They’re selling postcards of the hanging
They’re painting the passports brown
The beauty parlor is filled with sailors
The circus is in town
Here comes the blind commissioner
They’ve got him in a trance
One hand is tied to the tight-rope walker
The other is in his pants
And the riot squad they’re restless
They need somewhere to go
As Lady and I look out tonight
From Desolation Row…

 Yes, I received your letter yesterday
(About the time the doorknob broke)
When you asked how I was doing
Was that some kind of joke?
All these people that you mention
Yes, I know them, they’re quite lame
I had to rearrange their faces
And give them all another name
Right now I can’t read too good
Don’t send me no more letters, no
Not unless you mail them
From Desolation Row – Bob Dylan “Desolation Row”

It’s pretty hilarious watching Desolation Row aka Molalla’s “blind commissioners” try to sweep their dirty financial laundry under the carpet. The Oregonian outed the problems in detail on Saturday:

http://www.oregonlive.com/clackamascounty/index.ssf/2012/01/post_58.html

It’s pretty apparent that, except for the excellent new and honest City Manager Ellen Barnes and Councilors Jim Needham and Steve Clarke, the “blind commissioners” want to try to sweep their past sins under the carpet. The apologists on the Oregonian blog certainly want to “hang” anyone who wants the PAST “MISTAKES” (or perhaps more properly CORRUPTION) fully understood. They are going to need a much bigger carpet to hide under:

Molalla can’t improve unless we all face the ugly truth about City Councilors – “blind commissioners” – who are more interested in putting gag orders on a fellow Councilor and about  puppet mayor Mike Clarke who thinks he is a KING and who protected his nepotism based buddy appointments for years. King Clarke is actually such a control freak that he is allowing his son to run a recall attempt on a couple of Councilors (a recall election would put tanking Molalla even further into deficit spending!). Former and present employees of the City of Molalla are/were incompetent. It’s truly stunning that anyone connected to Molalla wouldn’t demand that the EXACT history of financial abuses be brought to light.

But no, if you read the blog comments you find the “happy face” idiots Molalla is filled with trying to make the people who outline the problems into villains. Sorry “blind commissioners” your smiley face, “think positive”, “it takes time for change” buttons are tarnished.

What a joke of a place – to suggest whistle blowers deserve bad karma because they have taken the time to tell the TRUTH about Decayville Molalla! The truth was, the “blind commissioners” were fully engaged in burning money!

Note this statement from a Molalla Councilor at the City Council meeting, as quoted in the Oregonian:

“It seems like the city is being punished for some ignorance on other people’s part. A volunteer council such as this, we are not financial geniuses, we can only make decisions off of what’s given to us“.

Hello? You are entrusted by voters to have oversight over public money? “Given to us?” Aren’t grown-ups supposed to be accountable for funds – especially when it is public money? Need we say more? Shouldn’t elected officials be very careful about forming their own opinions based on sound research? No wonder “blind commissioners” like that don’t want us to dig deep.

Most of the “blind commissioners” – except Councilor Needham and Councilor Steve Clark -  voted to continue the urban reserve quest in spite of certain denial. So maybe the guilt is setting in? Maybe those rubber stamp “let’s see what happens” if we keep saying “yes” voters on the Council – who continued on insane spending paths for legally indefensible planning and who failed to fire City Hall deadwood incompetents LONG AGO  – don’t want their constituents to notice THEY are part of the problem?

Hey Happy Face, Empty Headed, What Me Worry, Think Positive Molalla Councilors: Since it appears from your deer in the headlights response to the urgent need to STOP SPENDING SO MOLALLA DOESN’T GO BANKRUPT and since you apparently are too cowardly to do the right things quickly, like laying off the incompetents in city hall,  pruning the bloated LOL police force and killing urban renewal to balance the budget, I guess you are just a bunch of:

After all, you are “just” volunteers and “just” volunteers apparently feel they have no duty to dig deep and root out the facts BEFORE they flush away the future of a city on years of nonsense spending!

Let’s get on with a forensic audit because there could be entities to sue. The “blind volunteer council” was more than happy to spend public money on idiotic ideas like a Forest Rd truck bypass study for a road to nowhere; surely a forensic audit would not cost much considering all the money the lemming council pissed away on planning nonsense?

How about checking into the audit firm that thought it didn’t have to dig in deep because the long time auditor “thought” the Molalla financial department was doing a “good job”? Maybe there’s some audit insurance that will pay if the audit firm is held libel? And what about all those years that the city employees claim they couldn’t use the software correctly? Is that pure bullshit? And what about all the years of SDCs that have never been accounted for – did “certain” employees pay fast and loose with those funds? Did “someone” just allow developers not to pay?

But never fear, for the short term,  I have a great and unique solution to save Brokesville Molalla. Its something that no city has tried before! Molalla is always looking for a “hook” to make it special!  Molalla is always eager for feel good propaganda.

