Forum Lane

Thanks to my friends and supporters for their hard work throughout the recent campaign.  Thanks to my campaign staff:  Elizabeth Sanford, Dale Stoneburg, Amanda Christie, Mychal Smigley, Brett Foster. Thanks to my support cabinet: Paul Jorgensen, Steve Davis, Tom Poage, John DelNero, Greg Evans, James Manning, Donna DeForrest, Mary Walston, Rich Cunningham.  Thanks especially to my main pillar, Debi Farr.

Register-Guard front page, March 16 2112. Farr is congratulated by wife Debi Farr. Cheri Esselstrom looks on.

Read the follow-up story here at “Election not seen as game-changer” in the Thursday May 17 edition of the Register Guard.  RG election tallies, including undervote, here.

Final Tally Farr: 59.33%  Incumbent: 30.87%.  Results at Lane County Elections.

“How do we get out of the budget hole the County is in?”

Or:  “Do you have a plan to fix the mess?”

Or:  “Why would you want to be a County Commissioner at a time like this?”

These are the most commonly asked questions from the seeming mass of people who look at me with a combination of puzzlement and pity in their eyes.  They don’t expect an answer, it seems.  But unlike my opponent, who often says, “I don’t know” when asked questions about how to proceed with policy issues, I have answers. (Rob Handy really does say, “I don’t know” when asked policy questions—I have video of him doing so!)

My quick response is always, “First we have to get people working in Lane County.”

Which I follow with the explanation, “Lane, as a county, has among the highest unemployment rates in Oregon, which in turn has among the highest unemployment rates as a state.”

The questioners’ expressions quickly change to consternation.  “Well, duh,” they think.  Everybody knows that answer because everybody has already heard somebody say it.  And nobody’s doing anything about it.

But it is the answer.  In order to generate revenue to pay for general government we must have more people with jobs.  People with jobs receive paychecks from which they pay their share of taxes and buy their share of food and clothes and entertainment and housing.  All of which in turn puts more people to work.  It’s a fierce cycle, with fierce being a good thing regarding this cycle.  Jobs create prosperity which spreads throughout the community.  That is not a secret.

Not unlike the systematic dismantling of the economy that has taken place in this county, creating jobs doesn’t happen with the flip of a switch.  Job creation has to be built on a multi-faceted front.

To begin with, I support the efforts by Oregon Congressmen Peter DeFazio and Greg Walden to open limited portions of our vast Douglas Fir and mixed species Federally-owned forests to sustained harvest.  See the Forum Lane post from April 18 2012 headlined, “Handy has the better funding idea (?) I don’t think so.  By Pat Farr” This article has links to O & C forest land history and the Walden/DeFazio/Schrader plan.

Next we make sure that land is available and appropriately zoned to allow for expansion of current manufacturing businesses and to attract new manufacturers.  We have started this with the Envision Eugene process (see the draft proposal) that will ultimately provide for appropriately sized properties near the county’s urban center where job providers can have choices of where to locate their companies.  Site choices are critical when competition arises for locating a new plant, whether the investor is choosing between Boise Idaho and Lane County for a new plant or a local business owner is deciding whether to build close to the existing metropolitan area or push further out into the county.

One other way to foster job growth is to look at another natural resource that we possess in Lane County:  prime agricultural land.  Here in the lower Willamette Valley, like trees, food grows abundantly.  In recent years we have lost our capability to process the vast array of food crops we are capable of growing here.  There used to be canneries—I worked for years at Agripac in Junction City canning green beans.  There used to be more specialty food processing—I worked for years picking cherries for a maraschino cherry processing plant that no longer operates here.

We have great examples of local small businesses that grew to be large exporters of finished food products that can be replicated.  Glory Bee Foods produces the world’s best honey.  Grain Millers produces the world’s best cereal products.  Springfield Creamery produces the world’s best yoghurt.  The list goes on.  And it can go on and on and on given the right encouragement and policy attention.

To allow businesses to prosper and grow in our county we will need a nurturing approach that includes incentives we naturally have in place (who wouldn’t want to live here?) and makes certain that policies and procedures for job expansion are in place to make sure that the owners of companies know we actually want them here creating jobs.

