The face of a community is important. For many that is one of the reasons they oppose LNG corporations putting even one terminal on the lower part of the river, it ruins the face of the community, in their mind.
For many the Riverwalk in Astoria is the face of the community, showing an eclectic community, loving the outdoors with an artistic bent. There are those who still cling to the days of yore looking wistfully to the mooring basins, in their minds eye each berth full of fishing vessels or looking out to the river where rafts of logs from old timber stands are gently pushed to market by tugs.
With a shudder many of us turn our faces from a spreading mall, the word making our shoulders shrug and noses lift. What is the face of Seaside? Cannon Beach? All of it is Clatsop County and whatever face you don’t want certainly you do want it to have one, or even two or three. So, have you googled our county lately? If a business has, they won’t be pleasantly surprised.
We now have a new face of being unprepared for disaster. You felt proud of our abilities during the storm? Not the Daily A! Suddenly, after 200 years of sustaining all sorts of disasters and catastrophes, it has dawned on our daily paper and one of our commissioners that our disaster mitigation plan isn’t finished yet. Funny, it wasn’t finished after last year’s storm, (or the year before that or that or that) but our lone commissioner that’s publicly bitching out the county manager while posing for the editor of the Daily A, didn’t notice the lack of the mitigation plan then. No one had. Why? Because, it really doesn’t matter, all that much, in the grand scheme of things.
Will a project or two have to wait to get funding? Possibly, but so will half a dozen others for lack of something else. It’s not that big of a deal, because it was already being taken care of and no one thought it was a big deal until the Daily A manufactured the story. What is a big deal is when the area’s only daily newspaper writes it up as a big news story and puts it out on the Associated Press as a big news story and suddenly, that is what Clatsop County is known for. How many businesses will want to move to the area if they think they will be hampered with costly building delays while waiting for mitigation plans to be put into place? Thank-you, Daily Astorian, for manufacturing the news and giving our area its new face. It wouldn’t be so bad if the news was real and it was an actual problem to be contemplated and resolved, but the fact that it’s being made up is irksome.
This is the same paper bemoaning the county commissioners approving zone changes for LNG corporations to move in. It seems that this newspaper’s editor doesn’t want any growth, any new businesses or industry whatsoever, and it will do its best to make sure growth doesn’t happen whether it means maligning individuals or a county as a whole.
What is ironic is not so long ago the Daily Astorian’s editor complained, "Deceit is in the saddle. The Wall Street Journal too frequently carries business news that befits a supermarket tabloid. Our president is using deceit for the third time in his career to smear an election opponent. We stand on the edge of a very slippery precipice.” One wonders how he looks in the mirror when he shaves in the morning.
1 comment:
It is daunting when you look at what is happening here. Every step towards growth is being criticized except tourist trade which benefits a select few. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. We are becoming a retirement community. A playground for the upper middle class to come here to live out their golden years on our backs, our tax dollars, without any regard to our future and our children's future. We will be their busboys, wait staff, chauffeurs, maids, gardeners, handmen, hairdressers, ditch diggers and garbage men.
I, for one, don't want one industry, the tourist industry, to run our community. I want diversity. I don't want one group of people, outsiders, moving in getting themselves in their old dotage appointed to our boards and controlling our future. I want people who have lived their lives here and have families living their lives here making the major decisions. The retirement community can have a voice, but it shouldn't be THE voice.
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