Where to start? How about the Bus?
Former Executive Director Cindy Howe and her lawyer have reached a settlement with SETD and part of it was acceptance of her formal resignation according to a news release from Dan Schwanz who is the temporary Executive Director. Cindy offered her resignation three months ago but the Board refused to accept it. Not because they were trying to talk her out of it but over the settlement terms of her very well written contract. Insiders tell me she didn't get everything she wanted but at least she can put "resigned" on her resume instead of "fired". The rest of the details are officially under wraps. Meanwhile we just got the following news release:
Sunset Empire Transportation District recently announced employee layoff and route service cuts in response to their recent discovery of a severe cash flow problem and mounting debt service. The Transit District with assistance from the Oregon Department of Transportation and Special Districts Association of Oregon developed a financial recovery plan that will allow Sunset Empire Transportation District to eventually restore some of the service cuts implemented in the restructure plan. The Sunset Empire Transportation District Board of Directors invited public input to assist in the restructure plan, route design and service hours. Three new route proposals and other service changes were presented at the regularly scheduled SETD Board of Directors meeting today. Due to the volume of public input the SETD Board elected to postpone making a decision The SETD Board of Directors will hold a Special Meeting at 9 AM on Monday March 28th at the Transit Center in Astoria to make their final decision on the proposed route changes.
The public meeting held on Thursday was packed with people truly scared for their jobs, their homes, their health...and these are riders, although I'm sure it's safe to say that the 36 SETD employees who are looking at lay-offs come the end of the month are thinking about the same things. There were a couple of big sticking points for riders. First, all weekend service will stop. That's a huge problem for riders who depend on that bus to get to and from work. These are the folks that don't have an alternative and the board seems to take no responsibility for seeking a solution. The other point is that the system will be down to six buses total.
The math , such as it is, works out that it costs $45 to $47 per hour to run those buses. If buses are half empty the district loses money every hour. By having fewer buses and either less coverage or less travel time the two guys trying to save SETD from imploding entirely think they have a better shot at filling more seats more consistently thereby reaching the hourly operational cost.
Some people asked about raising money by selling the buses that would otherwise just sit unused. The board didn't respond so I will. The problem is that ODOT holds the title to many of those buses and the buses that are owned by the district are already leveraged. The Board does plan to sell them but only to get out from under trying to maintain them in a mothballed state. They don't expect to make big bucks by reducing the fleet.
There is a misconception about seeking grant funding. There is some of that going on but those grants that Cindy Howe was going for that required matching funds have been thrown out. SETD doesn't have the matching money and it's not likely they would go looking for it. Howe never had the chance to explain how she was going to make that work. The fact is the Board was having difficulty communicating with their Executive Director
Cutting routes has another effect. The State DHS has concerns because so many of their clients absolutely depend on the bus. The State agency on Senior and Disability Services just moved into their new facility in the Warrenton business park and many of their clients depend on the bus service to make appointments there. Community Action Team (CAT) just placed some families in homes in the Warrenton area to get them off the street. The state granted funds to get that done but that grant depended on regular public transportation being available. CAT had no idea that SETD was crashing as they were arranging the grant.
Another misconception is that "somebody" took the money that would have kept the buses running. There is no question that funds were mishandled in terms of the way the budgeting was handled but it's also pretty clear that this situation, from all indications so far, didn't come about as the result of someone stealing from the district. It happened because the District tried to do more than it is truly capable of handling. It tried to be a Tri-Met when all it could really be is much smaller. Running multiple buses on multiple routes in the cities with half full, sometimes nearly empty buses, providing long distance connections between cities more frequently while making many stops along the way. Board Chair Ron Bline put it this way: 'We just had too much out there and now we have to pull back".
Pull back they will and the fallout will be significant.
Meanwhile...Over at the County.........
As KAST reported this week, the Clatsop County Commission threw out the members of the County Planning Commission. The entire planning commission.I received the following email from one of those volunteers:
" The issue at hand is being mischaracterized as one that claims that Debra Birkby and I have a dispute and that the two of us are engaged in a conflict.
This is not the case.
The issue at hand consists of local citizenry that must interact with Debra, who has functioned in a few public capacities.
During her limited tenures, she has demonstrated a track record that selectively disregards the rule of law and those things that make up good governance for our community.
This is well documented in Arch Cape public record.
Birkby's disrespect for both the rule of law and good governance, as demonstrated in Arch Cape, has now departed South County and has taken up residency on the body of the Clatsop County Board of Commissioners .
My sole issue with Birkby, is to hold her accountable for her campaign promises of restoring transparency and trust in our local government as well as her promise to assist small business in job growth."
Stephen Malkowski / Planning Commissioner
I want to thank Steve for his communication. The reasons for releasing all the Planning Commissioners was not stated clearly by the County Commissioners in public session other than Commissioner Birkby's odd comment that the action marks a "Rite of Passage" for the Commission. This term is usually reserved to describe a significant event that marks a person's progress from one status to another. Marriage is one example. I suppose this would be a divorce. It is common in the business world that when a new CEO takes the helm of a company the executives who worked for the former CEO are asked to resign if their philosophy of operation differs from that of the new boss. Birkby cited the example of a new President bringing along his own adviser's to fill cabinet posts. This is expected. What the County Commissioners did was not.
