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Stopping the CRC Now – A Rally for Businesses and Citizens
Why you should care . . .
Will your business survive the massive CRC disruptions to downtown Vancouver, Hayden Island, and beyond?
Devastating $5 to 10 Billion debt bomb on region
$2000/year in first year tolls for commuters will rise steadily for decades
In today’s modern society, filled with time-consuming activity and daily distractions we all deserve a time out simply to enjoy ourselves, be entertained, escape from daily woes that face us all and if we can do that while helping someone in need, all that much better.
We live in increasingly partisan times. It seems more and more we are divided as we bicker among ourselves on issues of the day. Be it taxes, civil rights, infrastructure projects or any number of issues facing us, we remain divided and apparently unable to find a compatible middle ground.
But when it comes to supporting veterans, we are united. Even though our bickering extends into partisan rancor over sending them off into harm’s way, we remain united in appreciating their willingness to stand between us and our enemies, having learned decades ago that those that we send to war are not the designers of war and THEY deserve our support.
City Council meetings are notoriously boring with the occasional spat of sparks flying. Most are barely attended as simple matters merit little attention from citizens. But when an issue arises that does get the attention of citizens, many schedule their time to appear and speak their view on whatever the issue is before city council.
That is a right of citizens and city ordinance recognizes that in the procedures to implement ordinances and changes to ordinances, scheduling time for citizen input during hearings on the issue.
If that does not happen, citizens are being denied their right to speak before council and we run the risk of shutting citizen out, subjugating ourselves to 7 people elected to office.
In a press release today issued by State Senator Pam Roach, by the same title, we read:
For Immediate Release: For Interview Contact:
March 12, 2013 Sen. Pam Roach (360) 786-7660
Toll-dependent Columbia River Crossing halted by Roach inquiry
OLYMPIA… Despite the Supreme Court’s decision last month to throw out the Initiative 1185 requirement two-thirds vote for tax increases, it is now required that certain transportation fee and toll increases be approved by the Legislature. This includes the proposed Columbia River Crossing Project.
“This should be a big wake up call to proponents of the CRC project and similar projects throughout the state,” said Sen. Pam Roach, R-Auburn. “In response my inquiry to the attorney general’s office, I received a letter written by the Office of Financial Management on March 8 stating that the Transportation Commission no longer has the authority to impose tolls needed to fund the CRC due to provisions in I-1185.”
The Columbia River Crossing project to extend Portland, Oregon’s financially troubled light rail a short distance into Clark County has long been a source of contention to county citizens and residents of the City of Vancouver.
Several times now efforts to give those citizens a vote on the project have been thwarted as promises made during campaigns of fighting for a citizen vote and efforts put forth by the citizens themselves have been neglected, discarded and voices in opposition marginalized by elected officials.
The latest effort saw a citizen petition rejected with the claim of being 32 signatures short of the required number after an excessive time spent verifying those signatures by the County Auditor’s office. Then end result was the claim of several duplicate signatures from voters who inadvertently signed more than once rejecting both the duplicate and the original signature along with some rejected due to the petition page not being dated properly.
Pearson Air Field is the oldest operating airfield in the United States dating to a dirigible landing in 1905. While most other airfields have grown and expanded into major facilities, Pearson remains much like it once was, although a small community airfield now.
The site is where the first trans-polar flight ended when Soviet pilot Valery Chkalov sat his Tupolev ANT-25 instead of continuing on to San Francisco as originally planned June 20, 1937. The Russian crew was greeted by Gen. George C. Marshall, then commander of Vancouver Barracks. A monument to the landing remains today.
A cornerstone and historic attraction has been the remaining hangar converted to a museum housing restored aircraft, models, flying suits and displays related to the rich history the field holds with Vancouver, Washington when it was operated as an Army Air Corps Field.
Timothy D. Leavitt, better known as “the Liar” for his winning the Mayor’s office in 2009 by blatant lies and who has heard or seen things at City Council meetings others don’t seems to be at it again.
The February 4, 2013 Council Meeting was played up to be a “Clash of Titans” due to potential legal matters stemming from the city’s denial of a petition to place before voters a vote on light rail from Portland, Oregon that this blog covered at CRC Petitioners Put City on Notice. Due to previous restrictions by Mayor Tim ‘the Liar’ Leavitt on just when and what citizens may exercise free speech before the City Council, last evening wasn’t the night they were permitted to speak on that issue.
Undaunted, Debbie Peterson did mention the petition and requested the city “do the right thing” and allow a vote and avoid costly litigation for both sides. She was ignored with efforts by Tim Leavitt to stop her talking, but she finished her words anyway, well under the 3-mimute time limit citizens have to speak.
Citizens of Clark County Washington, primarily within the City of Vancouver are not going to just lie down any longer as efforts to force the promised vote on light rail from Portland, Oregon are thwarted at every turn by elected officials. They are fighting back.