Imagine when Molalla calls the Oregonian to say “Eureka! We’re solvent! Hell, we are RICH!  It’s raining MONEY in Molalla!“. It’s so simple I can’t believe that the faith-based TEAM Molalla economic development arm twisters didn’t “guide” you to this solution long ago:

Maybe this will get you started, but once the world catches on in these difficult financial times, I suggest you get a patent going and crank out some better models, like this one:

Imagine! Molalla can make printers to crank out currency for the worldwide market. And the “blind commissioners” won’t have to face the music about their past votes that wasted public money on what was CLEARLY GARBAGE.

The “blind commissioners” can continue NOT to do research and NOT to perform any critical thinking. They can pump up the bloated police force – how’s about a PO-LICEMAN for every citizen! PO-LICE DOGS everywhere, sniffing and lunging. The “blind commissioners” can RE-HIRE the INCOMPETENT LOCAL YOKEL who produced the WORSE PLANNING sane people have ever seen! In fact, everyone for miles around can WORK FOR THE CITY.

I know the perfect place to set up the money printers: “Our” swell new MCC gazebo behind the spiked fortress fence. I bet  MCC/TEAM big kahuna Steve Loutzenhiser would be happy to stand guard (after all, a big kahuna like Stevie, making over $300,000 off “our” phone co-op, knows the value of a buck!). Stevie holds the keys to entry into this fortress, because nobody would dare climb that fence; I bet Stevie has it electrified to boot. Roll the presses! The new money will be safe!

I would expect the inability to read and write, the complete rejection of logical thinking and a hatred of addin’ them numbers up correctly would be perfect criteria for hiring. New City Hall here we come, the seams will be bursting with all the new hires and the “blind commissioners” will never have to face laying off deadwood again!

So world, come on down, the City of Molalla is ready to shovel that money into your pickups. We’re retooling them printing presses as fast as we can and the workers are lining up to push the wheelbarrows…

In the mean time, let’s all return to planet earth and say a prayer for City Manger Ellen Barnes. With “blind commissioners” who fail to accept their end of the blame and who can’t face unpleasant realities, leading Desolation Row Molalla must surely feel like this:Whether you are an oppressed Molalla resident, reeling after years of abuses by King “mayor” Mike Clarke (puppet of the rich and shameless) or just an interested reader discovering Desolation Row Molalla via the Oregonian, be sure to tell every State and County agency you can find to STOP GIVING MONEY TO MOLALLA.

Molalla has insulted us all and burned up their own future on crap. No more! Whether the “blind commissioners” are evil jokers or just a bunch of clueless lemmings, past history proves they have no capacity for critical thinking – if they did, they would not be sitting on a HALF MILLION DOLLAR DEFICIT and they would NOT be afraid of making the unpopular but necessary choices to solve the VAST PROBLEMS!

WE TOLD YOU FOR YEARS THIS WAS COMING, BLIND COMMISSIONERS!

NOW YOU CAN ENJOY THE HOT SEAT FOR A CHANGE!

YOU CAN TRY TO SHOOT THE MESSANGER BUT THE MESSAGE  THAT YOU ARE BANKRUPT  WON’T GO AWAY!

In the mean time, till the money is all printed and Happy Camper brainless councilor behavior can be restored, I’d suggest we rent one of the piles of blighted, empty storefronts and name it DESOLATION ROW. Surely the puppet masters at TEAM will be eager for a “new” business to spring up among the symbols of decay, like the sleazy bars, the pawnshop and the Mainstreet gun store. My idea would be “family friendly” and lots of fun.

Here, as food for thought, are some of the products I think we can feature in our new Molalla DESOLATION ROW store:

They’ve been gambling in Molalla
They took a lot of risks
Send lawyers, guns and money
Dad, get them out of this…

-Lawyers, Guns and Money, Warren Zevon (updated for 2012!)

INVESTORS BEWARE! MOLALLA IS TOXIC!  MOLALLA IS JUST ABOUT BANKRUPT!

It’s no joke – Molalla is in deep financial trouble! Read this Oregonian coverage as the clueless council grapples with the FACT that there is trouble on the horizon. They don’t have the courage to understand you can’t borrow the city out of its financial crisis:

http://www.oregonlive.com/clackamascounty/index.ssf/2012/01/post_58.html

For years, we have been telling the so-called Molalla leaders, especially pathetic King “mayor” Clarke,  that their idiotic aspirational planning, their insider trading, their nepotism, their incompetence and their sunk cost proliferate spending would lead to FINANCIAL DISASTER!

Now, with new, honest management provided by Ellen Barnes, it has only taken a couple of months to bring the financial malfeasance of former manager Atkins to light – Atkins and King “mayor” Clarke were thick as thieves!  Shining a beacon on Molalla’s financial disaster is great – we’ve screamed for transparency and accountability for years and have been denied the FACTS until now  – but honest auditing and accounting can’t make up for the money wasted and the lean (I’m being polite) times ahead.

