Thursday night the 21st, discuss your tax dollars at work

07-07-11

Media and Interested Parties

Open House on projects for regional transportation funding set for July 21

Clackamas County and the cities of Happy Valley, Milwaukie, West Linn and Lake Oswego are proposing six potential transportation improvement projects to be considered for funding with flexible federal funds administered by Metro. 

The limited amount of funds – approximately $3 million for Clackamas County – must be spent on projects that benefit pedestrian, bicycle and freight movement.  The money will be available in 2014-15.  More information about the program is available from Metro and by clicking here.

“This is a wonderful opportunity,” said County Commission Chair Charlotte Lehan, “to improve travel options for our residents that promote sustainable communities and a healthy lifestyle.  I’m also pleased that we are keeping freight movement, which is so important to our business community, at the top of our priority list.”

Proposed projects for Clackamas County and its urban cities will be available for review and comment at a public open house set for 6 to 8 p.m., Thursday, July 21, at the County’s Development Services Building, 150 Beavercreek Road, Oregon City, OR 97045.  

People are also welcome to comment by email or regular mail to Transportation Planning Supervisor Karen Buehrig atkarenb@co.clackamas.or.us or at the Development Services Building in Oregon City.  Comments will be accepted through Thursday, July 21.

The six proposed projects (listed in alphabetical order) are:

·        82^nd Avenue Boulevard between Monterey and Sunnyside; sponsored by Oregon Department of Transportation and Clackamas County -- Add median treatments, sidewalks, bike lanes, street lighting and bus shelters.  Request:  $2.969 million of the estimated $6 million of improvements

·        Boones Ferry Road/Lake Grove Town Center Multi-Modal Improvements; sponsored by City of Lake Oswego – Reconstruct cross-section of Boones Ferry Road from Kruse Way to Madrona, adding bike lanes, sidewalks, planting strips, mid-block pedestrian crossings and a greenstreet median to treat stormwater.  Request:  $1.5 million for preliminary engineering.

·        I-205 Multi-Use Trail; sponsored by City of West Linn – Improve pedestrian and bicycle mobility from 10^th St/Salamo Rd in West Linn to 11^th St/Main St in Oregon City.  Request:  $1.55 million for project development and construction.

·        Mt. Scott Creek Trail Extension; sponsored by City of Happy Valley and North Clackamas Parks & Recreation District – Create a safe, alternate pedestrian route from the trail/footbridge west of 122^nd/129^th Ave, west to Southern Lites Park, south under Sunnyside Rd to Mt. Talbert Nature Park.  Request:  $180,000 for project development and design.

·        Regional Freight Intelligent Transportation System Project; sponsored by Clackamas County – Improve freight mobility in congested subareas of the Clackamas Industrial Area with improved signal equipment, signal timing and minor roadway improvements.  Request:  $790,000 for development and construction.

·        SE 17^th Avenue Multi-Use Regional Trail Connection; sponsored by City of Milwaukie, North Clackamas Parks & Recreation District, Metro – Construct a trail on the west side of SE 17^th Ave to connect the Trolley Trail and Springwater Corridor.  Request:  $3 million, to complete the $3.4 million project.

The projects, which are in various stages of planning, were proposed by individual jurisdictions, and reviewed and moved forward by the Clackamas Transportation Advisory Committee (CTAC), with input from the Regional Freight Advisory Committee and the Clackamas County Pedestrian/Bicycle Advisory Committee.  Recommendations on which projects to fund will be made by the County and cities. The final decision will be made at the regional level.

More information is available here or by contacting Clackamas County Transportation Planning Supervisor Karen Buehrig atkarenb@co.clackamas.or.us or 503-742-4683.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it - George Santayana

Robert A. Heinlein died 19 years ago today... this blog entry honors him and his quest for passing on the torch of freedom.

He created honor for all of us, everywhere he went, with everything he wrote. A stellar example is this book, written when television did not dominate politics, and political parties really mattered.

Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good - Thomas Sowell

Reading this non-fiction book opened my eyes to the virtues, yes, virtues, of partisan politics, when the enormous power of the damned noisy box did not lead us astray into discarding partisan politics, replacing it with the hollow shell of the Demopublican and Republicrat parties today.

And, partisan politics still works today, on the local level. I've been asked, as a consequence of my service on the county sheriff's Enhanced Law Enforcement District Advisory Committee, to comment on a proposal to expand and revamp the county commission. In my response, I advocated the preservation of a partisan vote for the commission, instead of making it non-partisan.

Partisan politics *assures* competition on nearly every issue, and raises the bar of discourse and thought in civic affairs, for the greatest peril of a democracy is apathy. When citizens, the ultimate judges of truth and right, can no longer be bothered to vote, an oligargic elite can rule a placid, uncaring populace of sheeple.

And, in Oregon, our vote-by-mail system provides us with high turnout, low fraud and very high accuracy, a blessing when fighting voter apathy, for when it's easy to rig the system (see Diebold's vote editing machines as one small example), apathy increases, so I hope you Oregonians will continue to support vote-by-mail.

Last month, Tim Russert gave some worthy insight in a Bill Moyers PBS special (downloadable here) program on media blindness to bad intelligence. Russert emphasized the bipartisan system, especially when the press is lazy or has limited resources, is very important to revealing errors in government.

Even when I am one of those partisans, I appreciate the advantage of an honest critic, and when Clackamas County doesn't have an aggressive watchdog press, we need partisan opposition to assure the best government possible.

History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, however, if faced with courage, need not be lived again - Maya Angelou

We can learn from history, and I have learned that the ability of concerned, earnest Americans is increasingly irrelvant because of 'non-partisan' politics; for, all politics have partisans, and the 'non-partisan' lie merely makes it easier to mask the true interests of those invisible partisans.

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain - John Adams

It is time, now more than ever, to study politics and war. Heinlein explained first principles of what served us well through two centuries of social progress in Take Back Your Government, and he's well worth reading if you ever want to be an agent of liberty.