting terror or embodying it? If the U.S. tortures suspects, are we a light among nations? A beacon of freedom and justice? Or are we a fallen nation, lost without a moral compass, fallen to a place of sadistic depravity of other horror-rendering nations throughout history?

Richard Gross, Deadwood

READ MY SIGN

Sign, sign, everywhere there's a sign. Go this way, go that way; will you read my sign.

YARD SALE signs. You post them around town; take time to take them down. I have seen them nailed to the trees in Amazon Park.

Please don't litter. Do your duty and retrieve your signs you put out; this includes lost animals, events and etc.

Virginia Redig, Eugene

TURKEY OF A TAX

Voters beware. The powers that be are about to pull a fast one. The county commissioners have a nifty plan to put an income tax for individuals and businesses on the November ballot. They say it will be capped at 2 percent. Have you ever known a tax that remained capped at its original level?

The Register-Guard in a recent editorial said that the people pitching this proposal shouldn't bother wasting time or resources trying to reach voters who are hopelessly misinformed or unalterably opposed. Well put me down as both then I guess, because I don't want to pay an additional tax for the pleasure of seeing more resources mismanaged by those powers that be. Anyone who's a renter in this county should also know that this tax would primarily hit you, as the current proposal provides a rebate to homeowners for 75 percent of the proposed tax. No other county in Oregon has such a tax, which means those other counties somehow are able to manage their finances without resorting to an income tax.

There is a crisis in Lane County, but it's a crisis of inadequate leadership, lack of imagination and abysmal management by those elected to represent the people of this county. Voters should tell them where to stuff this turkey.

Jeff Innis, Eugene

END EUTHANASIA

Animals deserve to live! Did you know that based on current statistics, more than 2,500 cats and dogs will be euthanized at our county's animal shelter in 2006? In addition, there may be hundreds more put down at Greenhill Humane Society.

Although some of these deaths are the humane choice for sick or injured animals, the vast majority of euthanasia in Lane County is performed on healthy animals capable of living a happy life as someone's companion. They may not be the purebred puppy or cute little kitten you can buy at the mall, but they are living creatures who deserve our help.

Animal euthanasia is a symptom of two problems. First, we have a long-term overpopulation of dogs and cats due to lack of education and lack of freely available spay/neuter services. Second, our local shelters are functioning with extremely limited resources. LCARA has space for only 30 dogs and 40 cats. Greenhill is similarly sized.

With a constant flow of new stray and abandoned animals, euthanasia becomes standard operating procedure. At LCARA, a stray pet without a tag may be put down before the owner has a chance to find and retrieve her/him. At Greenhill, a family pet given up for adoption may be put down because she/he is deemed to be un-adoptable.

SARA is one of the most active local animal welfare groups (www.sarasavesanimals.org).On July 20 a national expert, Nathan Winograd, will visit our area and present a discussion titled "Building a No-Kill Community."

His website (www.nokillsolutions.com) has a lot of good information on the subject of animal euthanasia. Winograd's visit is a great step in the right direction and I encourage our local elected leaders, shelter staff, volunteer organizations, and new volunteers to work together and find ways to end senseless animal euthanasia in Lane County.