Here’s a link to the documents for a City Council meeting:

http://www.cityofmolalla.com/vertical/Sites/%7B8B732F6F-BF3A-4831-820E-E60E2A3E5AA4%7D/uploads/Agenda_and_Packet_January_20_2012_REV.pdf

City council to discuss proposed staff layoffs

• By: Pioneer Staff
• Published: 1/24/2012 5:02:42 PM
• Last Updated: 1/25/2012 1:15:21 PM

“Proposed staff reductions from the police department and city hall are on the agenda for Molalla City Council’s meeting this week in the wake of grim financial projections.

According to City Manager Ellen Barnes, current estimates indicate that the city’s general fund will have a deficit of more than $470,000 by the end of the fiscal year.

Spending freezes are now in place and the city’s finance department has calculated possible staff layoffs, including the positions of assistant finance director, an administrative assistant and the police chief assistant. Two police sergeant positions are also being considered for reduction. If that happens, two sergeants would instead become officers and the two officers with the lowest seniority would be laid off.” (end quote)

Molalla’s debts have piled up and it is clear that the past administration didn’t follow state ordinances. The the accounting is so bad that there may be need for a forensic audit. Frankly, the cheers will rise from the hills if Atkins is found to be legally liable – no one deserves a jailbird suit more than that vulture, except maybe empty chuckle-head puppet vulture King in his own mind mayor Clarke!

Let’s see – the planning debt vultures are landing, the County permit bill collectors are circling, the infrastructure contract vultures are have landed, the audit vultures are counting, the city personnel costs are through the roof, the budget has to be re-configured because of overspending… need I go on?

The best thing to come out of the financial disaster is that Molalla will have to STOP SPENDING ON CRAP IDEAS. Most of the clueless city council followed right along with the good old boy cabal insane “Molalla is growing” cant while the foreclosure rate was the only thing Molalla led the state in for the last years !

Wow! With the money GONE, no more “what if” studies of roads that the fools who “run” Molalla could never afford to build, no more dumbbell grants to sit and gather dust in boxes strewn around city hall, no more idiotic ideas about “high-end” is coming, no more “we need tons of new land”, no more consultants and lawyers bleeding the public dry on legally indefensible plans that NEVER COME TRUE! NO MORE PERIOD for the foreseeable future! The public pockets are EMPTY!

What is truly sad it that the public has been ripped off and with NO MORE $$$$$$ available the roads will decay further, there will be no new parks and property values will continue to lose more in value than the rest of the County. When you neglect quality of life in favor of CORRUPTION AND GARBAGE PLANS, you end up with the current toxic DECAYVILLE.

And, with TEAM for economic development (LOL!) losing its propaganda mouthpiece, we can be thankful that we won’t have to listen to “Molalla’s successful” lies coming from someone who lives in SE Portland! Maybe Clackamas County’s Economic Development Department will get a clue and stop being a handmaiden to Brokesville Molalla’s crazy ideas.

Hey TEAM for economic development in Molalla (a oxymoran)  what’s up with  more businesses – Artsmith, the dry cleaners, the gym and Mainstreet Pizza – shuttering for the New Year? You economic development vultures can’t even keep the doors open at a pizza parlor on Main Street?

And yet the City Council clings to the idea that they can borrow themselves out of debt? Hello planet earth – is there anyone in Molalla “government” besides Manager Barnes capable of critical thinking?

This is the most common sign in Molalla:

I’m thinking the city should rename itself:

RECALL FAKE KING MAYOR CLARKE.

Let’s hope the Secretary of State of Oregon is looking closely at Molalla and especially at King Clarke’s vindictive son who is trying to harass city councilmen with a pointless – and expensive! – recall.  If there is a more free speech hating pair on planet earth than  the Clarke father and son team, I dare you to provide us with names. Stay tuned because Sinking Ship Molalla isn’t done cost cutting yet. Let’s hope they start with King Clarke’s favorites first.

I hear King Clarke has decided to take a vacation while his city flames out.

I bet when King Clarke gets back  – if he has the courage to come back and face the ANGRY TAXPAYERS HE RIPPED OFF HELPING HIS NOXIOUS GOOD OLD BOY CABAL – he’ll be starting a new business called:

I can see it now, a crumbling empty Molalla storefront (Wow! No shortage of those blighted sites) putting up the “Bankrupt Productions” sign…

To be continued….

What? Or else there would be total mayhem in “circus” Molalla? There’s ALWAYS total mayhem in Cluelessville Molalla!

“All over the world, the protesters of 2011 share a belief that their countries’ political systems and economies have grown dysfunctional and corrupt — sham democracies rigged to favor the rich and powerful and prevent significant change. They are fervent small-d democrats. “- Time’s “Protester Person of the Year”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/14/the-protester-time-person-of-the-year_n_1147328.html

Speaking of “political systems and economies (that) have grown dysfunctional and corrupt — sham democracies rigged to favor the rich and powerful and prevent significant change” you couldn’t find a better example than the City of Molalla mayhem in all the years it has been ruled by mayor King Mike Clarke. Or maybe a better way to put it is to say “in all the years  the richie rich good old boy TEAM fools used King Clarke as their sham puppet for influence peddling”!

