Five thousand gallons of raw sewage were ‘accidentally’ dumped into the Coquille River when a computer malfunction or power failure caused a pump to stop working. Forgive my skepticism but when I ride my bike by and have to hold my breath and see bubbling brown ooze cresting the top of the plant, I can’t help but wonder if the release was more intentional than accidental.

The sewer treatment issue has long been debated around here with the City Council continually voting to defer badly needed maintenance. Unfortunately, the aging council members don’t even have the good grace to stop running for a seat in favor of some new blood. The antique council might explain why they continue with the same city manager despite a mediocre performance these last nine or ten years.

Please Coquille, can these people!

PS. Filter your drinking water

A speaker at last week’s Board of Commissioners meeting talked about how experienced employees are an invaluable resource. The speaker, Don Beebe, expressed what a travesty it was not to tap that wealth of experience during the recent reorganization at the Road Department.

From the outside looking in, unfortunately the only perspective available to the public given the opacity of the Board’s decision, the disregard for experienced input reflects an arrogant disdain for the citizens as well as the employees and has the sharp acrid scent of hubris. How dare the Board behave as if the citizens have nothing of value to contribute on such an important topic as public safety?

Evidently the Coquille City Council has no more regard for the collective experience of the voters than the Board. Certainly we can hope that their choice of Matt Muenchrath to the Council will benefit all the citizens despite their own mediocre performance.

Still it was their choice, just six people not the electorate. These same six people have presided while a wildly unpopular and apparently incompetent police chief was allowed to run roughshod throughout the City and his department without any management or oversight from the city manager for years.

These same six people continue to allow the city manager to behave as if he were not responsible for the many police department failings. They have provided no guidance to the city manager while an unsolved murder, a critically injured member of the public, thousands of dollars stolen and the misuse of City computers happened right under his nose.

Once again I detect the scent of hubris. Arbitrary council rules enacted years ago were used to wrest control from and justify ignoring the experience of the public.

Assuming the Board of Commissioners ignores public testimony and outcry and goes through with the Road Department layoffs the already high unemployment rate in Coquille will jump even higher. The layoff will effect schools, businesses and further reduce our tax base. Will the ever vigilant and alert Coquille City Council develop a plan to deal with these inevitable changes or come up with knee jerk reactions just like the Board?

Resource depletion is not why budgets get tight or societies fail. They fail because leaders do not adapt to resource depletion. The Board has not responded or adapted to changing economic conditions, instead they have reacted, frantically, wildly in a state of panic. Reaction is not leadership it is the absence of leadership.

Instead of blaming the legislature or pleading with a large corporation to ride in like a white knight and rescue the county like a damsel in distress there are many solutions available to enable local sustainability that are much more dignified. These solutions will require adaptation and a willingness to think out of the box but they do exist.

Energy is one way to become self-sustaining and fund public services such as road maintenance, public health and education. Five megawatts of distributed generating power operating at full capacity can earn $3M annual revenue. Using a ratio of 1.4 and assuming a AAA credit rating, $3M qualifies for $2.1M in debt service and translates into $19.2M financing at 9.5% interest although a bank will limit a loan to 80% of cost.

Centralized wind farms cost about $1.5M per megawatt excluding the cost of transmission. At that cost $19M in financing would pay for more than 12MW of power generation and might provide some insight into why energy is popular on Wall Street. The net earnings $.9M after paying debt service assumes a 20-year loan but distributed generation is less expensive than centralized power allowing a much faster payoff.

Generating 5 or 10MW of power locally instead of importing power and exporting dollars to investor owned utilities is just one of many ways to adapt the resources we have to suit our changing needs. These are by no means simple deals to structure but they are done successfully in the US and Europe, all it takes is competent and adaptive leadership.

If we invite the collective experience of our citizens and the people we work with everyday rather than keeping everyone in the dark many unique solutions will have the opportunity to present themselves. Hubris is not adaptive and the very act of excluding the very people affected by a decision from the decision process is polarizing and invites mistrust. For this reason, I believe Stufflebean has impaired his own ability to lead and should resign as interim roadmaster and give up his liaison assignment to the Road Department.

Coquille City Council voted 4 to 2 to vote in Matt Muenchrath, who never lifted a finger for the position or had the good character to respond to my request for a legal opinion regarding the handling of the Hagen debacle, for city councilor. So much for their word which is worthless and so much for Muenchrath whom I would like if he had not taken the cheesy way out to get on the council. What a huge bunch of pussies.

