|
|
Table of contents | Previous chapter Playing with Fire A novel by Scott Lazenby
Chapter 12  e moved quickly to start the fire department on its new course. Max and his assistant chief set up a process for splitting his staff between fire and EMS service. I insisted that he poll his firefighters to find their preferences, but Max didn’t hold out much hope that they would respond. Betty Sue drafted an insert for our city newsletter to explain the plan to the residents. I set up meetings with the chamber of commerce board and a few other groups to assure them that their fire protection wouldn’t be diminished. This was the fun part of the job: creating new things. I felt energized and looked forward to going to work, and woke up early in the morning with my mind full of ideas. After the court victory, Nova’s contractor had moved several pieces of equipment on their site, but not much else was going on. I reached for the phone to call Bess Wilson, but changed my mind and walked across to the planning department.In the open office area behind the counter, Bess was holding a three-hole paper punch over a trash can. She let go, and it landed with a metallic clunk. One of her staff assistants was watching, her expression frozen in disbelief. “Okay, now go get yourself something that will do the job,” Bess said She turned to look at me. “Did you want to see me, Ben?” “Uh, yeah.” I followed Bess into her office. “What was wrong with the punch?” “Nothing. It was perfectly good. But it only handles twenty pages at a time. Our planning commission packets are running up to two hundred pages, and it was taking her forever to put them together. For months I’ve been telling her to get something that would drill through the whole damn thing, but she didn’t want to spend the money. So I had to make my point.” “Oh.” “You don’t approve?” “No, it’s not that,” I said. “In fact, I wish I had your flair for the dramatic. Anyhow, what I came over for was to see what was holding up Nova’s plant. They haven’t even broken ground yet. Do you know what’s going on?” “Well, the last I knew, they were still having problems with Bruce Poulet on the right-of-way for their road connection to 73rd. ODOT is making them use that road for construction, to keep their trucks from slowing traffic on Chief Joseph. So they’re kind of stuck.” “What’s Bruce’s cell phone number?” Poulet answered on the third ring. It sounded like he was on the road. I had once passed him on the freeway, and recognized him by his long gray beard and denim jacket. He had had a newspaper opened over the steering wheel of his pickup truck, and he was absorbed in some article while driving at 60 miles an hour. “Hi, Bruce. This is Ben Cromarty. Is this a bad time to catch you?” “No. Go ahead.” “I’m in Bess Wilson’s office. We’re talking about the Nova Ceramics plant, and the access road off 73rd. What’s the status of that?” There was a pause. “Well, we’re still talking,” Poulet said. “I am willing to deal with them, but I want due consideration for the land.” “So how close are you to working something out?” I asked. “I don’t know. Hold on.” I heard an engine being gunned. He was probably merging onto a highway somewhere. “Okay. Ben, you still there?” “Yep.” “You see, there’s one other thing. I’m getting a lot of pressure from the TBLC not to enter into a deal at all. So I’m not sure yet what I’m going to do.” “What kind of pressure can they put on you?” I asked. “It’s your land, not theirs.” “See, it’s not that simple. I do business with a lot of those guys. I’m in Trillium for the long run. ... I can’t afford to be making enemies.” “Hmm. Well, if there’s anything I can do to help, let me know.” “Yeah.” The sound of a horn, and then another one, closer. “I don’t know if this would make things easier,” I said. “I told Nova I wasn’t interested in using eminent domain, and you might as well know that. But if it could help you with the TLBC, we could start talking about condemning the right of way. It would give you an out, if you really wanted to work with us.” “Well, let’s not go there. At least not yet. Talk of condemnation always raises my hackles, you know what I mean.” “Sure. But let me know. I want to see that project move ahead, and your right-of-way seems to be a key part of it. Go ahead and get a fair deal for the value of the land, but do me a favor and try not to take too long. Okay?” “All right, we’ll see. Well, I’ve got to go. Catch you later, Ben.” Bess raised her eyebrows. “Well?” “Says he’s still dickering, but the Trillium Business Leadership Committee is trying to keep him from making a deal. How about that?” “Assholes. Doesn’t surprise me, though. I heard your condemnation idea. How about if I get Pete to start working up the paperwork?” “No, let’s hold off. I don’t want to make life hard for Bruce — he’s really a pretty decent guy.” “Whatever.” “While we’re on the subject, when is the Nova Estates project going to come to the city council?” The mixed-use housing project had gone through a few hearings in front of the planning commission. The commission had finally — in the face of public opposition — approved the subdivision plan with a list of over twenty conditions. The Hemlock Creek neighborhood association had promptly filed an appeal to the city council. I didn’t know where they were getting their funding, but I had a guess. Their attorney was Terry Judd. “If I get my butt in gear, it’ll be on the next council agenda,” Bess said. “We’re getting close to running into the 120-day rule.” “Now that would be ironic, wouldn’t it?” Under Oregon land use law, if a land use application didn’t get a