As we all know by now, several elected officials have been making promises of a citizen vote on the CRC (Columbia River Crossing), more precisely the light rail prospect of the project. To date no vote has been held or scheduled and efforts by citizens to get a vote fall by the wayside in some fairly unseemly ways.
The latest being the petition effort that was first rejected with the claim that many signatures were from voters outside the city limits.
Not even a month into his term as our newest County Commissioner and already David Madore is acting on his campaign promises, standing up for Clark County citizens and bucking the light rail swindle from Portland into our community, just as we asked him to do when we elected him.
As can be expected, that is not setting well with the ruling class elites pushing light rail in order to gain access to our revenues to bail out their deeply indebted transit folly, now sitting at about $1.6 Billion and growing every day.
We elected David Madore over keeping Marc Boldt and together with fellow conservative Tom Mielke, have a fighting chance to see some accountability where the CRC swindle is concerned.
Knowing now that our County Commissioners will stand on the side of citizens over the special interests of the CRC swindle, we can expect volleys of attacks aimed at the County Commission and they have already started.
It is no secret that much of Clark County, Washington holds a very negative view of the Columbia River Crossing project (CRC). The more the layers of this scam are pulled back, the more we appear justified in our disdain for what more and more comes across as a massive swindle to suck revenue out of our own cash-strapped community and give it to Portland, Oregon to help with the massive debt, some $1.6 Billion and growing daily, associated with their bloated light rail line.
Even though Clark County citizens rejected extending their folly into our community in 1995, the push has continued to force Clark County to accept it, even to the point of gerrymandering a sub-district in 2005 in an effort to ‘fix’ the vote to approve a C-TRAN sales tax increase perceived to be a back door funding of light rail that was rejected county-wide in the November 2004 election.
UPDATE: Leavitt is not expected to be at the city council meeting this evening, due to being sick. Regardless, the rest of the council will be there and also need to hear your views.
If you are upset over being denied a clear vote on accepting Portland’s financially ailing light rail and the appearance of underhanded tricks to deny you a vote, as recently mentioned in the post The Petition That Refuses To Die, Mayor Tim ‘the liar’ Leavitt and Vancouver City Council needs to hear from you, now.
The city council next meets Monday January 14 at 6:30 PM at city hall and is a night for citizens comments. You don’t need a long eloquent speech to fill the 3-minute limit, just a quick, “I want a vote on light rail.” Quick, simple and easy.
Just fill out a yellow comment card with the same words. The more of you willing to say those words in front of city council, the more they see we are serious and getting fed up being denied a promised vote while be forced to pay for a project most of us do not want. But we need a show of force in numbers of people telling them that we demand a vote. We were promised a vote and haven’t been given one.
Once again, efforts to let voters voice their opinion in support of or opposition to forcing Clark County to accept Portland, Oregon’s financially troubled light rail seems to have fallen by the wayside as the Downtown light rail Mafia, better known as elected and appointed officials determined to force citizens to accept the boondoggle against their will have ruled yet another citizen petition calling for a vote as “invalid.”
And it cannot be ignored just how fishy this latest effort is.
Ever since Portland, Oregon decided to build a light rail system throughout their city, efforts have been underway to extend it across the Columbia River into Washington State in Clark County. That voters defeated the effort in 1995 by 2 to 1 margin did not matter as our vote was apparently immediately thrown into the trash can as rulers in both Portland and Vancouver, Washington have continued to plot, scheme and dream of ways to circumvent state law to bypass voters every chance they got.
It never ceases to amaze me how Vancouver City Council Members can be so selective in how they choose to represent the city and voters within the city, picking and choosing when they will support the voters’ choices or just ignore us.
We all know by now how Mayor ‘Teflon’ Tim ‘The Liar’ Leavitt lied his way into office by strongly opposing tolls on the proposed new Interstate Bridge, only to quickly come out of the closet once winning in 2009 to advocate tolls.
We have seen Jeanne Harris melt down on citizens speaking before council in opposition to dragging Portland’s financially failing light rail into our community.
Teflon, the coating we have known for many years now in cookware and renowned for its non-stick capability. Whatever is being cooked just slides off easy as can be leaving little if any trace behind.
In politics the term is also widely known and has been used to describe several politicians of all parties that scandals just slide off of, not sticking, not being held accountable. President Reagan, Tony Blair, B.J. Clinton, Vladimir Putin, Ma Ying-jeou and Angela Merkel for just a few of the more well-known examples.
We also cannot forget well known Crime Boss, John Gotti was referred to as the “Teflon Don” for his many scrapes with the law that he slid through until finally convicted of murder in 1992.
The term “Teflon” has been used numerous times to those “slippery” characters that seem to just do whatever they wish with total impunity, either from the law or scrutiny by the media or fellow public servants. But who would have ever thought that our small community, Vancouver, Washington would find itself being able to apply it to one of our own public officials, the mayor Tim Leavitt.
For being such a young country, America is steeped in tradition and most Americans despise giving them up. Americans enjoy their traditions and celebration and at one time, stood up for them against any who would seek to destroy any of those.
