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On your next drive, just watch the gutter and then see if you don't agree plastic bags should be reduced. The main streets in North Portland are lined with plastic bags.

Over in Tillamook, the grocery stores switched to plastic a few years ago.  I recall thinking how ironic it was that the forests there were being stripped for wood fiber, yet the grocers within sight of those massive clearcuts were using a plastic bags.

posted 3 years, 3 months ago
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There is no tax shift.  Property taxes are still paid on the land, use fees are paid on services, system development charges are collected for infrastructure improvements and the employees still pay taxes on their income and any property they own. 

While this is the standard rhetoric of developers, it's nonsense.

Giving a large corporation a 95% tax abatement shifts the expenses onto the rest of the community. The consequence will  be higher taxes paid by the non-subsidized property owners. That's you and me.  And that is a tax shift.

Any income taxes paid  by employees go to the State, not the county.

Finally, as we heard on the show, Facebook was given enormous benefits, that nobody else in Prineville gets, yet committed to virtually ZERO in return, other than agreeing to pay 5% of the taxes that would normally be due on that property. 

No guarantee of jobs to locals in either constructing or running the facility.

The economic development folks got played.  Too bad it's the citizens that end up paying.

 

posted 3 years, 3 months ago
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When I first heard of this deal I thought it would be great for Prineville.

Now I see what it really is, is textbook example of America's race-to-the-bottom corporate welfare program. An an illustration of why Oregon's finances are so strained.

Those aren't 'tax incentives'. They are tax-shifts.

A 95% reduction in property taxes.  Essentially shifting the burden of all the services Facebook and its employees will demand onto the existing property owners.

No wonder property owners feel they're getting less services for more money!  That is exactly what is happening when these corporations get these tax shifts.

They might call it a benefit for Facebook but it's certainly a liability for the rest of the community.

posted 3 years, 3 months ago
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This past Wednesday evening on Sauvie Island at Gilbert River, I was pleased to find a Willamette RiverKeeper volunteer doing water sample analysis.  I wasn't aware of this project but applaud WRK for collecting this data.

Regarding the Willamette, folks tend to forget that Kelly Point isn't the terminus, but that its waters flow down the Multnomah Channel for nearly 20 miles before joining the Columbia at the downstream end of Sauvie Island, which is diagonally across from the the old downtown of St.Helens.

Beyond a great place to simply enjoy, people don't realize the economics generated by the river, including sportfishing.  Just the spring chinook sport fishing season alone, which runs from March into May generates tens of millions of dollars annually and supports hundreds of jobs.  A lot of this fishery is focused on the Mult Channel which isn't readily visible so folks don't realize the extent of it.

The Willamette deserves our highest standard of care.

posted 3 years, 9 months ago
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A correction is badly needed to the State Forester's comment that recreation on the Tillamook State Forest had a value of about $800,000.  (He admitted he wasn't sure, and should therefore have refrained).

Just for Tillamook County, the value of hunting and fishing - a good portion of which ocurred on Tillamook State Forest - in 2008 was estimated at $63.4 million.  Even if the activity did not occur directly on Tillamook State Forest, the fish and game those activities rely upon are OUTPUTS of Tillamook State Forest - just like the trees that ODF and the politicians are so singularly focused on. 

That economic data is found on the state agency ODFW website:

http://www.dfw.state.or.us/agency/docs/Report_5_6_09--Final%20(2).pdf

If ODF"s  State Forester is so in the dark about the value of recreation occuring on State Forests, no wonder all other aspects other than "board feet" are so under valued by ODF. 

posted 3 years, 11 months ago
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As a Tillamook County landowner, it's very sad to see our county commissioners, legislators and ODF heading down exactly the same over-cutting path that brought so much damage to our national forests and rural communities in the 1980s.  It is precisely the same -- there is always a rationale to cut more.

What's really stunning, considering the annual flooding Tillamook experiences - with increasing frequency and severity - is managing for hydrology and water storage in the Tillamook Forest is absent from ODF's forest plans.  With the ODF Board now seeking to explicitly make logging the highest priority, flooding, water storage, summer flows, and water quality will be pushed even further into the background.

I guess they're counting on the Federal FEMA money to pick up the cost of flood damage.

