Council: Don’t waste our federal funding

 

Our old water treatment plant, still going strong, but slowly falling apart.  The new plant will produce the same amount, but will have room to expand, about 3 blocks behind that big red roof.

            In the July 13^th Daily Courier, we are told that the Council is thinking of using 3 million dollars, a good third of our federal Covid relief funding, to pay for two years of rate increases for the new water treatment plant, an average of $8 per month that would not be added to our bills.  Since we use more water than average, my family would benefit more than most. 

            But such a small benefit would be hollow and temporary, compared to reforming our rate system to pay for all our overhead with base rates and charging only marginal unit costs to our unit rates, the way we used to pay for water when this city was clean, green, beautiful and safe from wildfire.  It is better to take the debt payments off our rates entirely and charge us all but the 18% paid by the Urban Renewal District in our debt payment fee.

We were told, when the debt payment fee was passed, that it would never increase and would go away when the debt was paid.  We were not told that 22% of it would go onto our base and unit rates, where it increases by inflation every year and will never go away.

Some councilors, the Courier said, want to thank essential workers for staying on the job by giving them some federal money.  This is problematic.  Which jobs are essential and who holds them?  How do you find out?  Do the relative few who are paying attention apply and prove it?  It would only cause resentment, dividing residents into classes and paying only some. 

Any money you would give to essential workers would be little compared to what they would gain when you reform water and sewer rates, making it cheap to use water and free to use sewer, like we used to.  A lot of those essential workers are sharing housing and paying more than they should for water and sewer because of water-rationing unit rates.

Housing is what you should spend all that federal money on, starting with two cheap places to shower and sleep for those without secure shelter.  With a few million dollars, you could build a couple of large hostels that can house all our unsheltered residents.  They would be sustainable, because they would be cheap to use, not free.  When you reform our water and sewer rates, they will be more sustainable.

 

Speech to the Grants Pass City Council, 7-21-2021, published at GardenGrantsPass.blogspot.com

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 Rycke Brown, Natural Gardener    541-955-9040    rycke@gardener.com

Council: Act like Regulators

 

Honorable Council, Mayor and Manager,

            At our last meeting, I chided this Council, especially the member who wanted to nearly double our bulk water rates from $6.05/1000 gallons to $12 just to see what happens to demand.  The Council passed the increase unanimously, so you all share in that decision. 

It seems that little will happen to demand for that water, because the actual price of the water is still low compared to the cost of hauling it.  Water is, after all, not a scarce, precious resource; it is abundant and vital to families and farms in our county.  Even hauled water is a monopoly, because the cost of time and fuel exceeds any savings that might be realized by hauling water from Medford at $1.25/1000 gallons.   This explains how Cave Junction can charge $30/1000; they are just as far from us as we are from Medford.

            The Councilor who proposed this rate hike for our rural customers replied that he represents the citizens of this city.  If you truly represent and act as regulators to protect the residents of Grants Pass from the monopoly power of city utilities to run rates up to whatever the market can bear, then you would reform our water and sewer rate systems back to what we had before water rationing rates became a worldwide fad over the last 35 years. 

For over 50 years, we paid for all the overhead of our water plant, the expenses that do not rise and fall with our use of the service, in our monthly base rates.  We paid only marginal unit costs, which rise and fall with use, in our unit rates.  Sewage treatment was all base rates with no unit rates not long ago.  Unit rates for wastewater cleaning are oppressive to larger families who are often low income and multi-generational.  Overpriced water is oppressive, too.

Returning to the old rate system would pay all the expenses of our utilities at the least cost to customers every month and allow us to use all the water we want at a low price, as we did in the ‘80s and before, when our city was clean, green, and safe from fire because we put millions of gallons in the air every day of the growing season with our sprinklers and water vapor spread through the surrounding countryside for miles.

Please put utility rate reform on your agenda so we can all water our city and make it clean, green, beautiful, and safe again.

 Speech to the Grants Pass City Council, 6-2-2021, published at GardenGrantsPass.blogspot.com

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 Rycke Brown, Natural Gardener    541-955-9040    rycke@gardener.com

We may not need a new water plant

 

Honorable Council, Mayor and Manager,

            I was wrong.  I apologize to the ratepayers, Copeland, and all other businesses on their property.  I was wrong to support taking any part of their property to build a new water plant before all options for fixing the old plant are exhausted.

            I was taken in for years, until last week, by Staff’s assertion that the old plant cannot be fixed because the only clear well is falling apart and we can’t fix it in the time it would take for us to run out of clean water.  But how big is a clear well?  Can we not build a new one outside the present footprint of the building and use it while we fix the old one?  Then we can have two and be able to maintain each as needed.  We can proceed to fix the rest of the failing masonry while doing seismic retrofitting and then keep it maintained.  We can certainly do it for less than $81 million. 