Need to try to get some good old boy land urbanized? No problem, King Clarke will spend into deficit for years, using public funds to try to foster private profit.

Want to pretend you can market your contaminated mill sites? No problem, King Clarke will lead the charge to spend money on an insane study of a truck bypass his broke city could never afford to build – and that would never be allowed through wetlands.

Want to keep your planning job or continue as city lawyer in spite of years of failure and incompetence? Hey, no problem, King Clarke’s nepotism policy protects all his “special” buddies.

“Throw more public money out the window and lack of results be damned” is King Clarke’s motto!

Anyway, it was funny to arrive at the Molalla Library on Wednesday night for what was billed as a “town hall” with Dave Hunt, candidate for Clackamas County Commission Chair, only to find that King Clarke and Dave Hunt and his aide were the only people on deck at the 6:30 start time. An environmental advocate friend of mine arrived a bit late so that was it for participants in a one and a half hour “town hall”: two environmental activists, a politician and  puppet King Clown Clarke. I bet this is how the King Clown felt when I walked in the door:

That two environmentalist guest roster must have blown King Clown’s mind! And the evil King Clown had no power to censure or to bang the gavel to stop free speech!

“Help! They’re talking about smart compact growth! Help!! They’re talking about only proposing realistic projects!” Help! No! They’re talking about transparency and accountability and the environment! HELP!!! They’re saying there’s no economic solutions for Molalla!”

As usual, King Clarke had nary a thought to share. He was surely displeased that his harshest political critic – me! – ran the Q&A. King Clarke’s biggest contribution was to mumble that he and Dave had “talked” – likely, King Clarke had tried some of his usual flim flam influence peddling! Ha! How’s that going King Clarke? Is Hunt offering to give you the moon for your endorsement? Do you actually think that Molalla is due much of anything after you “stuffed in” all those cheap houses without charging SDCs? Did you give Hunt  your famous badge?

I bet King Clarke’s hopes for future behind the scenes evil influence peddling were driven down by the fact that King Clown FAILED to produce any participants for the so-called town hall. I sure didn’t show up at Clarke’s invite! Prey tell, King Clarke, where WERE all your supporters? You couldn’t even dredge up one body to fill a seat? Not even your puppet boy toy clown son?

Have you heard about King Clown Clarke’s free speech hating, recall slap happy son? He’s a piece of work. The Oregonian covered the idiotic recall recently – it’s the second time around since recall boy child got spooked by legal problems first time around. Anyway, sleazy Evil King Clown Clark denied any knowledge of BOTH recalls  – can you believe he thinks anyone is stupid enough to believe THAT? Here’s what the King Clown was quoted as saying about recall #2 in the Oregonian:

“Mike Clarke denies any involvement with his son’s recall efforts.

“Him and I don’t talk about it at all,” Mike Clarke said. “I just stayed back, and then all of a sudden (my son’s) name’s on (the petition), and I thought, ‘Oh gosh, this is not going to look good.‘” (http://www.oregonlive.com/clackamascounty/index.ssf/2011/11/molalla_recall_campaign_underw.html)

The “Oh gosh,this is not going to look good” statement is about the first thing I’ve heard come out of the King Clown’s mouth that I agree with!

By the way, Evil King Clown was a TEACHER: “Him and I don’t talk about it at all“… HIM and I???? Are you kidding? The statement is dumb enough but “HIM and I“????

But now, back to date night on Monday. Again, the King Clown of Molalla could not even get ONE PERSON he knew to come to an important (to Dave Hunt) town hall. Maybe the “Him and I don’t talk” recall  story is correct, or else you would imagine silly recall boy Clarke would have at least shown up to support Daddy Dear.

(It’s all like when George W. Bush sent us to war in Iraq to avenge his Pappy – remember, there never were weapons of mass destruction!).

Since King Clarke was too dumb to get into the hour and a half debate, it was fun to run the topics about  land use, the economy, the need for transparency, the need for oversight to stop pie in the sky “we wish” crap, the need for accountability and the value of citizen participation with Hunt. Each question and answer was 180 degrees out from what King Clarke would want to hear.

Hunt agreed there needs to be far more citizen involvement and transparency in government.

Oh! No! King Clarke would not want THAT! Imagine if the public had been privy to all the behind the scenes meetings that for YEARS told idiotic Molalla planning and King Clarke that they would LOSE on the urban reserve! How much fun would it have been to be a fly on the wall of ALL THOSE MEETINGS! Imagine if the public could observe the meetings and give feedback about all the LIES TEAM and King Clarke tell! Wow! New day dawning!

Hunt had no solutions for tanking Molalla in terms of jobs. Hunt said the County will pump up the Clackamas industrial areas via the Sunrise Corridor. Hey King Clarke, your buddy Dave Hunt actually said workers can just keep doing the ridiculously long commutes to Metro! The other weak economic suggestion was that “maybe” the County could send a few logs from the puny County forest and add a shift at a local mill. But aren’t those mills OUTSIDE the city limits? And the County forests are so small they could not make a dent in local mill production.