It can be done.  It should have been done already.  Starting now, we can, by working together, bring jobs to Lane County.

“Hey Pat,“I’m writing about the Ward 6 race for school and would love to have a cup of coffee with you sometime next week. Let me know if you have any times available for that.”

I’d met the bright young man a couple of weeks before and he had told me he was interested in how government worked.  We spoke for a while, talked about his family, about his daughter, and he had shown keen insight about why people might run for office.

I responded:

“I’d love to.Please call me at your convenience. I often take Hayley to school on Tuesday and/or Thursday.”

So  we had a cup of coffee and talked about the difference between school board, city, county and state government.  Like many people he had not known the nuances or even the striking differences between the responsibilities and revenue sources  that exist at different governing levels.  We spoke more about his family.  He was so proud of his daughter.

He wrote the paper and gave me a copy.  It gave me fresh insights on how people thought about their elected officials that helped me tremendously with my door to door campaign for City Council in 2010.

He felt he owed me something for the interview, but I let him know it was quite the contrary—I owed him a debt of gratitude.  “Call me any time you think I can help…” I let him know that I could be a resource for him.

Then this, earlier this month, at about 1:30 am when I was wrapping up some details of the North Eugene County Commissioner race, on my Facebook Chat:

“Hey, Pat, you there?”

“Yes, congratulations.”  I’d heard he had gotten engaged.

But he didn’t need congratulations that night, he needed help,

“I’m having some real psychological issues aside from all that. I would like to talk to you.  I don’t know if it’s enough.  I moved the furniture to to bloack off my parest from being able to come out of their roon.  They put me on celexa”

We corresponded back and forth for a half hour as I determined the depth of the crisis.

He was having trouble with alcohol and his doctor was switching his antidepressant medication, so there was a period where he couldn’t take the medication.

He had been drinking–a lot.

I had told him to call if he needed help, and now he needed it.  We spoke on line for a couple of hours and then by phone.  He was fully despondent.During our phone conversation I realized this was a deep crisis and I had been his only outreach.

We spoke, and the key to settling him down was his daughter.  I reminded him of her and of how proud he was of her.  He calmed down and unblocked his parents’ room (they hadn’t woke up.)

Talk of his pride and joy, his little girl, had given him some hope.

The next day I picked him up and we went out for ice cream.

He’s ok now, but how many young people find themselves without a life-line in a situation like this?

For some reason, I was on line, and for some reason he contacted me.

It made me realize the minutia of finding words about bus transit and land use pales in the face of a true life crisis being faced by a bright young man.

Team Springfield is a collaborative organization in which four different public agencies of the community work together to make Springfield a better place to live. Team Springfield is comprised of the Springfield Utility Board (SUB), Springfield City Hall, Springfield Pubic Schools and Willamalane Park and Recreation District.

I have been a member of Team Springfield for several years. Typically, it provides services that not just one agency could or would do on its own. Teamwork is the key. Each piece of the pie makes the whole pie. I am a single piece of a larger pie so to speak. As a whole organization we as can accomplish much more than if we were working separately. If we join forces under one goal, it is much easier to get things done. We find where our philosophies are shared and envision a plan and set that goal. Get it done and move to the next.

Last Tuesday, Team Springfield hosted the ACE Awards Banquet at the Hult Center, “in which administrator, teacher, classified employee and volunteer from our district will be deemed ‘A Champion in Education’ worthy of an ACE award — and a $1,000 donation to his or her school. The ACE awards will be announced at a banquet at the Hult Center.” 1

You can learn more about Team Springfield at their website; http://teamspringfield.org or more about my involvement with this organization at www.pishioneri.com. To find out more about the ACE Awards put on last week by Team Springfield, the Register Guard’s article1 can be found at: http://www.registerguard.com/web/newsspringfieldextra/27906437-41/springfield-students-awards-kids-schools.html.csp

I found this inspiring article about keeping jobs local in the Register Guard a few weeks ago; Cap Maker Doubling it’s Space.