            At Monday’s workshop, Staff went over the history of the planning for a new water plant.  A second clear well at the old plant apparently has never been considered. 

Staff did say that they considered taking several properties next to the plant to rebuild parts of the old plant while operating it, but that it would be too complicated to have to negotiate with several landowners.  As though negotiating with the Auslands, helping them and their multiple dependent businesses relocate, and paying for all that is simple or cheap?  We have been negotiating for well over a year, and now we will have to go to trial of the need to build a new plant, with full discovery, to justify taking their property.

Staff also said that they were looking at the possibility of eventually expanding the new plant to use all of our 45-million-gallon-a-day water right.  That can also be done by expansion of the old site and plant as needed.

Staff said that, of the three water-cleaning technology options for a new plant, the conventional system that we already use is the most expensive to build but is cheapest to operate.  We already have it; we don’t need to build much more of it right now. 

Operations go on forever.  Ratepayers would thank you to keep the technology that will cost us less in the long run, in that historic building that only needs to be expanded, fixed, seismically retrofitted, and maintained to last into the next century and beyond.

 Speech to the Grants Pass City Council, 1-6-2021

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 Rycke Brown, Natural Gardener      541-955-9040         rycke@gardener.com

We will pay for this debt forever

Speech to the Grants Pass City Council, 10-21-2020

               A couple of years ago, Staff asked you to pass a debt payment fee for our new water treatment plant, which they said would not increase by inflation, and would go away when the debt is paid.  This made me happy; it was a fixed payment for a fixed cost, and in 30 years, it would be gone.

            Later I learned that only 60% of that debt payment would be in that fee.  I assumed that 18% of it would be paid by the Urban Renewal District that was passed to help us pay for the new plant.  But that still leaves 22% of that debt to be loaded on our rates, an equal percentage rise in the base rate and the unit rates, where it is set to be compounded every year by 4.5 times the rate of inflation, and will never go away.

            A few weeks ago, I asked our City Manager if this was correct.  He has not answered my question about the URD’s 18%, but we did learn in the Courier that our water rates will be rising by 6% every year for 5 years to cover the debt not paid by the fee.  That is in addition to the 6.78% more we are paying every year for 1.5% inflation plus 5.28% to cover the overhead that we are not paying with our decreasing water use.*

            Staff tries to make it sound like they are saving us money somehow by keeping our base rate too low to pay all the overhead, like we used to before the base started being lowered and part of the overhead loaded onto our unit rates to make us save water.  But each customer has only one base rate; we use multiple units, and as we collectively cut back on those units, both base and unit prices are raised to cover that overhead. 

            We used to pay all of our overhead with base rates because that was the cheapest way for everybody to pay for water, and we could use all we needed for any beneficial use, including watering to keep our city safe from fire.  Rates were stable.  Unit charges were literally pennies on the bill. 

Now we are oppressed by high unit charges into paying more and more to use less and less water.  Please cancel the 6% rate increases and make our debt payment fee and the Urban Renewal District cover the whole debt.  Please do the same for the sewer plant debt, which is all being paid with our sewer rates.

*I was wrong about this because FCS did not say what was being paid for in the expected 6.78% rate increases over 4 years that they put in their March 2020 memo’s rate charts.  Staff said that it does include the debt service of the planned new plant.  If that is all that their expected increase covers, they are not planning for increases to cover overhead that have been happening since 2008.  

Staff said, after this speech, that the Urban Renewal Agency (not District) is picking up 18% of water debt service, and that it can be done for the sewer debt as well.

Comment revised 1/5/21.  Shared to RatePayers for Fair Water and Sewer Pricing: https://www.facebook.com/groups/335132417324336

  Rycke Brown, Natural Gardener        541-955-9040        rycke@gardener.com

"City Council acting against litter"

MADELINE SHANNON/The Daily Courier 

"City Council acting against litter" was the headline in the Daily Courier August 19th:  http://www.thedailycourier.com/articles/2016/08/19/community/news00001.txt.  The picture on the article showed a plastic cup in uncut dry grass, a perfect marriage of the twin problems of weeds and litter.

Despite the headline, no action was taken.  City Manager brought the issue to the Council for future consideration and presented a number of ways to fight litter.  Not one of them involved enforcing the present nuisance trash and weed codes against those in control of property.  Some of them involved the city paying for litter cleanup.

