A city cannot expand and increase population for free. It takes money, vision, common sense and a will to look into the future beyond the “hood ornament.” A successful business always sets aside money for maintenance and improvement to the business. How much did our former mayors participate in this process? The snake oil merchants of yore have “morphed” into a variety of “experts” – attorneys, car salesmen, developers, former mayors, and other self-serving sorts. The amazing thing is these folks storm into our city council meetings,saying this surface water project needs more study! This planning process has been going on for several years. Where have these “nay-sayers” been? Along the way I had concerns that if it were studied anymore we will slam into a federal deadline and our water delivery system would further deteriorate. Keep in mind, this is a cooperative effort to “save” money and install the pipeline and rebuild the road at the same time.
In my opinion; the one who seems to have the most to gain is the most silent, Tumalo Irrigation District. Also the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) jumped in suddenly, being concerned about fishery viability. Why has this not been a concern in the last 33 years? In my opinion ODFW has been more concerned about regulations and revenue. Is greed for water rights an underlying motivator? Following Portland’s lead, Bend is working on a variance for the membrane filter. This would put off spending $26 million for a few more years. I say install the building and connections now and install the membrane filter later.
Our aquifer is NOT an unlimited supply of water. We are fortunate to have cheap electricity, but for how long? How long are we going to use “cheap” coal? For the last 100 years, the city of Bend has had a narrow outlook on future growth. Up until recently, growth has been slow and then all of a sudden – BOOM! With the city not setting aside money over the years for infrastructure maintenance and expansion, inadequate SDCs and lack of long-term vision, we are caught in this bottleneck. Somewhere during this long “dance” someone has to pay the fiddler.
Other than building the city sewer system in the 1980s, this surface water improvement and wastewater improvement projects are the largest, most complex, and most expensive projects in Bend’s history. On the positive side of the ledger, and tough as it may be, by building this infrastructure in a “down” economy when labor and materials cost less we will save money by acting now, rather than waiting until the economy improves.
This size of project will always have changes along the way quite often generating savings. There is a lot of specialized expertise that goes into a project of this magnitude. That means contracting outside our area. These outside contractors are encouraged to hire local talent when possible. When the economy recovers and folks start moving back to Bend, there will be more folks helping to pay down these project expenses.
A handful of former mayors and their fellow team members with their petition of 1,000 signatures, (last count?) is NOT a resounding demand from a city of 76,000. How about 1.5 percent. Sounds like the tail trying to wag the dog. Instead of forming a PAC, put that money to better use in our community. Bend has plenty of charitable needs. AND we do NOT need another hired consultant with another analysis to figure out if we need to go ahead with THIS project! So folks, let’s stop the rhetoric, accusations, “get over” past errors and let’s work together toward the betterment of Bend. Let’s be proud of our community.
Mike Lovely, Bend
This article appears in Dec 22-28, 2011.
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Mike:
You are clueless; The city of Bend is an unmitigated disaster, and nothing that they propose including all of their grandiose schemes warrants support of the people.
You must either be a bureaucrat yourself or completely naiive.
Scott
Mr. Lovely – I can tell you feel passionately about this, but you are off on several facts. First, while Bend will inevitably grow in the future, our actual water needs have declined significantly in the past 5 years, giving us ample time for circumspect planning, thereby avoiding haphazardly spending gazillions of dollars. Moving to wells when we DO need additional supply and adding capacity gradually will avoid suddenly skyrocketing water bills. Second, while the aquifer is finite, it is also VASTLY greater than any amount we would ever need to support fish, farms and cities in central oregon (check the science on this if you're not convinced). Third, groundwater doesn’t need the filtration that surface water does because it’s cleaner, so keeping surface water is actually a (very expensive) liability in this regard. Fourth, please explain how Tumalo Irrigation would benefit from the city abandoning surface water? Do you know how water rights work? And claiming that nobody cared about the fishery before means you have not been paying very close attention to the restoration that's been occurring on Tumalo Creek for years. Finally, many citizens tried repeatedly to participate in the “process” of evaluating the SWIP, but city staff kept the “studies” (now proven incompetent) under wraps until after city council voted on the project. Claiming we could have participated on the front end is hogwash. There are a limited few who stand to benefit from this project and a whole town that will have to pay for it. Between our declining water demand and excess well capacity, we’ve got plenty of time to take the slow & steady approach to water supply.
Yes, the aquifer is endless and runs at an incredible rate. Please look into it further.
Sorry, Mike. I think you are well meaning here but incorrect on this matter.
I’ll take just one issue of your essay as others have addressed others.
To say the city needed to take the woefully bad, and as judgement I’ll say arrogant, approach they did to avoid “slam” up against a Federal deadline is just wrong in my view. Although it is the City’s propaganda line, it is incorrect, it seems to me.
First, the Feds did not mandate that deadline. The city entered in an AGREEMENT (there’s a difference) in 2002 to have the work done by February 2012. And yet for until later into 2009, the city staff (and council) simply ignored their agreement. La dee dah…sounds sort of like how they mis-managed their DOJ AGREEMENT on the 2004 to 2014 horizon for the curb ramps too.
When the city staff woke up in 2009 about the fact this AGREEMENT they made was not optional, they started selling the line that “The Feds made us do it” regarding their current proposal. As in, we need to do this this way or face a fine in 2012. But in fact, by that point the city staff was already re-negotiating to push out the agreement with the Feds to 2014.
So, the fear tactic used by staff to instill on naive folk that they had to take their bad path or face Federal wrath by 2012 was all a part of the ruse.
Others who oppose the city’s path for the current SWIP testified before council using examples of other things to show, document, that the staff was using misleading data and misinformation with the public on this matter.
The point being a fish rots of the head down and our city manager and public works staff and sadly some on council all are smelling a bit “ripe”. In particular our city manager and Mr. Cappell, both of whom have behaved in a way so denigrating to the folks who question this that it is unacceptable.
I respect your passion in local government issues, Mike. But in this I hope you’ll take another look.