Lisa Burtraw, Eugene

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		RETURN THE FAVOR Measure 37 is not about fairness. It is about greed and opportunity. The opportunity to wholly dismantle the regulations that for more than 30 years have protected Oregon's resource lands and natural beauty from the feeding frenzy of callous exploitation rampant in other states. And its chief financial backers, the timber, real estate and construction companies, have begun to call the debt. The recent Wildish and Lone Rock Timber Company claims for $15 million and $11 million, respectively, are just a hint of what's to come from Seneca-Jones, Weyerhaeuser and other long-term corporate landholders. It's certainly predictable, but is it fair for a corporation that has made a fortune from public contracts by extracting gravel and then harvesting timber from land it picked up for a dime to capitalize yet again by being permitted to turn resource land into gentleman estates? Every year one of the local TV stations airs a Wildish video of pristine natural landscapes called "Hasn't God Been Good to Oregon." I'll not presume to speak for God, but without question, the cities of Eugene and Springfield, Lane County and the state have been very good to Wildish. We can only hope that the Wildish family will see fit to return the favor and, for a reasonable price, if not a charitable donation, make their 1,400 acres of oak and fir woodland overlooking the Middle Fork of the Willamette River a part of Buford Park-Mount Pisgah and the public trust. Robert Emmons, Fall Creek INACCURATE REPORT Eugene Weekly is an important alternative source of information and perspective for local issues. However, its credibility is compromised when the information reported is grossly inaccurate. Alan Pittman's article in the July 13 issue titled "LCOG'S Fat" is full of false information and assertions. The LCOG executive director's salary package is about $123,000, which is 25 percent less than the $164,000 stated in the article. For comparison's sake, this is substantially less than the compensation of the city managers of Eugene and Springfield and the county administrator. It is misleading to imply that LCOG is less accountable to taxpayers. LCOG does not create or collect taxes. Almost all of the revenue that LCOG receives is for specific contracts, which makes it very accountable to the governments that are receiving the services. Additionally, the quotation of the total travel budget implied it was excessive. LCOG's single largest travel expense is for Senior & Disabled staff to visit people that need care that do not have mobility, an expense that is necessary to provide needed services to the elderly and disabled. The concluding sentence of the article stated that "LCOG staff recommended that LCOG threaten to seize control of the required local approval of the West Eugene Parkway." The accurate report is that members of the LCOG Board, all elected officials, assumed their responsibility to ensure that the metro area continues to receive federal money for transportation projects. The board's action was not about the WEP. The real question is why would a publication that makes Eugene a better place by providing detailed information about local issues try to discredit a public agency by publishing misleading information? LCOG does not have taxing authority and exists to provide cost effective services to local governments as well as the elderly and disabled citizens of Lane County. EW loses credibility by blatantly misreporting information and making unfounded and inaccurate assertions. Robert Swank & Warren Roe, Eugene EDITORS NOTE: Salary numbers, including benefits, are from page 40 of LCOG's 2006-07 Work Program and Budget. FEAR FACTOR Dear EWEB: What's with the barricades? I thought you were going through a strike, not a siege. Union fangs that produced bloody strikes like the Longshoremen Strike in 1934, the image your fences invoke, were pulled long ago and history tells that provocation was shared by both sides in that era of labor history. I assume you're not up to shenanigans so what is it? Don't you trust the folks you hired? What is the fear that causes to erect barricades? I was walking past the picket line on the 10th and stopped briefly to talk to your struck employees. My impression is that you have nothing to fear. They are good folks. The guys I met all possessed professional and personal integrity: they are skilled tradesmen and, because of their work, unseen friends, good neighbors and upstanding community members. Did these integrities cause you to hire them in the first place? After meeting these pickets I'm willing to bet that if something untoward happened on their watch and in your parking lot they would do the right thing and stop it. After all, they are not goons, they are good people. EWEB, I am also a rate payer. That your workers have been without a contract for six months is inexcusable. That you are quibbling over health benefits is understandable; it is a popular arena for employee employer conflict these days. But EWEB, your market is Eugene. Use something other than the standard business model for drawing your lines in the sand and, dear God/Goddess, naming your battle. Trust your employees. Deal from a position of good faith. Defy popular business models and do what is right for not just your customers but your employees too as happy employees do better work. Above all, re-evaluate your posturing and resolve the dispute to the benefit of your community. Lowell Noennig, Eugene SHINE ON To the person who stole the light off my bicycle on July 14: May its light show you a path to generosity, love and kindness. Paul Gordon, Eugene SEARCH FOR MEANING I think it was in the movie Cabaret, Liza Minnelli's character, a wildly stressed out singer, invited her boyfriend to see one of the places that were special to her. It was where trains ran by and was noisy. She showed him that if one waited until a train was really, really close, one could scream at the top of her lungs and no one would hear. She moved over and invited him to try it. It was her