decision in 120 days, it was automatically approved. “Yeah, I thought about letting the clock run out, but even I don’t want to piss off the neighborhood that much.” I laughed. “Okay. Well, call me the next time you decide to trash some more city office equipment. I want to watch.” • • • Will Samuels and I sat in the reception area of the county administrator’s office. Will had told me that he had hit an unexpected snag in the golf course project, and needed my help. To build homes around the golf course, we needed to expand our urban growth boundary, and to do tha we needed to amend our urban growth management agreement with Multnomah County. Normally, it was a fairly routine procedure, but for some reason, we had run into resistance.While we waited, Will gave me an update on his department. The senior trip fund was bringing in enough money to re-finish the dance floor, a neighborhood group was fighting the construction of a skateboard park, a peace-loving resident was up in arms because the newest offering in the recreation program catalog was a paintball war game, and the staff had a good lead on a grant that would convert an old railroad right of way into a bike path, but some of the residents along the trail didn’t want the public anywhere near their homes. Will laughed. “When I got started in this business, I thought my job would mostly be a lot of fun and games. Recreation, you know? But I end up spending most of my time dealing with conflicts between adults.” He was right, and it worried me. I didn’t want him to get burned out — he was the best parks director I had worked with, and a good friend. But I didn’t know what I could do about it. “Does it get to you?” I asked. “No, not really. It’s not that much different from sorting out playground squabbles or refereeing a Little League game, right?” I chuckled. “Well, hang in there.” After a while, we were ushered into the office. Shantee Angelou, the county administrator, had an impossible job. The three county commissioners supposedly had part-time positions, but they spent most of their days in the county offices, and gave executive authority to the administrator only when it suited them. In practice, that meant that Shantee was left with either the most unpleasant, or the most boring, tasks. And to make matters worse, most of the department heads were elected directly by the voters, and felt that they didn’t have to answer to anyone, least of all to Shantee, who was merely appointed by the commissioners. It was a form of government that was designed for failure. But at least Shantee knew most of the ins and outs of county politics, even if she was relatively powerless. “Hey, you’re looking pretty sharp, Will,” Shantee said. Will’s olive green suit set off his dark skin. I was wearing gray, in keeping with the weather. “What about me?” I said. “Sorry Ben, didn’t mean to overlook you there.” “Oh, it’s okay. I don’t look good in green, especially this time of year. Do you know what the native Oregonian said to the Pillsbury doughboy?” “No, what?” “Nice tan!” They laughed, but then I wondered if the joke was politically correct. “I guess I should ask — are you a native, Shantee?” “Yep, as it turns out. My dad worked at the Kaiser shipyards during the war — he moved out from Detroit. The folks even got caught in the Vanport flood, but that was before I was born. The family’s been here ever since.” “Well, what do you know.” “So, you really came here to talk to me about your urban growth boundary change, didn’t you?” “Yes. What’s the deal?” I asked. “Do the commissioners want to do a golf course development themselves?” “No, it isn’t that at all,” she said quietly. “It’s the Fly Creek Fire District.” “How’s that?” Will asked. “Well, it’s a long story. Do you know much about them?” Will shook his head; I shrugged. “Okay, it’s like this,” she said. “The fire district, they’re like a separate country unto themselves. The chairman of their board, Ed Mann, thinks he’s the mayor. He runs a lawnmower repair business out of his garage, but being the big kahuna at the fire department is what his life’s all about. He and his colleagues on the board think they call all the shots for that end of the county.” “But Fly Creek isn’t even an incorporated city,” I said. “It’s just a crossroads in the middle of cow pastures.” “That may be true,” Shantee said, “but the fire board has delusions about getting all sorts of commercial and industrial development out there — I know it goes against the state planning laws, but that’s the way they think. Do you know what their tax rate is?” “No, what?” “Around two eighty per thousand.” I whistled. “That’s more than half the rate for our whole city. But I thought they were an all-volunteer department.” “Sure, that’s what they’ll tell you, and they do have a lot of volunteers.” “Didn’t I read about some of them not too long ago?” Will asked. “You mean the recognition banquet? Yep. Every year they throw a big bash for the volunteers, with lots of prizes — wide-screen TVs, stereo systems, all-terrain vehicles and a bunch of other toys like that. No one in the community ever raised their eyebrows at that. Who knows, maybe they thought it was worth it on account of all the money they were saving by using volunteers.” “But then they made the mistake of bringing in strippers, huh?” “Yes, that’s it. The wives weren’t too thrilled with that and got on the fire board’s case, and by some accident the whole thing finally made it onto the radar screens of the local press.” “So what do they need such a high tax rate for?” I asked. “Is their assessed value that low?” “No. You’d be