In this article Kelly Richardson expresses his need to keep the expansion of his company Richardson Sports local. The company supplies baseball caps to many types of teams nationally, including professional teams and local little league teams. The recent increase in the demand for caps has caused the company to relocate from their former west Eugene factory to a larger property in the Gateway area. Though Richardson could have made the choice to move to a more nationally central location, “‘at the end of the day, we decided we wanted to stay home, keep the jobs here and our team of people together,’ Richardson said.”

This aligns with my goal to keep our region viable with our local businesses in mind so they can expand when they need to without having to move from the area. We had facilities available and welcomed the business to our community. We will continue to be aggressive in our recruitment for new businesses and will always take care of what we already have.

There is an interesting letter in the April 18 Register Guard headlined, “Handy has the better funding idea.”

The writer states that Rob Handy, one of my opponents for the North Eugene County Commissioner position, has a plan to bring 20 million dollars per year to the county’s general fund by taxing timber companies.  At a debate last week I asked Handy to provide details of the plan to me or to the Register Guard.  He has not done so.  We will find, if and when he is able to provide the detailed plan, that Lane County has little or nothing to do with taxing at that level.

The writer states that our recent practice of asking for discretionary bail-outs from the federal government is a wise use of tax dollars.  By, in effect, begging for relief.

What isn’t mentioned in the letter is that an idea I support is actually not my idea at all.  It is the idea of Oregon Congressmen Peter DeFazio, Greg Walden and Kurt Schrader, who have crossed party lines to come up with a program of restoring dollars to Lane and other counties lost by forest closures. The plan calls for a limited harvest of second growth and younger logs off BLM and Forest Service lands.

Their plan, (follow the links above for more details) outlined last week by DeFazio at the April 13 City Club meeting, calls for a managed and sustainable harvest of logs from federally controlled O & C lands. The O&C Act of 1937 set aside approximately 2.4 million acres of federally-owned forest lands in 18 western Oregon counties for the economic benefit of those counties.

I support the bipartisan plan which would actually see more standing timber in those forests in 20 years than there is today.  It is a plan that would not only restore some of the promised revenue but would put Lane County residents to work.

Rob Handy does not support the plan.

I had a debate with Rob Handy and Nadia Sindi on Thursday April 12 at a special meeting of the Eugene City Club held at Trinity Methodist Church on Maxwell Road in North Eugene.

The format is not exactly debate:  the other two and I only had about six minutes to ask questions of each other, the rest of the time being spent responding to questions from the mediator or the audience.  Still it was a good opportunity to air some issues.

(I would welcome a Lincoln-Douglas debate format which involves direct discussion and questioning  of one another by the debaters.)

I took time to talk about issues such as public safety, water rights, environment and human services. The others spent some of their time tossing remarks at their competitors.  Nadia, for instance, spent a lot of time talking about ethics and secret meetings while looking at Handy, who spent a lot of time talking about my “ultra-conservative” leanings.

Nadia’s comments seemed to be an accurate reflection of what has been reported often in the media while Handy’s seemed more of a rant, at one point suggesting falsely that I had received contributions from a source that had not contributed to my campaign.  Such is campaigning for some.

One point I wanted to make was that the Human Services Commission is conducting a “Thriving Communities Summit on April 24 at the U of O Ford Alumni Center Ballroom.  Follow this link for more details. It will be a gathering of more than a hundred engaged men and women from the community to see how we can meet the challenge of building a healthy, prosperous, safe and educated Lane County based on our collective strengths and efforts.  My wife Debi Farr and I are among the invited participants.

There are three stated purposes of the Summit:

1.  Explore ways for organizations bo build a thriving community together.

2.  Strategize how to leverage recent community innovations to meet current and future challenges, and,

3.  Learn about successful efforts that have made a difference in the quality of life for many local residents.

Pearl Wolfe, right, a powerful and seasoned advocate for Human Services, gives her input on the Summit's content.

It’s a four-hour round-table that will actively engage the delegates who represent local business, education, government and human services.

When I spoke of my participation in the planning effort, Handy unfortunately disdained it, saying that he had been involved with the Human Services Commission since he took office about three years ago while I had recently become involved in human services “Just in time for the election.”

The audience largely sniggered, most of them knowing about my decades of work with hunger, shelter and education .

