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

I should have read Chapter 5.72 sooner

I called out Dan DeYoung in the October 7^th Council meeting for not reading or understanding the ordinance that he passed and that I am suing the City about.  I did so because he made remarks in the previous meeting that showed that he had not read the definition of “indoors” in the “Homegrown and Medical Marijuana” ordinance, which does not include any building with windows, like our houses.

But I should have apologized for not reading the ordinance myself before it was passed.  We had a good month to read it before the first reading of the ordinance, having been warned by the Courier.  I went by what was written in the Courier and what was said in Council meetings.  Apparently, so did everyone else who came to object.  We would have commented so much more knowledgeably and effectively if we had read the ordinance.

We weren’t even listening when the City Recorder read the ordinance at the July 15th meeting, when it was passed unanimously by the Council.  Neither was the Council, apparently.  Dale Matthews was, and played a section of tape on KMED, 1440 AM, that included “possession” in the activities allowed only “indoors.”  I verified this from the City website video, and told the Council at the next meeting.  They had the City Attorney amend it to remove “possession” from the ordinance and passed their final product on September 16^th.

The articles in the Courier and the discussion in the Council were focused on the odor of growing pot around harvest time.  The ordinance treats it only as a sign of cultivation, which might attract thieves, the other reason that was given in the Courier and by city staff for the ordinance, but which was hardly touched upon by the Council. 

It seems as though nobody actually read this ordinance, including our City Attorney, who appears to have copied and pasted it from Central Point’s Chapter 8.45, changing only the name of the city.  Why else would he have had to remove numerous mentions of possession well after our Council passed it? 

But I knew better, from long experience, than to neglect to read a law that I have a problem with.  I did it 10 years ago with probation law, and beat probation.  I did it with Measure 91 and was able to tell Carl Wilson exactly what was wrong with it when he asked.  I am sorry that I didn’t do it with this ordinance until long after it was passed.

October 17, 2015 protest leaflet.  Published on GardenGrantsPass.blogspot.com.  Sign the petition at https://www.change.org/p/grants-pass-city-manager-aaron-cubic-leave-pot-growers-alone-target-litter-and-weeds

Read Chapter 5.72 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