The New Face of Clatsop County

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.

Conflicts of Interest

In Clatsop County a recurring topic of debate is conflict of interest. Conflict of interest between a public official and his/her “regular” job. Conflict of interest between two spouses when one is a judge and another is the city attorney. Conflict of interest between government employees “using” office time for private business.

Over and over again we have public officials who have to make a choice. Will the outcome of the decision before me give me an undue advantage? We want it to influence their lives. We want it to impact them just as much as it impacts us, but not more and not less. If it is good we don’t want them to have it better than us. If it is bad, we don’t want them to have it less.

How is it that these people, who we elected a mere matter of a few years, or even months, ago suddenly change into people who must be watched with suspicion? Perhaps it is the nature of the beast. We are raised with these ideas of ignobility. Thoughts like “the nature of the beast” and “original sin” are common threads most of us are familiar with. Absolute power corrupts absolutely and the root of all evil is the love of money. Success is looked at with a degree of suspicion, especially when it is in someone who is perceived as “flaunting” it or “suddenly” coming upon it. Carpet baggers are the worst of all people especially carpet baggers with money that aren’t sharing it by opening a series of small businesses that fail, one after another.

Perceptions are very important. In small communities where at the age of 50 you are still be referred to by a “y” at the end of your name or as a junior, one error in judgment can haunt you for decades, depending on who you are. Ask Julie Leonhardt.

Conflict of interest is about perceptions. Each year what is perceived as wrong and to what degree changes drastically. Recently the Daily Astorian reported a drug bust in which an “arsenal” of guns and ammunition was found in a home along with drugs and paraphernalia. The horror of Latino nationals being involved along with “Mexican Mafia” was a topic of conversation and news for the local rag for days.

Not even 20 years ago one of our own from the upper crust was caught after an intense six month long DEA investigation. When the agents burst through the door the man greeted them with a sub-machine gun in his hands. He had over twenty guns in his private “arsenal” along with all of the appropriate ammo. He also had cocaine, heroin, marijuana, and an assortment of prescription drugs bagged and ready for sale. The man was arrested, the DEA agents packed up and moved on to another county. Six months later the man opened a logging business. His first client? The then district attorney. After the next election Julie Leonhardt was the new DA. Conflicts of interest … never ending.