Quoth Og Mandino

"There are lessons to be learned from failures."

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Holy crap, I'm becoming an old crank!

I never thought it would happen to me, but it has. I am exchanging letters with a City Commissioner. Anyway, he started it!

In a nutshell, Oregon City is considering moving the library out of its crappy Hilltop digs and into the old Eastham Elementary School. One of our City Commissioners sent out a mass email asking for last minute citizen feedback before the decision on March 17:

One of my key personal political values is grass-roots democracy, which is why I work to open up the decision-making process to as many people as possible. This includes trying to get as much information out to the public as possible … If you are interested, please take a look at the information the City and the school district are providing, and let me know your opinion on this important matter.

To which I responded:

Thank you for this email. I wasn’t aware that Eastham was being looked at as a possible site for the library, but I think it’s a wonderful idea. As a local author, I appreciate the importance of a good library to Oregon City’s liveability. Moreover, I have always hated the Hilltop location, as it is cramped and stale and tacky.

He responded with an email in which he expressed concern about the price of the project. At which I slapped a Ron Paul bumper sticker on my ass:

The price strikes me as very cost-effective vs. building new. And if you believe (as many do) that we’re due for some hefty inflation courtesy of the banking bailout (which resulted in the Fed flooding the system with fresh-printed dollars, the value of which are currently propped up by only the rickety-est of supports), then it’s not beyond imagining that within five years time, that $47 million will seem like peanuts. Inflation works in the favor of debtors, not renters or leasers.

Which strikes me as a cogent argument, but then again it’s late, and I’m tired, and my tin-foil hat is chafing me a bit. I won’t bring up the whole thing about the Trilateral Commission unless he emails me back.

P.S. Since this is a post about Oregon City, should probably lodge my most recent complaint about West Linn. I got stranded in the parking lot at the West Linn Albertson’s today, and I needed a jump start. But could I find even one good Samaritan in that whole parking lot of Lexuses and Hummers and Volvos? MAIS NON! Ooh, you West Linneans! But in the end, it all turned out OK. The tow company lady who came out was super nice. So I made a friend. See, West Linn? You can’t keep me down.

Oh, and P.P.S … I just went and looked at that Website I linked to above, and saw that the total project cost is actually $4 million, not $47 million, which I incorrectly remembered from looking at the Website before. Only $4 million? Sheesh! The boys at AIG wouldn’t wipe their butts with $4 million! Or wait, actually they did. Repeatedly. Damn them. Make AIG pay for my library!

March 15th, 2010 | Category: Community, Oregon City, West Linn
  • http://www.maheshrajmohan.com/ Mahesh Raj Mohan

    I think it's a good idea, too (though I am less Paulian than you … oy vey, bad pun alert …) So well said! Power to M.K.!

  • http://djonn.livejournal.com/ John C. Bunnell

    If I read the materials correctly, it's more like $5.5 to $6 million — $4 million to buy the building, $1.5 to $2 million for the remodel, not counting the cost of interim space.

    That said, I agree that this sounds like an extraordinarily good deal. I am a longtime library patron, have cards for all three county systems in the Portland area (yay, reciprocal borrowing agreements!), and have gradually been wandering into most of the transit-accessible libraries over the last year or so. That Hilltop space is indeed cramped and stale and tacky, and given the combination of resources and opportunity, I don't see how any rational fiscal planner could turn the Eastham proposal down.

  • http://www.demimonde.com M.K. Hobson

    Yes, I caught my order of magnitude mistake after posting. To me, even six million seems comparatively cheap. I'll have to look up the actual numbers, b ut I'm guessing 6 million is, like, the cost of 1/100th of a second in Iraq.

  • http://www.demimonde.com M.K. Hobson

    Ok, I just found a statistic that indicates that the war in Iraq is costing taxpayers about 255 million a day. So, about 11 million an hour … That means to pay for the Oregon City library, we just have to turn off the war for about 1/2 hour.

    I say let's go for it!

  • http://www.demimonde.com M.K. Hobson

    I say pipe lemonade to all the public fountains!

  • http://www.clockworkcuriosity.com/ Sara

    I think it's rare enough that a politician hears from an educated source who's paying attention that if nothing else you may make him pause and actually look at those kinds of factors in his decision-making. A broad base for making decisions is rarely a bad thing. Go you!

  • http://locallvfood.blogspot.com/ Patrick

    “Who's that?”

    “That's old lady Hobson, she wants to have the library moved.”

    “That's nice she has something to do.”

    Actually, I'm all for being active in local politics. I, however, am not.