The action lines up perfectly with Birkby's personal grudges and shows that Chairman Rohne thinks it's quite proper and in fact Democratic to put anything on the agenda that the other commissioners desire without
thinking of consequences. There was nothing wrong with adding this item to the agenda for discussion but to make it an action item that was handled in a matter of minutes doesn't make any sense.
Callers to KAST Coastwatch said it was certainly insulting to those volunteer Planning Commissioners and an insult to anyone who volunteers their time to the County as a matter of civic duty.
Callers also found it troubling that Commissioner Scott Lee made it a point to say to the audience that "There is no conspiracy here" "Methinks thou dost protest too much" would have been my response. Then Commissioner Huhtala really played it up by saying he just wanted to listen to the discussion but he certainly didn't like one of the staff options that would have had him tell the Planning Commissioners from his district that their service would be ending prematurely. He insisted the commissioners formally take it off the table. They did.
The discussion was rather limited. If indeed Commissioner Huhtala was trying to make a decision based on what was said at the meeting I can only conclude he must have psychic powers to have come to the conclusion that dumping the entire Planning Commission was the best possible option. There was no reasonable argument presented. Just the fact that the Planning Commission serves at the pleasure of the County Commissioners doesn't cut it. The disposed of Planning Commissioners may reapply for consideration if they choose. Really? Do you think any of them will? Why would they after a slap in the face like this?
Let's move on, shall we?
Oregon Pipeline has gone to the State Supreme Court with claims that Circuit Court Judge Cindee Matyas acted improperly when she vacated an Alternative Writ Of Mandamus sought by Oregon Pipeline Company against Clatsop County. The Writ was designed to force the County to do one of two things. They could immediately approve the consolidated land use application for the construction of he natural gas pipeline OP needs to build to service it's proposed OLNG terminal in Warrenton, or set a show cause hearing with the court to offer substantial evidence in support of delaying the decision to approve it. Neither of those things happened. Instead Judge Matyas wrote a letter to the parties involved saying that she is satisfied that the process in reconsidering the application, while slow, is still proceeding and she felt it would be inappropriate for the court to take over the process at this time.
Oregon Pipeline argues that the statutes involving the Alternative Writ of Mandamus do not allow the court discretionary powers to simpily cancel the hearing and vacate the Writ. Oregon Pipline says the county missed the statutory deadlines even after Oregon Pipeline agreed to several extensions and that the Writ is intended as a legal remedy for applicants when governments drag their feet on these sorts of decisions.
Oregon Pipeline would like the Oregon Supreme Court to direct Judge Matyas to reinstate the Writ and to make that decision before the county makes it's inevitable decision to deny the permit. OP's lawyers say failure to do so will get very expensive, very fast. They use nicer language but that's pretty much the gist of it.
It seems the County was successful in it's argument with the local court that they had in fact approved the application in question by the agreed deadline and they had also acted legally in later withdrawing the application from LUBA for reconsideration and therefore reset the deadline.
We can only hope that the Supremes see through this shell game.
Well of course there's more to blog about and we'll get to other matters later. Until then feel free to hit the comment link and chat amongst yourselves. Comment moderation is sometimes a bit slow but I ask for your patience.
I sincerely think that the new gang of three (or four), are meeting outside of the public eye; otherwise, how could they possibly be coming to some of the conclusions and decisions that they have, with so little discussion? This reminds me of the show "Survivor" and the two-person alliances that are connected to another two-person alliance through a common member. The whole thing stinks, and I hope to be seeing some recall petitions floating around soon. These four people (yes, Rohne included) are going to ruin Clatsop County!
ReplyDeleteThe fallacy - The President Cabinet comment. Isn't it important to have diversity on the planning commission? Why don't they just appoint the local democrat party to the planning commission and be done with it. This reeks of nothing more than the board trying to stack the deck to carry out their bidding.
ReplyDeleteThis is wrong on so many levels.
Any enterprise initiated on shaky grounds will end up imploding. That’s Sunset Empire Transit District in a nutshell. In a way, the relatively short-term rise and fall of the district (I realize it’s not dead yet) is quite similar to what is playing out with state and federal governments nationwide. Essentially, it’s people looking to government to provide services that make no economic sense, but were “justified” by all measure of emotions. Well, emotional income doesn’t pay the bills, and Sunset, most states and certainly the federal government have proven this true.
ReplyDeleteSunset was just a small part of the tail of the big dog of government largesse. People like David Wu, Ron Wyden, Betsy Johnson, Debbie Boone and all the rest of those types including quite a few Oregon Republicans over the years--all of them-- led the way to a culture of blindly spending public money without the discipline of financial planning or economic analysis. That would have spoiled the fun of ribbon cutting, and smiling politicians in newspapers. All it took to convince them to push for programs like Sunset were whimpers from constituents that other areas were getting entitlements like these, why can’t we? And so the big-dog politicians, noting there were still checks in the checkbook, all became like the proverbial dumb blonde, thinking that real money is created by just the stroke of a pen.