So, sorry King Clarke – no solution ahead per Dave Hunt for your “Death of the Fringe Suburb” boxcanyon Decayville Molalla. No real industrial expansion is seen, either from Hunt or from a recent Economic Development meeting the BCC held recently. That BCC work session focused on McLaughlin Corridor, Clackamas industrial, agriculture and Mt. Hood.

Could it be that Molalla might have to focus on the dreaded agricultural sector – that the good old boy TEAM fools and their false god King Clarke might have to RESPECT the prime farmlands that surround the city. That would be a hoot of all hoots – it surely is about the only expansive local sector anyone with a brain is suggesting for fringe outlands like Molalla!

I got an extra big kick out of discussing the need to stop pie in the sky bullshit (like the forest rd truck bypass study boondoggle and the urban reserve) with Hunt. Hunt agreed that there must be far more  robust discussion between agencies and policy makers to ensure that we don’t waste public money and agency time on crap proposals (hello TEAM) that have zero chance of implementation: Like the forest road baloney – like the urban reserve baloney – all based on lies that Molalla is growing and thriving. All based on lies that Molalla is adding significant businesses – when the TEAM propaganda machine talking head lobbyist FAILS to list all the companies that have disappeared!

And puppet mayor King Clown Clarke is the fall guy for it all the TEAM greed!

I’d say all it will take is for agencies to look at the LOL “Molalla budget” to run away screaming that there is no way the public can fund more phony studies for Brokesville Molalla!

How did you like THAT answer, King Clarke? Has your buddy Dave given a different spin in your “private” influence peddling discussions? Do you REALLY think anyone takes YOU seriously, given the state of your crumbling, going broke fast berg? Do you REALLY think anyone is going to drop money for roads outside the city limits in these economic times for a bypass to contaminated land?

Hunt hopes, if elected, to get voters to approve a transportation user fee, like the $5 Sellwood Bridge fee that just got roundly defeated. He hopes that if a transportation fee is promised to help all areas of the County it might pass. I’d say that’s a huge “might”. Even if such a fee passed, Molalla’s cut would be so tiny it would never cover the pent-up needs in the city limits for glaring road repairs. How’s that endorsement looking now, King Clarke? Do you think you’ll get enough influence peddling bang for your buck? I’d say NOT!

The 99% of us – Time’s PROTESTING PEOPLE OF THE YEAR – already know that we are fast approaching beggar status. We WON’T LET false King Clowns like Mike Clarke drive us further into the depths of poverty as he runs his “I work ONLY FOR THE RICH” campaign!

Hey King Clown, where WERE your TEAM greed puppet masters on date night? Why didn’t they turn out to support you – to protect you from a couple of environmental truth tellers? Boo hoo, a poor Evil King Clown can’t even depend on the unethical good old boy cabal when push comes to shove!

“Don’t you love farce?
My fault I fear.
I thought that you’d want what I want.
Sorry, my dear.
But where are the clowns?
Quick, send in the clowns.
Don’t bother, they’re here.

Isn’t it rich?
Isn’t it queer,
Losing my timing this late
In my career?
And where are the clowns?
There ought to be clowns.
Well, maybe next year.” – Send in the Clowns

All that’s missing for a complete Urban Decay downtown Molalla  with the sleazy bars, the gun store and the pawnshop is an Adult Store and – light bulb moment! – a TATTOO PARLOR:

Letter to the editor re: King Clarke published Molalla Pioneer 12/7/2011

Mayor Clarke’s ludicrous claim that he isn’t involved in his son’s second round of recall petitions is funny beyond belief! In any case, it further proves that the silly King Clarke dynasty is anti-democracy because it works to suppress free speech and to hog power.

King Clarke has a horrific record: dictating gag orders, piling up legal and consultant bills, thwarting transparency and accountability and producing nothing but a tragicomic pile of unimplemented plans via public money grants.

There’s the 211 Streetscape/Downtown Master plan (over a million just to fill ditches and add one paved shoulder – complete implementation costs would be mind boggling), a 20 year road plan (64 million), 213 / Toliver plans (one and a half million), a 20 year park plan (33 million), Four Corners Industrial Park plans (over 3 million) and the never gonna happen Forest Rd. truck bypass farce.

It doesn’t take a calculator to add up all King Clarke’s crazy “plans” – over one hundred million dollars are needed and decaying Molalla is just about bankrupt!

As unaffordable plans piled up, profligate spending on the now denied urban reserve continued. King Clarke clung to his nepotism, protecting an overpaid, unskilled planner, honoring his good old boy land speculator buddies to the bitter end. Those bitter end bills bought nothing but Molalla’s financial ruin.

