Free?

A resident, Jay Sperling, asked me to post this topic. Here is his letter:

FREE?

If a bus stopped in front of your house and offered to take you to
Fresno for FREE, would you go, even if Fresno wasn’t a place you wanted
to be?

Apparently TAP-PAC thinks that’s a great idea for Tangent, according to
their latest letter. We’ll get a bunch of “free” stuff to turn Tangent
into a place most residents don’t seem to want.

And how is all this stuff free anyway? Don’t we pay county, state and
gas taxes? FREE? Nonsense. We’re paying.

TAP-PAC will probably tell us that since we’re paying for it anyway, we
should get it. Yes, we should – if it’s something we want.

TAP-PAC and the Council are stoked up about “free” culverts and asphalt
from the County. Why aren’t they equally excited about getting
planning and codes enforcement help from the County. It’s just as
“free.” We’re paying for it already. But not a word about those.

And we sure need the help.

When our neighbor Ron Oliver contacted Linn County Building and
Planning last spring to get help with the drainage problem on our
properties, the County Codes Enforcement Officer said he was “getting
dozens of calls from people in Tangent” desperate for help with
drainage and other issues.

Does that sound like a city that is ready to grow?

And when the city let the Linn County codes enforcement into Tangent
temporarily, in 45 minutes he saw through a problem that the Council
has dithered about for nearly a decade. That’s what happens when you
bring in experts.

And when the Council refused to act after the Codes Enforcement
Officer’s inspection? He said, and I quote, “I feel sorry for people
in Tangent. If it was me, I’d get out.”

Does that sound like an endorsement for business as usual? Does it
make you confident we’re headed in the right direction? Are you
convinced Tangent has the right infrastructure, planning and review
processes – no matter who pays for it – when the newest subdivision
floods in its first winter?

TAP-PAC tells us that if we exercise our right to vote NO on Measure
22-65, it will mean more expensive staff time and money.

It’s not the citizens of Tangent who are wasting expensive time and
money.

We aren’t the ones who failed to take the Planning Commission’s
recommendation to give them a year moratorium to get a new
Comprehensive Plan in place. If the Council had done this, we wouldn’t
be in this fix and we sure wouldn’t have this much anger here.

The citizens aren’t the ones running a process that has twice been
kicked out by the courts. TAP-PAC can’t blame us for wasting expensive
time and money – look in the mirror! By the way, among the
“particularly sad” things we haven’t been told is how much have we
spent on all this already? We’re nearly $20,000 over on the auditing
contract (per the last Council meeting). What do the other accounts
look like?

Well-managed growth is a lot more than getting developers to pay for
stuff, or getting tax money from some other pocket, or even setting a
population estimate. It’s planning for the community that residents
want, not the community that somebody else, like developers, wants to
give us. It’s being able to promise people they can move here and know
their property will be protected. It’s believing that people are
entitled to their opinions without being called names or accused
unfairly.

I know we’re only one example, but for our family the cost of business
as usual has been a lot higher than ZERO.

It takes courage to do stuff like enforce ordinances, and listen to
everybody’s opinion – even if it means you might not get the answer you
want. That would be the kind of RESULTS we could be proud of.

Jay and Alice Sperling