I believe you’re correct in suggesting that Sunset tried to do here what Tri-Met has done in the Portland area--grow a local government operation with big-dog, available funds, organize a transportation district complete with taxing authority, set up a bureaucracy to satisfy the grant auditors, and presto! We’ve got mail! And the paper thinks we’re wonderful too, so we must be! Everybody was happy, and smiling, especially the employees who are paid nice wages, given nice benefits, and are automatically part of a wonderful pension program. What could be wrong with this scenario?
What’s wrong with it is there is no free lunch, never was, never will be. A service that cannot stand on its own cannot be allowed to expand on its own. That’s what happened to both Tri-Met and Sunset. Their model, built by shallow underwriting to begin with, once organized, becomes a shell game of hiding problems, pretending success, and patching financial shortfalls with promises rather than real numbers. When the numbers don’t add up, you get surprises like the ones Sunset is now experiencing. With Tri-Met you get a nuclear explosion of unfunded liabilities, overly generous salaries, and deficits as far as the eye can see. And who gets the bill for all of this waste? The taxpayers, most of whom have never ridden on one of the empty buses.
But our buses run on bio-diesel! That concept is a perfect example of successful obfuscation by a public entity: tout the green-ness of using a fuel that costs way more than market (remember, subsidies are a cost too) but hide the ridership numbers by not only tinting bus windows, but by pretending the district is solvent when it’s clearly not. Districts should be required to advertise their financial losses and condition with signs right on the buses indicating just how much each route costs taxpayers. You can be certain that additional routes to nowhere might be more restricted if this were the rule.
As a county, state and nation, will have to learn to save, pay for what we absolutely need and no more, and re-learn the lessons of our ancestors who knew snake oil when they saw it. They were known to “look a gift horse in the mouth” because they knew gifts were potential liabilities. We have forgotten this healthy skepticism, and we better re-learn it quickly because tough times are here right now.
because tough times are here right now.
Coud you remind us all again how much money NNB Radio stations took in in advertising dollars from the various natural gas entities that were trying to convince us to allow these projects to happen?
ReplyDeleteCould that possibly be related to why you would still be trying to advocate for these companies?
The simple bottom line for SETR (SUNSET EMPIRE TRANSPORTATION DISTRICT) is this better not be the end of this investigation. Someone in this bus operation is responsible for allowing this mess to reach this pinnacle. Either the (EX) Executive director or the Boards are responsible and a full disclosure must be made. I do not appreciate the details being kept under wraps. If a disclosure is not made its time to remove the funding from the taxpayers and shut the operation down.
ReplyDeleteWhat would you think if Dirk Rohne thought he has enough votes to run for Wu's seat???
ReplyDeleteHe thinks he has Clatsop County in his pocket so he wants to take the next step.
I say NOT!!
It is unfortunate that three of the five county commissioners have chosen to take the step of firing the entire planning commission. From the reporting, it appears there was little true discussion prior to the taking of the vote. Where is the transparency in that? Why were they not willing to thoroughly explain the reasoning behind their action? It appears they came to the meeting with the decision already made---something the last commission was repeatedly accused of doing by LNG opponents. This is sad to see.
ReplyDeleteI hope that in the future they take the time to have true discussion and adequate notice for public input before making such an important precedent setting decision.
One thing to remember is that the planning commission is an advisory committee. The county commissioners have always had the right and authority to reject their recommendations. The county commissioners alone hold the final vote. They should not be afraid to go against any recommendation that they do not feel they can support or justify.
Unfortunately, firing the entire planning commission gives the appearance of an inability to tolerate an opinion different than their own.
Allowing the planning commission members to finish their appointed terms would have been the right thing to do. Agree or disagree, we need to have public dialouge and discussion for freedom and democracy to work.
Cindy Howe should have received a pair of handcuffs, rather than a taxpayer funded resignation reward, for destroying SETD. It does not take a MBA like myself to see Enron style accounting. Not providing monthly financials should have set off alarms. And don't blame the accounting system -she obviously had something to hide.
ReplyDeleteAnd this so called Board of Directors. They have a fiduciary resposibilty to look out for the interests of the tax payers. Cindy Howe has lame excuses for not providing financials, and way to much authority over financial matters, and they don't ask any questions? Now they want to run for re-election. Are you joking? That takes some nerve. If they have any self respect they would all appologize to the tax payers and resign - NOW!!!!!!!!
Enough is enough. The local media needs to get to the bottem of this mess. We deserve answers. Why and how much of a severance package did she receive? The Board members need to go on record and explain their actions. Otherwise it's just another example of us putting up with failed leadership. We have it at the federal, state and local level and are suffering for it. The time has come for these people to start answering for their actions.