Can you recall the outrage across America when there was a Baseball Strike and no games? Have you listened as we are told that eating hot dogs are bad for us? Would you stand for a ban on Mom’s Apple Pie?
No, like other Americans, you would strongly oppose any such banning of a favorite pass time for most Americans.
But curiously, another long held tradition has been slowly chipped away at and even outright banned in some regions and Americans remains silent, obediently falling in line and doing as they are told. Celebrating our Independence from Britain with our own fireworks is dying before our very eyes as municipalities and busybodies who don’t like them convince people they are better off giving up the long held tradition and allowing their elected leaders to show them such displays, provided you can handle the crowds or even get into whatever venue they are set off at.
Our own community has a long proud tradition of fireworks and at one time was used both for Independence Day and New Years, joining World Leaders from before America was founded in celebrating important events with fireworks.
Contributed by Professor Robert Dean
It was the night before Christmas. Tim tossed back his nightcap, blew out the candle, and snuggled into his pillow for what he hoped would be his first good night’s sleep in years. Visions of sugar daddies danced in his head. You see, Tim had just announced his resignation as Mayor of Vancouver, Washington and accepted a job as Vice President of Light Rail Promotion at the engineering firm, Government Contracts R Us.
As the Vancouver City Council unanimously approved acceptance of a $2.3 Million SAFER Grant to reopen Fire Station 6, almost exactly one year ago, council member Jack Burkman was quoted, “We’ve wounded a neighborhood and now we need a Band-Aid” as he referred to the city as using a “broken business model.”
Fire Station 6 had been closed for much of 2011 due to budgeting problems in the city.
Other city council members applauded accepting the grant while reminding all of it gives the city a “temporary fix” and two years to work out a permanent solution.
Crews were hired and trained and the station was reopened on November 7, 2011 to a jubilant neighborhood, just in time for the November 8, 2011 elections where three Vancouver City Council members were up for reelection.
Our community remains very blessed in so many ways and one blessing we enjoy is taking care of and looking out for our Veterans, knowing the price they have paid for us. We have some of the strongest Veteran supporting communities in the United States and our citizens turn out in large numbers to support our Veterans, as seen every year on Memorial Day and the attendance at our Veterans Day Parade at Vancouver Barracks.
But Veterans are human too and occasionally, a small few may stray and run afoul of the legal system. As was outlined in a previous post, that is where our Veterans Court comes in, diverting minor infractions that might otherwise land someone in jail to Veterans support groups in an effort to help a struggling Veteran instead of just throwing them to the wolves.
The previous post announced a “Cruise-in” to raise needed funding for the Veterans Court and was not only well attended, offered everybody who could make it a great day of fun and enjoyment.
Another event is now planned to benefit our Veterans Court that promises to be even more fun and enjoyment for all ages, especially if you are a “Certified Car Nut.”
Incumbent Clark County Commissioner Marc Boldt, who ran as a conservative and sold out his conservative base during his two terms on the commission, is eager to keep his seat and be reelected. No real surprise, the position not only pays pretty well for a former truck driver, it carries power and a degree of prestige, as public office does.
But that does not justify the lengths Marc Boldt is taking to retain his seat.
Politicians of all walks are noted for trying to present their best view for us and are expected to embellish somewhat. But Marc Boldt has elevated the art of dishonest deception presented to voters to a new level for the office he seeks to retain, with the willing assistance of the unofficial daily newsletter for the CRC & Democrat Party, the Columbian.
While they Columbian’s Stephanie Rice strains gnats to paint Boldt’s strongest opponent, successful businessman David Madore as less than sincere, she makes no effort whatsoever to vet Marc Boldt’s claims he makes or vet those who speak on his behalf.
Ask any conservative in Southwest Washington about the reliability of the newspaper of record in Clark County, the Columbian, when it comes to political coverage and you will likely be met with laughter. The blatant left lean of the paper has many of us dubbing it the unofficial daily newsletter of the Democrat Party.
Nowhere is this better seen than the papers continued promotion of the largest and most expensive boondoggle to ever hit Southwest Washington, the Columbia River Crossing being shoved down citizens’ throats to force acceptance of Portland, Oregon’s financially troubled light rail into our community.
In spite of 3 past votes in the county declining light rail, once directly in 1995 and twice indirectly in 2002 and 2004, it came out in a recent Oregon Supreme Court ruling that the sole reason for project is to force their light rail into our community along with the desire that Clark County residents pay for operations and maintenance of the new line all the way from Oregon’s Expo Center, across the state line and into our community.
In spite of costing so far nearly $150 Million in studies, several deficiencies continue to crop up that even though reported in the pages of the Columbian, are marginalized along with any who speak out questioning the validity of such an undertaking, skeptics often dubbed with such pejorative descriptions as “the Hounds of Whinerville” and “ankle biters” by Editorial Page Editor, John Laird.