surprised. I would wager their tax base is as big as your city’s. They don’t have much density, but the homes they do have are pretty big, and their district is huge. No, the reality is they just like to spend money. They pay cash every couple of years for another $500,000 fire truck, and they have more full-time staff than you can shake a stick at. They’ve got battalion chiefs and lieutenants for training, for polishing the equipment, for writing emergency plans that sit on shelves, you name it.” “And the taxpayers are okay with all that?” “Sure, the firefighters and their department are so popular, they pretty much do whatever they want.” “So what does this have to do with our golf course project?” Will asked. “It threatens their little fiefdom, doesn’t it?” I said. “Yes,” Shantee nodded. “Anything you annex automatically leaves their tax base and gets added to yours. They’re obsessive when it comes to protecting their turf. Around eight years ago, Nottingham, at the other end of their district, tried to annex 100 acres for an industrial park. Ed Mann was going around to neighborhood meetings saying that it would be over his dead body before they gave up a square foot of land. They printed up bumper stickers with a thumbs-down sign, saying, ‘Annexation-NO.’ We suspected they used tax money to do it.” “That’s illegal.” “Sure, but like I said, they get away with a lot. Even though the fire district is hugely popular with their residents, nobody really knows who the board members are. Few citizens ever show up at their board meetings, and the election turnout is always low. The board members are mostly former fire volunteers themselves — it’s sort of a closed system. Nobody pays any attention.” “Except for the county commissioners, I gather.” “You got it, Ben. When Ed Mann and his buddies got wind of your golf course and the urban growth boundary amendment, they went ballistic. They met privately with each of the commissioners. I wasn’t in the meetings, but apparently they threatened all sorts of political repercussions if the county approved the UGB change. It was fairly ugly, I think. And my board has enough to contend with right now. They just don’t want that headache.” “Okay. What can we do about it?” Will said. “Nothing, far as I can see.” “So you don’t think a meeting between the city council and the county commissioners would do much good?” I asked. “No. We could try it, but it would have to be a public meeting, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Ed Mann and his entire board showed up. Even if they didn’t, they would get to the commissioners soon enough, or organize some kind of ’grassroots’ campaign against annexation.” We were silent for a few moments. Shantee said, “We could work with you on developing the golf course, but leave it outside your city limits.” Will scratched his head. I said, “The thing doesn’t pencil out without the housing around the golf course. That’s basically how you pay for the golf course land and development.” “Well, we could look at a change in our zoning to allow that,” Shantee said. “I doubt that would get past the state. At least I hope not.” Unmanaged development in unincorporated areas had already made a mess of a lot of the county, but I didn’t want to bring that up now. Shantee didn’t say anything. “What about this,” Will said. “Could we come up with some sort of agreement with the Fly Creek folks so that the area stays part of their fire district even if we annex it?” “You know, that’s a good idea,” Shantee said. “Well, it’s theoretically possible,” I said. “But it would set a precedent that I don’t think our fire department — or city council, for that matter — would be comfortable with. Maybe we’ll just have to be patient, and wait until Ed Mann isn’t in office anymore.” “Good luck. He’s been there 26 years so far and hasn’t shown any signs of wanting to retire.” “Sounds like they need term limits,” Will said. “Hmm. It might be possible,” I said. “They could just do it the old-fashioned way: get someone to run against him, and vote him out of office.” “Easier said than done,” Shantee said. “Even though nobody cares much about the board, Mann does have name recognition, and the volunteers would get the vote out to keep him in office.” “And besides, I can’t get involved in local elections,” I said. “How come?” Shantee asked. “Part of the city management code of ethics,” I said. “Thou shalt refrain from all partisan political activities, or something like that.” “But that doesn’t apply to your council members, does it?” “True. Good point.” “How about Dick Boatwright?” Will asked. “Does he live in that part of the county?” “Yes, I think so,” I said. “But why would he want to waste his time with a fire board position?” “Hmm. Right.” We sat in silence for a few moments. Will looked at Shantee. “This is driving Ben crazy. He doesn’t accept it when there aren’t any good solutions to a problem.” I laughed. “Yeah, and I can’t think of anything now. Can you? And I don’t think this is worth using up much political scrip with the commissioners anyway.” Will’s shoulders sagged a little, and he frowned. “No, I guess not.” • • • I had a six o’clock meeting with the Trillium Historic Society, and had enough time in the quiet of my office to log onto the Internet. I had sent a reply to Kate’s message, but hadn’t seen anything else for a few days. I watched the new mail pop onto the screen as the server downloaded the messages.
Next chapter: a question of ethics Copyright © 2001, Scott D. Lazenby. Reproduction in any form without the written permission of the author is prohibited. Illustration: Paul Salmon |
 |