He did tell them that we have a $500 fine against people who drop litter.  At the September 7th meeting, I told the Council that a previous Council had reduced the fine for dogs running loose from $500 to $75 so the police would actually write tickets.  No cop wants to write a $500 ticket for a petty nuisance violation.

I also told them to drop the 20% admin fee on abatement of properties, because it is a disincentive to enforcement of the code before abatement becomes necessary.  Police should be warning residents and property owners about litter and weeds before the problem becomes overwhelming and a health or safety hazard; otherwise the city is just breeding health and safety hazards.  Every property that has to be abated is a failure of the City to enforce the code before it gets that bad, and it should not reward itself for such neglect.

Later, in matters from Council and Staff, Council President Dan DeYoung said that reducing the littering fine is a good idea.  City police Chief Bill Landis defended his Community Service Officers, saying that they had been doing numerous abatements, hauling out huge amounts of trash, and they'd asked the City for another $35,000 to do it.

At this week's meeting on the 21st, I will answer Chief Landis.  He doesn't get that the purpose of having a nuisance code and officers to enforce it is not to have city workers cleaning up and hauling out huge amounts of trash; it is to keep properties from getting to the point where the City has to do so.  

If the police have to ask for $35,000 more to abate properties, abatement is not profitable enough even to support itself, even with a 20% admin fee on top.  The people being targeted are too poor to pay for the cleanup or don't want to spend the money.  Big property owners with vacant land and big businesses get no enforcement or abatement, judging by the look of the city and where abatement notices are posted.

On the other hand, if police were trained to notice weeds and litter while answering calls, and warn property controllers of all sorts that they are violating  city code and how weeds and litter attract thieves and trespassers, passing such warnings on to Community Service code enforcement to follow up on, most people would clean up the nuisance without any further enforcement or need for abatement.  Most people will do what a uniformed officer tells them to do, if it is easily done.  It doesn't make the city any money, but it also doesn't cost anywhere near as much as abatement that never gets paid for.

Contact your City Councilor about having regular police actively enforcing our property maintenance nuisance codes anytime they see litter and/or seeding or flowering weeds.

Breaking 4 laws with 1 code

8 weeks old, from seed that sprouted July 9th

Councilors, Mayor and Manager:

          You each took an oath to obey the laws of the State of Oregon.  You have managed to break 4 Oregon laws in passing one code and failing to stay its enforcement when you were told that it is illegal.  This may be a new record in breaking state laws with a local code.  

Don’t tell us that you were obeying federal law in banning outdoor marijuana, because federal law completely bans it, and you are allowing indoor growing under lights.  You have allowed outdoor medical cultivation for the last 17 years without any interference until now.  It’s not your job to enforce federal law.  The feds are not enforcing it because the Supreme Court told them they can’t, back in the Bush era.

          The first of three Oregon laws, Measure 91, you broke twice, the first time in passing a 5% sales tax on marijuana in clear violation of  M 91’s ban on local pot taxes and long before the legislature allowed you only 3% sales tax in House Bill 3400, revenue which you plan to spurn by banning sales in the city.

You broke Measure 91 again when you banned all outdoor growing of marijuana without authority from the state.  You need state permission because our legislature had already banned local governments and voters from inhibiting or preventing the production, sales and use of agricultural items in Senate Bill 863 in 2013.   Carl Wilson wrote you an email about that before you began to pass it.  Some of you had read it.

SB 863 applies to marijuana and other crops, except where the legislature allows local regulation and/or taxes.  HB 3400 allows reasonable restrictions on time, place and manner of growing commercial and medical marijuana, separately amending licensing rules in Measure 91 and the Oregon Medical Marijuana Act.  Forcing everyone to grow indoors under the code’s definition of “indoors” is not reasonable, so you broke HB 3400, Measure 91, and the Oregon Medical Marijuana Act.

But we don’t need a license for four homegrown plants, so SB 863 protects our right to be free of local restrictions on homegrown marijuana as long as we stay within the state’s rules.

You have managed to break 4 Oregon laws with your code.  You will be hearing from my attorney.

December 2nd update: I had to fire my first attorney and have retained new counsel, Andrew Deweese of Portland.  I am raising funds to pay him at www.GoFundMe.com/HomegrownDefense.  A trial date is set for June; hearing on the City’s motion for summary judgment is set for February 8^th.