This is just another affirmation along with having my pocket picked by the City of Coquille why I will never do business with Coquille. They deserve their poverty, the high unemployment and the high vacancy rate. City Hall has earned all these negative accolades in spades.

Amazing that an errant city councilor too irresponsible to bring a timely resignation to the council can hold the city hostage and the city council allow it. In the end 710 votes to 4 decided the choice of city councilor and it was not the citizens who were served. Shame on Muenchrath for not have the balls to run for the position and interjecting himself into this mess.

Happily, voters remember.

Dian has put up a good post about the local democratic process as it is enacted here in Coquille and does a handy job of fingering the usually flawed logic delivered by the Coquille equivalent to the National Enquirer.

There is no need for me to elaborate on Dian’s thoughts here but I will say my view of the job of the council is to steward public money and assets and respect the will of the people. The council can listen to the opinion of hired staff but is supposed to instruct the city manager not be instructed.

The council is just too old and too complacent and too lethargic to really dig into the city’s problems. They are given a packet of information chosen by the city manager a couple of days before the council meeting and there is very little evidence they ever do any fact checking or analysis or serious exploration of alternatives of their own. They accept at blind faith that staff has done all that for them. Certainly as regards the handling of the police department and the water/sewer issue it is really hard to understand how staff has earned so much faith.

Now at the urging of staff, the council has put itself into a very uncomfortable position regarding the council seat. Thanks to ’staff’ they will be damned if they do and damned if they don’t. Apparently, ’staff’ hires the city attorney and continues to employ John Trew who has exhibited poor judgment in the past. Did he consider the liability to the city when ‘harpy’ was slandering and defaming a citizen during a council meeting? Apparently, a letter sent by the citizen’s (me) attorney alerting the council to the falsity of the statements and the precarious nature it put the city in was never forwarded from Trew to the council as it would have been in any other city.

Why does the council have such a low bar of expectations for the city manager? In the last two years I have attended many city council meetings around the state and country and I wish some of our council would do the same just to see the contrast and professionalism that can be attained. Surely, Coquille can do much better and replace those old fossils on the council.

Eldon points out in his letter the councils decision to throw out the election results for only three of the candidates.

Further, there appears to be nothing in the City Charter, let alone the City Council Procedural Rules, that grants authority to the City Council to ignore or unilaterally invalidate the election results entirely, just because one candidate was determined to have been ineligible at the time of the election. In other words, there is no provision at all which renders any of the other candidates ineligible for election to the City council merely because Kathy Hagen was ineligible for election.
If there had been a provision allowing the City Council to disregard the election results as they apply to some of the candidates, then they would probably apply to all the candidates, including the 2 currently presumed to have won re-election, being Corky Daniels and Fran Capehart, but no one appears to be challenging their re-elections.

[emphasis mine]

We now have five new people that want three seats. What a great opportunity for change that would be!!!

While no reason is given, Gold Beach has suspended their police chief, Russ Merkley, placing him on temporary, indefinite paid leave. Gold Beach administrator, Don Flynn will supervise the police department until a replacement can be found. Having watched the Coquille City Council these last two years I marvel when I read stories like this or the one where a discontented Reedsport withheld a raise from their city manager.

It seems that some city councils really do pay attention and ‘council’ their hired administrators. Yet here in Coquille a city manager of eight years that has repeatedly demonstrated a lack of departmental oversight, receives little or no admonition or ‘oversight’ from the council.

As I read the latest news regarding disgraced officer, Randy Ulmer, I can’t help but get angrier and angrier at city manager, Terence O’Connor for ignoring complaints about then police chief, Mike Reaves. Again and again he sided with the chief over the safety and well being of the citizens. His indifference to actions and inaction of his friend and ex chief, has, in my opinion contributed to the downfall of Randy Ulmer.

Personally, I had my own issues with Ulmer and regarded him as either, incompetent and just plain slow witted or thoroughly dishonest, either way the net result for me was negative. That said, I don’t really think he is a horrible person and he has a very nice family that are no doubt all suffering greatly at this time. So I can’t help but get angry because there is no question that a real police chief would have already implemented the structure and policies to have prevented this from ever occuring. Further, had Ulmer had any real supervision, his gambling (if that is in fact what the problem was) might have been discovered and counseling sought to help him with it long before it got to this point.

