Letters 12/30-1/6

IN REPLY TO “CASEY ROATS: NEXT-GENERATION WORKING CLASS CONSERVATIVE” (12/31)
If Roats Water System “isn’t making anyone rich,” how on earth are they partnering with Avion and buying another city water utility (Juniper)??? There is more to that story Erin Rook...
—Anonymous via bendsource.com

IN REPLY TO “BEST SOURCE BURNS” (12/31)
Sounds like it’s time to appease the readers and not just the advertisers. I religiously obtained and read the Source about four years ago (and prior). It seems like it has lost a lot of integrity, a lot of variety and has become geared only to the young, drinking crowds, which seem to encapsulate the same fashions, hangouts, musical taste and lifestyles. I’m only 36, but I feel like I don’t relate anymore.
—Ryan Andrews via bendsource.com

Ryan, I agree with you. In prior years, the Source actually had a good investigative journalistic approach (unlike the Bull...). Issues like the Urban Growth Boundary and the tactics developers used to get their westside land developed, rather [than] allowing progress in other Bend areas, were clearly explained.
While I read the Source for entertainment, it seems to have become a tool of the Chamber of Commerce/Visit Bend machinery.
The citizens here deserve a newspaper that courageously investigates the “powers” here and lets voters know the who, what and why decisions are made and who really is benefitting.
—Lahaina via bendsource.com

Not nearly as prestigious as making the worst letters of the year list as I did around a decade ago, but this still carries a measure of accomplishment despite the exclusion of some of my finer work from the other seven slots here.
As a post script, I will note that everything I said with relation to the referenced story has turned out to be correct, except that I thought Michael Sam would shame some NFL team into giving him a guaranteed contract. Turns out he wasn’t even good enough at football, or orientation hustling, for that.
—Jon Jegglie via bendsource.com

IN REPLY TO “BILLS, BILLS, BILLS” (12/31)
Until Bend developers are required to pay impact fees commensurate with the true costs their “investments” impose on the City, lay off raising taxes to substitute for this bias!
The fees for developers here are the lowest in Oregon. Residents shouldn’t be required to subsidize these wealthy
oligarchs.
—Lahaina via bendsource.com

IN REPLY TO “NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS: WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE In THE SOURCE IN 2015?” (12/29)
More reporting on local politics — it’s informative AND entertaining.
—Reader via bendsource.com

IN REPLY TO “BEERPOCALYPSE” (11/11)
As the author of the post quoted and linked from The Pour Fool, I have to observe how startlingly disingenuous the Cox Boys have been about this sale. All that high-flown rhetoric about “our employees” and “better distribution” neatly skirts the issue that ALL the people who are denouncing them and this deal care about: the fact that AB/InBev, the world’s most unprincipled and overtly craft-hating “brewery” now has its tentacles into both Bend and Oregon. (Conveniently, not one word about issues of right and wrong in this sale.) Now, instead of just being an associate of Widmer and owner of distributors, they have a direct claim to ownership of a Bend brewery and are entitled, now, to lobby the Oregon legislature for whatever changes will most benefit AB/InBev and the Oregon craft community be damned. One hundred-plus years of ruthless, amoral, marketplace aggression on a scale that would make Gallo blush is not going to change because Carlos Brito and his minions suddenly “got religion” about everything that all of us have come to identify as “craft:” the independence, pride in ownership, respect for one’s peers, the struggle to build a brand, and the TRUE claim to the title “American Made” that AB relinquished when they sold out to a Belgian corporation. The Cox Boys just took rich — in MAJOR ways, and I, for one, would have had a LOT more respect for them if they had just said, in response to all of our bruised feelings, “Y’know what? We’re in this for the MONEY — have been since Day One. WE saw a chance to get really rich, instantly, and took it and anybody who doesn’t like that can KISS...OUR...ASSES. You’re boycotting us? Knock yourselves out! With increased distribution, we’ll have all new consumers who aren’t such moralizing tight-asses. Up Yours, Pacific Northwest! We got ours and you’re just jealous!”
Since that’s exactly what they’re saying, now, anyway.
—The Pour Fool

IN REPLY TO “THE OTHER SIDE OF THE FENCE” (12/17)
Only 25 percent of vacation rentals in Bend are owner-occupied. The majority of vacation rental owners live out of neighborhood, out of town, or out of state. Many own three or four vacation rentals. They’re not neighbors. They’re investors.
—Steve via bendsource.com

I have two issues related to this article’s subject matter: When exactly and by whom was it decided that continued local population growth is a goal we wish to pursue? I personally would be quite content to have the local population stabilize at its current level. I realize that so-called “growth” benefits the local business interests but it’s just an annoyance to many of the rest of us. Secondly, it seems to me that those of us who live just outside the city of Bend are very poorly represented in all these discussions. We can’t vote in City elections nor are we represented by neighborhood associations. Yet, the City seems to have the power to expand and encompass our homes and force higher density zoning upon us.
—jcbarlow via bensource.com

You don’t want to live next door to a short-term rental. They should be banned nationally in all residential neighborhoods. Try living next to one, a hotel really right next door. It don’t work.
—Robert Stiles via bendsource.com

I’m amused that the article commences with an apparently serious person saying, “I think tourism is a great thing, but not in my neighborhood.” Is this an Onion article? It goes on to cite a City Councilor invoking another tired cliché — also entirely devoid of reality — that “people don’t want to see Bend turn into the place they moved away from.” Oh, is that right? There’s a documented exodus from Detroit or D.C. to Bend to get away from crime? Stop resorting to useless sound bites and take stock of what Bend actually is: a city of 85,000. Which means it’s high time to start acting like one. The sooner Bend ceases casting itself as a Shangri-La in which the oppressed seek refuge from “city problems” the better. This is the mindset that equates a bus system with poverty, disabled access with “not my problem” and any semblance of diversity with “the sorts of people we don’t want here.” I suspect the only reason people seem up in arms over the vacation rental issue is this: their goddamned property values.
—Peter G via bendsource.com

IN REPLY TO “MY, WHAT BIG BUNS YOU HAVE” (12/31)
“What’s more ‘Bend’ than using delicious craft beer in your baked goods?” this review asks. Well, using a beer from Bend, would be more “Bend” than using Ninkasi, which is produced in Eugene.
—PBR Rules via bendsource.com