present to him. I was at Sunday's Oregon Country Fair, when the realization hit me that what I was really looking for was just such a place. Not a place to relax, not a place to listen to fine music, which the fair has in abundance, but instead a place to let out my intense ... well, what she was letting out. Her country, Germany, was about to be taken over by murderous war criminals, her life was a desperate struggle to find meaning and in her heart she knew it was all downhill from there. Lives were individual battlegrounds, wars to survive. To paraphrase Bruce Springsteen, my country is in ruins, my eyes don't see glory but despair, and I see the future as, not a present, but a disaster. There is no "we" anymore in my country. Maybe there never was. I doubt my need to scream is an isolated one. Hugh Massengill, Eugene SPINNING COMPASS Yesterday (7/10), I heard an interview with a U.S. military interrogator from Iraq. I was shocked, slapped in the face with alarm at the realities of which he spoke. The soldier replied in monotone yet straightforward explanations of the techniques of torture i.e. vicious dogs snarling and barking close to the blindfolded faces of prisoners, sleep deprivation on top of forced positions held for hours, and worse, much worse. The military interrogator spoke of his and his co-patriots' loss of their moral compass due to the deviant nature of their work, and their own isolation from friends and family. "Loss of moral compass." These words shook me and reminded me of people's loss of values through isolation and propaganda and the resulting suffering through torture of innocents throughout history including my own people's suffering in the holocaust. Who is lowered by torture in the pursuit of information? The torturer sacrifices his own humanity. If we allow torture are we a nation that is losing our moral compass? In the terrorizing of those captives and behind every act of torture is the body of people of each nation who condone it by their silence. A military doctor on the same show stated that suspects are more likely to lie, to say anything to stop being tortured and just as likely or more likely to give information if the interrogation is carried out with a modicum of humane treatment and dialogue. Torture of another being is terror. Are we fighting terror or embodying it? If the U.S. tortures suspects, are we a light among nations? A beacon of freedom and justice? Or are we a fallen nation, lost without a moral compass, fallen to a place of sadistic depravity of other horror-rendering nations throughout history? Richard Gross, Deadwood READ MY SIGN Sign, sign, everywhere there's a sign. Go this way, go that way; will you read my sign. YARD SALE signs. You post them around town; take time to take them down. I have seen them nailed to the trees in Amazon Park. Please don't litter. Do your duty and retrieve your signs you put out; this includes lost animals, events and etc. Virginia Redig, Eugene TURKEY OF A TAX Voters beware. The powers that be are about to pull a fast one. The county commissioners have a nifty plan to put an income tax for individuals and businesses on the November ballot. They say it will be capped at 2 percent. Have you ever known a tax that remained capped at its original level? The Register-Guard in a recent editorial said that the people pitching this proposal shouldn't bother wasting time or resources trying to reach voters who are hopelessly misinformed or unalterably opposed. Well put me down as both then I guess, because I don't want to pay an additional tax for the pleasure of seeing more resources mismanaged by those powers that be. Anyone who's a renter in this county should also know that this tax would primarily hit you, as the current proposal provides a rebate to homeowners for 75 percent of the proposed tax. No other county in Oregon has such a tax, which means those other counties somehow are able to manage their finances without resorting to an income tax. There is a crisis in Lane County, but it's a crisis of inadequate leadership, lack of imagination and abysmal management by those elected to represent the people of this county. Voters should tell them where to stuff this turkey. Jeff Innis, Eugene END EUTHANASIA Animals deserve to live! Did you know that based on current statistics, more than 2,500 cats and dogs will be euthanized at our county's animal shelter in 2006? In addition, there may be hundreds more put down at Greenhill Humane Society. Although some of these deaths are the humane choice for sick or injured animals, the vast majority of euthanasia in Lane County is performed on healthy animals capable of living a happy life as someone's companion. They may not be the purebred puppy or cute little kitten you can buy at the mall, but they are living creatures who deserve our help. Animal euthanasia is a symptom of two problems. First, we have a long-term overpopulation of dogs and cats due to lack of education and lack of freely available spay/neuter services. Second, our local shelters are functioning with extremely limited resources. LCARA has space for only 30 dogs and 40 cats. Greenhill is similarly sized. With a constant flow of new stray and abandoned animals, euthanasia becomes standard operating procedure. At LCARA, a stray pet without a tag may be put down before the owner has a chance to find and retrieve her/him. At Greenhill, a family pet given up for adoption may be put down because she/he is deemed to be un-adoptable. SARA is one of the most active local animal welfare groups (www.sarasavesanimals.org).On July 20 a national expert, Nathan Winograd, will visit our area and present a discussion titled "Building a No-Kill Community." His website (www.nokillsolutions.com) has a lot of good information on the subject of animal euthanasia. Winograd's visit is a great step in the right direction and I encourage our local elected leaders, shelter staff, volunteer organizations, and new volunteers to work together and find ways to end senseless animal euthanasia in Lane County. Lisa Burtraw, Eugene






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