Clarke signed a 2006 agreement with Forristall Family Investments that required Molalla to install more infrastructure in Four Corners by 2010. The city is now stuck with legal bills and private installation costs because Molalla failed to honor that contract. The taxpayers of Oregon donated over $600,000 in grants for the initial Four Corners installation, which produced nothing but a short, ill-kept dead end road and a handful of low paying jobs.

Look at the shuttered stores, the potholes, the cracked pavement, the missing sidewalks/bike lanes and the inadequate parks: King Clarke’s legacy represents nothing but overblown plans, overbuilt housing without balancing System Development Charges and nepotism based appointments. Spendthrift Clarke killed any hope that Molalla can implement anything of value.

The greed TEAM hopes their puppet King Clarke will squash all debate and surround himself with toadies so a handful of good old boys can force their agenda at the expense of our quality of life. Recall petitions, once filed, become public record. We’ll learn who supports the tyranny of the Clarke dynasty. If you sign, you certainly don’t have a clue what the First Amendment stands for.

The taxpayers of Oregon have had an ugly elephant on their backs for years – it is called the phony “dreams and aspirations” of toxic City of Molalla. Molalla has wedged itself into the negative hole of all holes. Molalla just keeps begging for  more grant WELFARE money to try to pull itself out of its financial disaster. JUST SAY NO!

The City of Molalla has a bunch of laughable Kings and Queens – TEAM and the City Council – who worship at the throne of the sunk cost effect. That false god, the sunk cost effect, led to gigantic planning financial losses and to the current “we can outgrow” our financial disasters if we keep tossing the losing dice long enough (including proposing to “study” an insane truck bypass to get to CONTAMINATED LAND and retaining the “you must be kidding me” loser lawyer Crean! How could ANYONE have the guts to post “advice” from Crean in the current City Council agenda – does anyone connected with Molalla “leadership” have an IQ above 50?):

“The sunk cost effect is the tendency to persist in an endeavor once an investment of effort, time, or money has been made. This is problematic because it often leads to emotional rather than rational decision-making. We know [rationally] that “sunk costs” (past investments that are now irrecoverable) are irrelevant to decision making. Sunk costs are the same regardless of the course of action that we choose next. If we are to evaluate alternatives based solely on their merits, we should ignore sunk costs. We’d be better off making the decision by weighing future gains and losses. Yet, the more we invest in something (financially, emotionally, etc.) the harder it becomes for us to give up on that investment.” (http://financialtip.blogspot.com/2007/06/sunk-cost-effect.html)

We now breathlessly await the newest WALK OF SHAME November foreclosure rate for low quality Molalla (google “realtytrac foreclosures 97038″ for the current fun list of 118 properties awaiting auction and be sure to note the gigantic loss of equity). There’s a great op-ed coming up below about THE DEATH OF THE FRINGE SUBURB (just insert MOLALLA in place of “suburb”) that the greedy fools who pretend there is an economic future in Molalla don’t want you to read. That “DEATH” article explains exactly why Molalla is an epicenter of foreclosures.

TEAM’s glib lobbyist (can it be true that she is soon moving on to greener pastures – can we be THAT LUCKY?) continues to pimp for business people who, by and large, don’t even live in Molalla. TEAM’s bandits grab funds from reluctant businesses, allegedly to “promote” the local economy, but really just to further the “cost sunk” effect. Even pathetic Christmas decorations can’t hide from us all the “boarded-up and vacant strip malls, surrounded by vast seas of empty parking spaces.”

What the glib lobbyist for TEAM doesn’t want you to know is that “These forlorn monuments to the real estate crash are not going to come back to life, even when the economy recovers. And that’s because the demand for the housing that once supported commercial activity in many exurbs isn’t coming back, either.”

Molalla – at least thirty LONG AND EXPENSIVE  miles from REAL JOBS, REAL SERVICES, REAL INTERSTATE TRANSPORTATION CONNECTIONS, A REAL WORK FORCE, REAL STORES, REAL ENTERTAINMENT, REAL QUALITY NEIGHBORHOODS, REAL DIVERSE TRANSPORTATION, REAL PARKS, REAL DECENT SCHOOLS, AND GREAT RESTAURANTS – has only a LONG COMMUTE AND TANKING HOUSING VALUES TO OFFER.

Clearly, any “recovery efforts” for Molalla are a primer for the cost sunk effect!

TEAM’s lobbyist – TEAM’s  pimp for for hiding the clear trends, a junky for the cost sunk effect – could mouth all the lies on earth but she can’t change the FACT that “It was predominantly the collapse of the car-dependent suburban fringe that caused the mortgage collapse.”

TEAM can’t change the massive oversupply of homes in 97038 created by the DICTATOR MAYOR via his fake planner. TEAM can’t hide the sleazy low quality of life in fringe Molalla with is glut of tanking foreclosures.