I fell into the spirit of the debate for a moment by letting Handy know, it seems for the first time, that Mayor Ruth Bascom first appointed me to the Commission 17 years ago.

You can listen to an hour of the City Club discussion on KLCC tonight (April 16) at 6 pm. You can listen to the audio archive of the discussion here.

For more about the election go here.

It’s too bad Rob Handy continues to disrespect Representative Peter DeFazio.

In a snide comment last night at the City Club debate he talked about “Walden’s” bill (referring to Congressman Greg Walden, R, Oregon) to restore sustained harvest of previously harvested timber land in Lane and other Oregon counties.

The disrespect for Congressman DeFazio comes in a couple of orders:  first, the plan has been authored by DeFazio along with Congressmen Walden and Kurt Schrader, (D, Oregon); second, Handy believes that the Congressman and his fellows are wrong in suggesting we restore the dollars we have lost in Federal timber receipts by harvesting timber on already-logged land.

I’ll cover some of the details of what services, ranging from schools to roads to public safety, would be at least partially restored by the plan in subsequent articles. The restorations would be tangible and substantial.

You can read the entire story of the City Club-sponsored April 12 debate by following this link to www.registerguard.com.

See more about the election here.

I was asked to speak on KPNW’s April 10 Wake Up Call Show with Bill Lundun and Rob Holloway.  The entire show lasted a little more than a half hour. Downloaded portions of the show will be posted on Forum Lane and the entire show on my web site soon.

Bill Lundun at the mike after airing and taping my interview on the KPNW "Wake Up Call" show on April 10. Rob Holloway is off the screen to the right.

The show includes a discussion of the County Commission North Eugene election, sheriff’s office and public safety, human services, EmX, Lane County’s budget…the list and the show both go on. goes on.

On Friday March 29 the Opportunity Eugene Task Force  (Forum Lane, 1/5/12) had its last meeting.  The plan was to review a draft of recommendations that were to be made to the City Council regarding the work of the task force.

The recommendations had been winnowed down from discussions of the broader group by a smaller planning group.  This group was selected to narrow the discussion to a manageable number of point to present to the City Council.

Five meetings of the Task Force had been held between January 4 and March 6 each lasting around two hours.  The meetings involved as many as 50 participants with an audience of observers.  The report from the smaller group included the following:

“The investment made in establishing the Opportunity Eugene Task Force has yielded results.  While consensus among the group was difficult to achieve, three key recommendations have been identified.  These recommendations are as follows:

1.  There should not be cuts to existing services, and the City should work to meet needs by bolstering existing services.

2.  A site (or sites) is/are needed for a safe, legal place for the unhoused.

3.  A body is recommended to expedite and further the work of the Opportunity Eugene Task Force.”

Following these three key recommendations in the draft is a list of prioritized actions Eugene City Council and others may take to implement the above recommendations.  The list of actions includes such achievable suggestions as:  ”Approve the zoning change to enable expansion of the Eugene Mission from occupancy of 400 to 643.”

Rather than discuss the recommendations it was immediately asserted by members of a separate group that the final draft needed to be revised and a 16-page list of changes to the recommendation, “because of the nature of its construction and multiple authoring, it lacked the clarity and “punch” that it needed…” was forwarded.

What was to be a relatively concise recommendation slipped into an angry discourse from members of Occupy Eugene who made statements like, “you will have blood on your hands” if you don’t recommend immediate action.

A particularly troubling statement, directed by an Occupy Eugene participant toward a dedicated Lane County staff member who has devoted her professional career to finding solutions for homeless adults and kids, “I don’t want to live on the same planet as you” was disturbing enough that I lost confidence and enthusiasm that a civil recommendation could be formed.

The final recommendation to Council is being drafted, but I fear that it will be so broad and nonspecific that it will be difficult for the Council to agree on practical areas to address.

I expect that a smaller committee will be appointed to further explore what can realistically be done in a way that addresses longer term needs.

Demands for an October 1 2012 startup of a self-governed homeless camp, as made by members of Occupy Eugene, are not likely to be realized because of a large number of issues including but not limited to: local and state codes and zoning requirements, public process and impact on adjacent neighborhoods.

Threats made by certain individuals of consequences if it doesn’t occur need to be taken seriously.