Is this any way to manage  a public forest?

posted 3 years, 11 months ago
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Consider that if the ideas behind these initiatives are so good - how come it's only Sizemore and his bankrollers that keep submitting them?????

posted 4 years, 6 months ago
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I hope you'll devote a show to the fishery that most people are unaware of -- the lower Columbia commerical gillnet fishery and its indiscrimate killing and wastage of salmon, steelhead and sturgeon.

posted 4 years, 7 months ago
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Fishing is Oregon's most sustainable and beneficial activity.

What this discussion is missing it that to have any fish - or fishing - you have to preserve the high quality habitat that trout or salmon need through their entire life history.

This point, the environmental foundation needed to sustain fisheries is much more important than this debate over the personal choice of whether to harvest a fish or not.

IF and WHEN they're is abundant fish populations, the whole "catch&release"-versus-"harvest" debate goes away.

posted 4 years, 7 months ago
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As someone who's fished across Oregon in its many fisheries,and spent 5 years in the flyfishing industry, so much of this discussion misses the point entirely -- at the root, it's not what people want, but rather what the resource can accommadate.

The question is first based in biology - are there enough fish so that keeping a couple won't diminish the population? And then our social expectation - will killing that fish impact the experience of other anglers? For most of our wild trout river fisheries the answer is 'no'. To maintain high quality fisheries given the pressure, catch & release is required.

But then we have plenty of robust lake fisheries where harvest is sustainable.

And then we have our strong salmon fisheries. And you always have a choice - such as mine to generally avoid taking the hen fish in our coastal wild fall chinook fisheries.


As for flyfishing being an elitist or rich mans' sport -- that's funny. You need to take a look at the boats salmon fishing in the Columbia or Tillamook right now. Most of these anglers have invested well over $35,000 to participate in that fishery. It makes flyfishing look like a poor mans choice.

posted 4 years, 7 months ago
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Although millions of dollars of effort have been spent on recovering Snake River Sockeye salmon, the states of Washington and Oregon, called for a commercial gillnet season on these sockeye below Bonneville.

Pretty incredible that at the first hint of recovery the states allow a directed harvest. When there's ONLY 800 fish returning to Idaho, every single one matters. There is no surplus.

I wonder how the gentleman from Idaho feels about that below Bonneville commercial gillnet season?

I wonder if the OPB host knows this?

posted 4 years, 9 months ago
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This program focused on Oregon State Parks...a tiny fraction of Oregon's public lands. The largest being our Federal national forests and BLM lands. That is where the overwhelming proportion of outdoor recreation takes place. And it's on these Federal properties that Day Use fees are thwarting the public's usage of these lands - lands that are their birthright heritage as Americans.

It is not simply the amount of the fee, it is often the inconvenience of
a) not having the correct money for self-pay stations
b) having to find a place to issue a permit like the NorthWest Forest Pass when your miles from a store that issues them.

These day-fee taxes are an impediment to outdoor recreation.

At the heart of the issue is -- compared to several decades ago, America has divested from providing recreation on Federal lands. THere are actually fewer trails than 50 years ago.

While the NW Congressional delegation has never failed to find appropriation monies for logging activities on National Forests (just consider the tens-of-thousands of miles of logging roads constructed in the 1970s-1980s) recreation has only had the tiniest sliver.

These are America's lands, our legacy and if you pay taxes, you ought to be able to walk,fish, hunt, and generally recreate in those forests without having to be nickled & dimed by day fees.

The answer is getting our NW COngressional delegation to pay some attention to adequately funding the recreation budget of the US Forest Service and other Federal land managers (BLM, Nat.Parks, Fed. wildlife refuges, etc)

posted 4 years, 12 months ago
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"Read about the Magnusen Stephens Act and the PFMC..."

It's even more enlightening to take off the rosy glasses and actually compare the PFMC's management to the health of our coastal fishery. The pitiful limits we have today are a reflection of PFMC's history of maximizing harvest. The management agencies are beholden to the commercial industries that take the resource...sports fishers and conservation are an afterthought.

The proposed near-shore reserves will likely have no impact on sports anglers, due there small size and placement, the placement criteria of do-no-harm. The hysteria being whipped up by opponents including the mis-named and East Coast based, Recreational Fishing Alliance, is simply - and intentionally - over the top fear mongering.

posted 5 years, 2 months ago
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