Molalla is face to face with its abject failure to accept PROVEN demographic trends. Molalla must accept that the cost sunk fixation of its  pathetic “leaders” is a disaster because “Over all, only 12 percent of future homebuyers want the drivable suburban-fringe houses that are in such oversupply, according to the Realtors survey. This lack of demand all but guarantees continued price declines. Boomers selling their fringe housing will only add to the glut.“

We laugh watching the Cost Sunk addicted City Council grapple with “should we or shouldn’t we” approve the ridiculous and unneeded apartment/commercial Hart Street complex that would simply add to THE GLUT OF RESIDENTIAL HOUSING AND TO THE GLUT OF COMMERCIAL SPACE. Given the failure of the Molalla City Council to grasp any FACTS,  god only knows what dumb outcome will come from the Hart Street million dollar waiver.

Hello, City Council:  READ ABOUT THE COST SUNK EFFECT! Or shall we just line you all up for a photo in front a shuttered storefront and market a “COST SUNK GANG OF FOOLS” poster?

Whatever the Ship of Fools “decides” we can expect a further hemorrhage of public money – that’s about the only “work” that comes out of Molalla.  It is the COST SUNK EFFECT center of the universe. We’ll all just sit back and watch SINKING SHIP MOLALLA till the money runs so far into deficit spending that maybe someone will wake up from their “let’s spend ourselves silly just to see what happens” gambler’s binge.

COST SUNK EFFECT: REDUX AND REDUX AND REDUX AND REDUX AND REDUX… times infinity it seems! Hello bankruptcy! Hello stuck in decay!

Nope! Maybe the horse has a good reason for being stuck in a hole but the “leaders” of Decayville have no EXCUSE for any more of their bad judgment calls that squander public funds on “what ifs” or for further decisions based on the cost sunk effect. There’s ZERO ROOM FOR WASTE these days.

Willamette Week just ran a revealing story about how tight the intercity PDX rental market – people are falling all over each other to live in the walkable, bikeable, mass transit friendly intercity:

http://wweek.com/portland/article-18305-renter%E2%80%99s_hell.html?current_page=1

The demand for housing in inner PDX is reflected in the Death of the Fringe article: “Today, the most expensive housing is in the high-density, pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods of the center city and inner suburbs… The good news is that there is great pent-up demand for walkable, centrally located neighborhoods in cities like Portland, Denver, Philadelphia and Chattanooga, Tenn.“

What was stunning in the Willamette Week article is that those desperate renters consider places like Gladstone, Oregon City and Gresham too far out in the fringes to be in their target rental area – where does THAT leave way, way off in the fringes Molalla? It leaves Molalla with piles of rentals up for grabs and no hope for sound reinvestment: “”Many drivable-fringe house prices are now below replacement value, meaning the land under the house has no value and the sticks and bricks are worth less than they would cost to replace. This means there is no financial incentive to maintain the house; the next dollar invested will not be recouped upon resale. Many of these houses will be converted to rentals, which are rarely as well maintained as owner-occupied housing. Add the fact that the houses were built with cheap materials and methods to begin with, and you see why many fringe suburbs are turning into slums, with abandoned housing and rising crime.”

Take a look at the growing piles of rental ads in the local paper, the apartment rentals are piled up like cordwood in all the local “fringe cities – and Molalla is by far the farthest out on the “fringe”!  When Molalla got its Motel 6 Barracks (StonePlace Apts) a couple of years ago, StonePlace started advertising that it was “Section 8″ friendly almost immediately.

That’s just the demographic trend “Death of the Fringe” outlines.

And, worst of all, foolish TEAM, always with its hands out for public money like a city on welfare, fails to understand that in the age of PEAK OIL location is EVERYTHING. Every extra mile to a job or every extra mile for a business to truck raw materials in and finished goods out is MONEY WASTED. Anyone who can read economic trends knows that “It was predominantly the collapse of the car-dependent suburban fringe that caused the mortgage collapse.”

So read up on the FACTS for a change, TEAM and “leaders” of Molalla. Get your heads out of your asses and accept what the future really holds for FRINGE MOLALLA. Here’s the poster of the “leaders” of Molalla (Let’s market it along with the BOYCOTT MOLALLA: IT’S TOXIC bumperstickers!):

We can’t afford clowns like you sponging off the public! You’ve COST SUNK us into a point of no return!

Beware GREEDY, BROKE, LUNATIC FRINGE MOLALLA, the land of “we don’t want to hear no FACTS”!

November 25, 2011

The Death of the Fringe Suburb

By CHRISTOPHER B. LEINBERGER

Washington

DRIVE through any number of outer-ring suburbs in America, and you’ll see boarded-up and vacant strip malls, surrounded by vast seas of empty parking spaces. These forlorn monuments to the real estate crash are not going to come back to life, even when the economy recovers. And that’s because the demand for the housing that once supported commercial activity in many exurbs isn’t coming back, either.

By now, nearly five years after the housing crash, most Americans understand that a mortgage meltdown was the catalyst for the Great Recession, facilitated by underregulation of finance and reckless risk-taking. Less understood is the divergence between center cities and inner-ring suburbs on one hand, and the suburban fringe on the other.

It was predominantly the collapse of the car-dependent suburban fringe that caused the mortgage collapse.