                   

September 2nd speech and protest issue, published at GardenGrantsPass.blogspot.com, revised 12/12/15

Sign the petition at https://t.co/l7oJgGKeGc

Read the ordinance at http://gardengrantspass.blogspot.com/2015/09/chapter-572-homegrown-and-medical.html

Support the lawsuit at www.GoFundMe.com/HomegrownDefense 

Rycke Brown, Natural Gardener          541-955-9040        rycke@gardener.com

Legislate in haste, repent at leisure

Honorable Mayor and Council,

            “Marry in haste, repent at leisure.”  The same could be said for legislating. 

It pays to give people time to think about a proposal, and inform you about its consequences.  It pays for you to take time to think on what they said and search out more information.  That’s why our county charter requires two readings of an ordinance, two weeks apart, with public comment at each, before the Board of County Commissioners votes on it.

            July 15^th, you passed an illegal ordinance banning marijuana outdoors with no public comment allowed, because you had voted for it two weeks before, after only one reading when you were tired and irritated with the people telling you not to do it.  On the 15^th, I wanted to tell you that Representative Carl Wilson had told you by email that it was illegal before the first reading and point out exactly why it was illegal, but I was not allowed to; your ears were stopped by your previous vote.  I will tell you at your next meeting; I’ll be talking about this as long as it takes to fix it.

            Sometime before I started attending City Council meetings, some Council lost the point of having a second reading of an ordinance.  They started your present routine of: vote to read; vote on the ordinance; immediately vote to read it again; and vote again if the vote for the second reading is unanimous, which it usually is.  Otherwise, the 2nd reading is held off until the next meeting.   And you are supposed to talk to no one about it in the meantime.  Really?

            What is the point of this ritual?  It’s just a rigmarole, which makes no sense and ticks people off.  It is an avoidance of information from the public, a rush to judgment, thinly disguised as procedure.  I’ve never seen the Board of County Commissioners reconsider an ordinance.  It is common with the City Council.

            Please reconsider your outdoor pot ban, which, your Recorder read in the second reading, includes possession.  I do not want to sue you over it.  I do want you to pass a city sales tax.  This ordinance and that tax campaign are not compatible. 

You can’t offend the poor, pot smokers, and shop owners and expect to keep your seats, much less pass a sales tax.  You can, however, reconsider and repent your illegal ordinance, and adopt the County’s procedure for passing ordinances.  A little repentance and reform can soothe a lot of hurt feelings.

P.S. Their unknowing prohibition of outdoor possession got an immediate response from one councilor.  She explained that it is too late to reconsider the ordinance; it cannot now be changed or repealed for 6 months.  I said that the Manager must stay enforcement of it; publicize it, so we need not fear to call the cops; and the Council must repeal it in 6 months.  I repeated this in an email to the Council, Mayor, and Staff, and gave them two weeks to do it or I will retain an attorney and sue.

                   

August 5^th speech and protest issue, published in GardenGrantsPass.blogspot.com

Follow @AnRycke on Twitter; GP Gardener on Facebook; check out GPgardener.com for blogs

Rycke Brown, Natural Gardener          541-955-9040        rycke@gardener.com

The ordinance was amended September 16, 2016, to remove any references to possession.  The rest of it is still quite illegal.

Whose law should we obey?

Honorable Councilors, Mayor and Manager:

Three City Councilors were on the KAJO talk show on July 7^{th .}  When they were confronted with a state law which would nullify a proposed ordinance, one asked whose law we should obey, state or federal?

          The state is the basic level of government, from which both federal government and local governments are derived.  When the colonies declared independence, they declared themselves “free and independent states.”  The Articles of Confederation bound them too loosely for some years, and then the Constitution was written to give the federal government specific, listed powers, with other powers reserved to the states and the people.  Its powers allow it to deal with foreign governments by treaty or war; regulate the military; coin money; regulate interstate commerce; judge disputes between the states; to levy particular taxes to do these and other listed powers; and by the 14^th amendment, to secure the rights of the people in the states.  Much of federal law is not authorized by the Constitution; it is tolerated by the states.

          The states control elections; we register to vote as citizens of our state of residence.  States license driving, marriage and many professions, including doctors.   The vast majority of the laws that we are subject to are state laws. 

          States formed the federal government; they also charter cities and counties.  That which is licensed or chartered by a government can be revoked thereby.  The feds cannot revoke your charter; the state can, in theory.

          The federal government has backed off enforcing its laws where they are contradicted by state law.  The Supreme Court stopped John Ashcroft from going after legal medical marijuana growers and sellers; the feds have since stopped prosecuting people following state marijuana law. 

          Where there is a conflict between state and federal law, therefore, you should obey the one with constitutional authority; they have separate realms of authority. 

          Where there is a conflict between city and state law, you should obey the state, the source of your authority to be a city, unless the state law conflicts with the state or federal constitution.  Then you should defend the rights of all your residents.      