So we have had some tort claims, some insurance payouts from grievances, a man who never had an opportunity to give his side of the story is now a quadriplegic, numerous other complaints and potential for lawsuits under the watch of Terence O’Connor and our council does nothing. As I understand it, O’Connor, knowing full well that Reaves was leaving the job and the profession let the city pay for a week long jaunt at a police chiefs annual gala shortly before he retired.

It took hiring a real professional for the job of police chief to even uncover the depths the department had sunk under the former chief and with the full complicity of the current city manager.

Frankly, our police chief is over qualified to be answering to someone like O’Connor and I believe our council is remiss in not seeking a professional to replace him. Just look at the wonders that have been performed at the PD and just think how wonderful this city might be.

O’Connor is not alone in his responsibility as I think of Councilor Capehart and her blind allegiance to the police department simply because her husband was a trooper, her constituents be damned. The same can be said for Bruce Parker and I note they have both been mum on the topic of the total mess the new police chief inherited, much of it on their watch.

Now, it seems the city manager may have knowingly or unknowingly advised the council incorrectly regarding the Kathy Hagen debacle, possibly to the point that they are violating the city charter and disenfranchising voters. More on this soon as I have requested some outside legal opinion.

As mentioned I attended the county commission meeting yesterday regarding the annex building and downtown parking. O’Connor quipped that people will ‘walk two blocks to shop at Pony Village Mall’ but are too lazy to stretch their legs to shop downtown and suggested that people should think of the benefits to their figures.

Apparently, he feels the parking problem is the fault of the shoppers and not a concern for the city to try and solve. Clearly, in his mind, the merchants can solve their own parking problem by catering only to physically fit patrons.

It is a good sign that six, count ‘em six, people applied for the city council and a couple of them were young to boot! We must have some new blood on the council, willing to work with our mayor and not against him, to move this city out of the mud flats from which it has settled.

The World and KCBY are reporting on the interview process last night to fill the seat ‘vacated’ by Kathy Hagen. However, the question has been raised since Hagen was not eligible on the day of election therefore she never won the seat and thus had no seat to ‘vacate’.

Mayor Britton, accepting the interpretations of city attorney, John Trew and city manager, Terence O’Connor, of council rules and the city charter is quoted as saying the council had no choice but to engage in this interview process.

“I would much prefer that the general election would select our next council person but our council rules say that in the event of a vacated position, this is the process we have to go through to select the council person.”

[Emphasis mine]

Nevertheless, it appears that the council might be violating the charter by having accepted an ineligible Hagen as elected to the council.

SECTION 12. QUALIFICATION OF OFFICERS. No person shall be eligible for an elective office of the city unless at the time of the election he/she is a qualified elector within the meaning of the state constitution and has resided in the city during 12 months immediately preceding the election.

Hagen did not reside in the city on election day, (unconfirmed reports state she may have been a part time resident for several months). So was the council remiss in treating Hagen’s ineligibility to serve on the council and resignation as a ‘vacated’ seat? Has the council misinterpreted the charter and state and local election laws to the detriment of the electorate?

Lawyer Matt Muenchrath apparently too busy to run for the election has seized on this opportunity to ease his way onto the city council. Frankly, I was impressed with Muenchrath and certainly hope he will make the effort to run in the next election two years from now but I feel strongly that he should earn his position by working as hard to get elected as Dian has done, including attending city council meetings for the last two years. Where have you been Mr Muenchrath?

There is a comment from The World which bears quoting

What a Shame wrote on Dec 16, 2008 1:47 PM:
My vote would go to John Spencer or for Dian Courtright. There is enough business type on the counsel now. We need someone in there that represents the working person for a change and get away from “that is the way we have always done it” thinking. As a former counsel member myself, sometimes you have to make tough decisions and I think that these two people are the ones to do that for the citizens of Coquille. I think a lot of the voting decisions that some of the city counselers vote on today are made because the counseler tends to have his vote decision go towards how that vote would affect only a small handful of citizens when the vote should go towards how it would affect the entire city or it entire population.

Dian Courtright certainly represents the local working class admirably and her high vote count reflects the public’s confidence in her abilities. More importantly Dian if some interpretations of the charter are correct, won the seat fair and square. If this is true both she and the voters are being disenfranchised.

Meanwhile there is considerable pressure being placed upon the council by City Hall to ignore the votes in this process, in other words, the citizens don’t matter and this is now a personality contest with only five judges.

Applications for the position of city council will be accepted until 5 PM and at 7 PM the public may attend as the council decides on a replacement for Kathy Hagen. Please show your support for Dian Courtright who campaigned so hard for the position and be at City Hall this evening.