1 August 2010

Greetings from City Hall

I have learned that there is no such thing as a “practice” heart attack. It is like being pregnant; you either are or you aren’t and with the heart, the enzymes in the results of the initial blood test will tell that you either did or didn’t have a heart attack. Many of you have experienced this serious situation and know the importance of listening to your body tell you to get your fanny to the emergency room. That is very important when you are 40 miles from the nearest one. So let me pass this on: Listen to your body. Your entire body. Muscle cramps, especially in the arms and shoulders. Shortness of breath for little or no reason. Heart palpitations. In retrospect, I had all of those for several months. But never any pain, although some folks have a lot during a heart attack. There are as many symptoms as there are people and the most important thing is (one more time) listen to your body!! No heart damage and the most evident aftereffect is more energy and my body asking, “Where did all that oxygen come from?” As for the people in The Dalles and at OHSU, their response could not have been better in terms of taking care of the patient.

Recycling

Sometime last year, Wasco County was singled out as a weak recycler and in this day of being green, the pressure of the many Kermits in Salem resulted in a mandate to increase our efforts to be greener. So DEQ with a limited budget gave us enough money to buy the recycling equipment to get started and the money to operate it for one year. This was to give us the capability to help Wasco County bring their score up in the “recycle participation” category. As a recycling program, it worked better than expected. And now we are the proud owners of a successful recycling center with the requirements to continue the operation. Like the water meters demanded by the state to be installed in our water system, this is undecipherable from an unfunded mandate. So this is now our recycling situation. In work sessions and meetings, all of which were public and advertized, the council and the very few people who were there to help us figure how to pay for the transportation costs associated with the new recycle station considered several options including using general funds, establishing universal garbage service and packing up the equipment and sending it back to the state. The decision to attach $2 to the sewer and water bill was not lightly made but came only after considering what was equitable, what was onerous, and what the State would do with the equipment we returned (which could have been financially painful). Most of our sewer and water customers gladly paid the $2 fee we attached to the bill even though recycling is something that doesn’t really relate to water and sewer (unless you consider that water is recycled through the sewer system and I don’t want to think about that). There were several that didn’t pay, however, and some of them had a good reason to not do so which we can fix. Some are the owners of vacation houses in the City and aren’t full-fledged citizens of Maupin, just part-time residents. You can be both and most are, but not in this case. And some are full-time residents whose citizenship has been tapped to their limit. I expected to hear from them and I was not disappointed. The problem we can fix is being worked on as we speak. It seems that during this summer the recycle bin, especially on the cardboard end has filled up faster than the center in The Dalles can handle it. This in turn delays our transport of recycle material to the center and the bin fills up. There are two ways to fix that. First, while we have the current system, we can make trips to the center more often with the expectation that the frequency will fall off during the off-season. Second, we can get a grant for a separate recycle building for cardboard and a compacter/baler so that we can store and transport the cardboard when the number of bales builds up to make the trip worthwhile. Without the cardboard in the same bin with the other materials, the transport schedule will be much easier to handle. According to the owner of the sanitary service in Madras, cardboard prices continually fluctuate from under $50 to over $80 per ton, which would make it feasible to keep the baled cardboard under cover until the price is right. When we get all our recycle systems working at full speed, we will be able to discuss a complete ban on burning as The Dalles is doing right now, as are other cities and counties across the state. (I anticipate at least one letter on this last remark.) So we will continue to work the problem. We are now aware that there is no way to please everybody when we ask them to participate in a program where the community as a whole benefits but they can see no personal benefit to themselves. But we won’t let the fees that we are being shorted slow down the recycle program. By the way, when you take a load of garbage to the Tygh Valley garbage transfer station, it costs $40 for that load. That’s three years and four months worth of “Recycle Cost Recovery Fees.”

Other Really Important Stuff

Upcoming Elections. This note is on the counter at City Hall: “The City of Maupin is accepting Filing of Candidacy for the Offices of Mayor and (3) Councilors until 4:00 p.m. on Tuesday, August 24, 2010. Filing of Candidacy shall be by prospective petition, with a minimum of 5 signatures of active registered voters in Maupin, Wasco County, Oregon. Filing forms are available at Maupin City Hall, 408 Deschutes Avenue, Maupin, Oregon. Candidates will be placed on the General Election Ballot in November, and the terms of offices will commence on the first of January. The office of Mayor is for a two-year term and office of Councilor is a four-year term. A candidate who files for office shall be a qualified elector under the state constitution and shall have resided in the City of Maupin during the twelve months immediately before being elected to the office. Additional information may be obtained by contacting Recorder DeOra Patton at 541-395-2698.”

Hearing to Designate the Office of Wasco County Commissioner as Non-Partisan. A Public Hearing will be held in the County Courtroom, Room 202 on 4 August, 2010, at 11:00 a.m. There the proposed Ordinance will be read and objections and comments will be considered. If you wish to review the proposed ordinance, you may do so at the County Courthouse in Suite 302, or on the County website, www.co.wasco.or.us.

City of Maupin, Request for Proposal, Tourism Promotion Agency. We are seeking a qualified Tourism Promotion Agency to provide tourism support as defined by our City Ordinance No. 286. It is anticipated that Tourism Promotion Agency will receive up to 90% of the total receipts of the City under its transient rooming tax. A complete copy of the RFP is available at Maupin City Hall. The City will hold a pre-bid conference at 10:00 a.m. on 5 August in City Hall to answer any questions. Attendance is not required as a condition to submit a proposal for services for this project. All questions regarding this RFP should be addressed to Maupin City Recorder DeOra Patton, 541-395-2698.

The Dalles Chronicle. For those of you that read our “local” paper, you have seen the long article about the economic developments being made in the real local area – South County – described in the Sunday, July 25 paper. Bill Mintiens, the author and Public Affairs Specialist for Wy’East Resource Conservation and Development, did a great job of describing our efforts to build our economy. This has been a tough three years in the making and paralleled the Main Street project fairly closely. Also in the Chronicle, you might have noticed a series of pieces that could affect the City in other ways. One is the County’s interest in establishing a transient lodging fee of their own to support, among other things, the Discovery Center. If the Center were in the geographic center of the County, I would support it fully. However, fortunately for the “Seed to Table” folks, it isn’t because it would crowd them out of their green house. Another recurring theme is the discussion of a complete outside burning ban in the City of The Dalles. I know some of you probably give your burn barrel a big hug as 1 July rolls around and celebrate the 1 November advent of burning season, possibly with old copies of the Chronicle.

That’s it. I have to fill out my candidacy forms so I can run for two more years. There are several things that are on the “to-do” list that we will talk about after the summer activity has dwindled to a dull roar and this cardio-rehab program has run its course. October? Meanwhile, we at City Hall will work on making the recycling project work. I don’t think the State will let us not do that. And I would bet that banning outside fires are on the horizon.

Cheers,

Denny