July 2015 protest issue.

Follow @AnRycke on Twitter; GP Gardener on Facebook; check out GPgardener.com for blogs

Rycke Brown, Natural Gardener          541-955-9040        rycke@gardener.com

GP: Let us grow legally and safely

Speech to the Grants Pass City Council, 7-1-15

Honorable Mayor, Council, and Manager:

          Today, I planted my first legal crop of marijuana.  It means a lot to me to be able to grow it legally.  Tomorrow it could be illegal.  Please don’t make me and many others continue to grow it illegally by demanding that we grow it in our houses.  We don’t have the money for lights or room in our houses.  We have been growing it outdoors or in greenhouses for years now with no problem but thieves.

          Police in Portland are telling people to grow discretely, and not let anyone know, because of thieves.  But in my case, secrecy is futile; I am a well-known pot activist and gardener.  People will assume that I am growing it.

          Pot thievery became more obvious after medical marijuana was passed, but it was happening all along.  Thieves were fairly safe from arrest, though not from retaliation, because pot was illegal.  Pot growers and smokers rarely reported thieves, being punished for growing or possessing it if they did.  That changed with thefts of medical pot, as growers and patients claimed protection of the law when they were targeted by thieves.

          Growing pot under Measure 91, people who are stolen from are quite likely to call the cops.  It won’t be so safe to steal.  But if you pass this ordinance, many of us will be growing illegally and will be subject to fines and confiscation if we report thefts.

We will still be in danger from police, and will be in more danger from thieves.  Those who obey your ordinance will be subject to home invasion robberies, not just backyard sneaks.  People could get killed.

Josephine County voters voted down Measure 91 by only 2 votes: 17,313 to 17,311.  If I had voted for it, it would have been a tie.  It appears that half of the county, and probably half the city, favor home pot growing.

You want to pass a city public safety sales tax in November.  But if you pass this ordinance, you will push away a large minority of voters, the silent majority of those that voted down the county levy.  People who can’t safely call the cops generally don’t vote to fund the cops.  Many more don’t vote at all, they are so alienated.  Please kill this ordinance and allow us to grow cannabis legally, safely, and cheaply, to defeat the black market, the real enemy of law and order.  We might then trust you enough to vote for your tax.

         

July 2015 issue, online at GardenGrantsPass.blogspot.com and at the Mail Center, 305 NE 6^th

Follow @AnRycke on Twitter; GP Gardener on Facebook; check out GPgardener.com for blogs

Rycke Brown, Natural Gardener          541-955-9040        rycke@gardener.com

Stop Charging Us for Watering

Speech to the Grants Pass City Council, 8-7-13

Honorable Mayor, Council, and Manager:

We don’t have to breathe smoke until winter.  I’m breathing in my yard a lot easier than downtown, because I use misters and sprinklers to keep the smoke down.  And I’m not even watering more than necessary to keep my yard alive and healthy.  I pay about $80 extra a month to do it.  We shouldn’t have to pay through the nose to maintain our yards.

Watering one’s property with sprinklers and misters benefits oneself and neighbors by cleaning and humidifying the air.  If enough people do it, we can even make rain.  An article in Science News tells us that farmers irrigating in California cause more rain in the Four Corners area and put more water in the Colorado River to water farms in the desert.

          This should not be surprising.  It’s just an illustration on a large scale of the water cycle we were taught as children.  It works on the local scale as well.  In our bowl of a valley, when we have a high pressure inversion, water can evaporate and cause thunderstorms in our valley, if we throw enough water in the air.  When we are not in inversion, it can blow upstream and fill the Rogue and Klamath Rivers with rain.

          We used to make rain, in the ‘80s, by watering our yards and farms.  We had thunderstorms nearly every week in ’85 and ’86 when I lived here.  A lot of creeks were running year-round then that are seasonal now.  What changed?  The way we charge for water.

          The provision of water is properly a service, like sewer, not the sale of a commodity, like electricity.  The water we get from the river is essentially free; the service is cleaning and delivering it, and like sewer, is mostly overhead in plant and employees.

          Pricing it as a commodity has put us into a spiral of rising rates and dropping usage.  The city admitted this a few years back when asking for a rate increase.  The last time you raised rates, you raised the basic rate, which at least did not make matters worse.

          A few years ago, the city started charging for sewer based on winter water use rather than a flat rate per household.  The same could be done for water, rather than charging us extra for watering our yards.

          Please make this an emergency ordinance.  Let us put enough water in the air now to make rain that will fill our seasonal creeks again and put these fires out.