Editorial

The City Standoff

Heads or tails. Upfront has been entertained by the new Bend city council's standoff start to the new year. As of Monday councilors remained evenly divided over whom to tap for the seat recently vacated by Chris Telfer, who departed in early January for the state legislature. By law councilors have until Feb. 7 to select Telfer's replacement. That person will serve out the two years remaining on Telfer's term. But several councilors who spoke with Upfront about the stand-off said they didn't foresee any compromise before the deadline, which would force the city to settle the question with a special election (estimated cost $13,000) or with the flip of a coin - a relatively rare but well established political tie-breaker. One councilor who spoke with Upfront on Monday said he thought the council would go with the later method to avoid a costly and politically divisive special election.

Not a LAHFing Matter
Breaking the law!Central Oregon seems to love Larry and His Flask, but the same can't be said for the Southern Oregon University campus security team, which sent the wheels of chaos in motion, resulting in three members of the punk-turned-rampaging-Americana act to jail for the Martin Luther King Jr. weekend.
As the band's multi-instrumentalist Dallin Bulkley tells it, the trouble started when bassist Jeshua Marshall was approached by a pair of SOU campus security guards who told him he was banned from the campus. This was news to Marshall and the rest of LAHF, who were in town on Saturday, Jan. 17 on tour opening a show for Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band and had never been told that they were not welcome on the campus where they've played previously.

The 44th

So I'm watching the Inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama as our 44th President, trying to calculate the number of coal-fired electricity plants and oil-burning cars, buses and planes utilized to make this day so special, guesstimating that the Earth will heat at least 1½ degrees before D.C. is done celebrating itself. It was all we expected, indeed deserved, our millions of dollars in donations ensuring that hope is still alive. And then the following happened:
Lord Cheney Not
Looking So Well
Wearing a fedora that matches his old pal and Indian-giver Jack Abramoff, former (oh the joy in being able to write that!) Vice President Dick Cheney was in a wheelchair, and purposely well hidden behind bulletproof glass. Maybe there's tact in the old grumpy Halliburton hack after all: He could have faked his death months ago and we'd now be celebrating Condi Rice as our 44th - African-Americans still pleased but the GLBT community ecstatic at the thought of our first butch prez.

As noted in this week's Boot former councilor and now state Sen. Chris Telfer (R) stuck around city hall just long enough to orchestrate the installation of her hand picked mayor, Kathie Eckman. After Eckman won on a "party line" vote over Mark Capell, Telfer packed her bags for Salem leaving the council to fill the two years remaining on her term.

And if the mayoral contest was any kind of litmus test, expect a divided council to narrowly appoint another person with strong ties to, or at least support from, the Bend Good Ol' Boys Club (i.e. the builders, realtors and Chamber lobby).
Upfront's money is on Don Leonard, a former planning commissioner who ran unsuccessfully in November against Jim Clinton. Leonard subsequently filed for the position opened by the sudden death of councilor and former mayor Bill Friedman. The council ultimately filled that seat with Jodie Barram, another planning commission vet, who lost a close contest to Jeff Eager in November.

Upfront realizes that the city of Bend catches a lot of crap from the community over its snow plowing practices. If the city isn't plowing enough, they're money-wasting morons who dumped all the city's nest egg into pet projects like bridge proclamations.