In the late 1990s, high-end outer suburbs contained most of the expensive housing in the United States, as measured by price per square foot, according to data I analyzed from the Zillow real estate database. Today, the most expensive housing is in the high-density, pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods of the center city and inner suburbs. Some of the most expensive neighborhoods in their metropolitan areas are Capitol Hill in Seattle; Virginia Highland in Atlanta; German Village in Columbus, Ohio, and Logan Circle in Washington. Considered slums as recently as 30 years ago, they have been transformed by gentrification.

Simply put, there has been a profound structural shift — a reversal of what took place in the 1950s, when drivable suburbs boomed and flourished as center cities emptied and withered.

The shift is durable and lasting because of a major demographic event: the convergence of the two largest generations in American history, the baby boomers (born between 1946 and 1964) and the millennials (born between 1979 and 1996), which today represent half of the total population.

Many boomers are now empty nesters and approaching retirement. Generally this means that they will downsize their housing in the near future. Boomers want to live in a walkable urban downtown, a suburban town center or a small town, according to a recent survey by the National Association of Realtors.

The millennials are just now beginning to emerge from the nest — at least those who can afford to live on their own. This coming-of-age cohort also favors urban downtowns and suburban town centers — for lifestyle reasons and the convenience of not having to own cars.

Over all, only 12 percent of future homebuyers want the drivable suburban-fringe houses that are in such oversupply, according to the Realtors survey. This lack of demand all but guarantees continued price declines. Boomers selling their fringe housing will only add to the glut. Nothing the federal government can do will reverse this.

Many drivable-fringe house prices are now below replacement value, meaning the land under the house has no value and the sticks and bricks are worth less than they would cost to replace. This means there is no financial incentive to maintain the house; the next dollar invested will not be recouped upon resale. Many of these houses will be converted to rentals, which are rarely as well maintained as owner-occupied housing. Add the fact that the houses were built with cheap materials and methods to begin with, and you see why many fringe suburbs are turning into slums, with abandoned housing and rising crime.

The good news is that there is great pent-up demand for walkable, centrally located neighborhoods in cities like Portland, Denver, Philadelphia and Chattanooga, Tenn. The transformation of suburbia can be seen in places like Arlington County, Va., Bellevue, Wash., and Pasadena, Calif., where strip malls have been bulldozed and replaced by higher-density mixed-use developments with good transit connections.

Reinvesting in America’s built environment — which makes up a third of the country’s assets — and reviving the construction trades are vital for lifting our economic growth rate. (Disclosure: I am the president of Locus, a coalition of real estate developers and investors and a project of Smart Growth America, which supports walkable neighborhoods and transit-oriented development.)

Some critics will say that investment in the built environment risks repeating the mistake that caused the recession in the first place. That reasoning is as faulty as saying that technology should have been neglected after the dot-com bust, which precipitated the 2001 recession.

The cities and inner-ring suburbs that will be the foundation of the recovery require significant investment at a time of government retrenchment. Bus and light-rail systems, bike lanes and pedestrian improvements — what traffic engineers dismissively call “alternative transportation” — are vital. So is the repair of infrastructure like roads and bridges. Places as diverse as Los Angeles, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, Dallas, Charlotte, Denver and Washington have recently voted to pay for “alternative transportation,” mindful of the dividends to be reaped. As Congress works to reauthorize highway and transit legislation, it must give metropolitan areas greater flexibility for financing transportation, rather than mandating that the vast bulk of the money can be used only for roads.

For too long, we over-invested in the wrong places. Those retail centers and subdivisions will never be worth what they cost to build. We have to stop throwing good money after bad. It is time to instead build what the market wants: mixed-income, walkable cities and suburbs that will support the knowledge economy, promote environmental sustainability and create jobs.

Christopher B. Leinberger is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and professor of practice in urban and regional planning at the University of Michigan.

A link to another great article about the changing demographics of America “How History Killed the Suburb”:

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/04/how-history-killed-the-suburb/237815/

Some come from ahead and some come from behind.

But I’ve bought a big bat, I’m all ready you see

Now my troubles are going to have troubles with me!”

-Dr. Seuss

I’ve loved the work of Hieronymus Bosch all my life. The Garden of Earthly Delights is his masterpiece. I’d call it a Bosch Free Speech Manifesto in paint! Or maybe it is Bosch’s “big bat” in images! The movement in the triptych  from the Garden of Eden to the chaos of Hell  is one of the greatest paintings of all time. It fits right in with the faith-based City of Molalla’s wishes and dreams and – FAILURES!

Coming up are  snips from the right panel of Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights  – the Punishments of Hell. Molalla has pretty much run through the “Garden of Eden” (that ended when the Europeans displaced sustainable Native American use) and the “Earthly Pleasures”  (when the “cut down every tree and stuff in the houses” crashed into the current Great Recession)  and has moved on to The Punishments of Hell.

Bosch used paint as his “big bat”. Words can function as excellent “big bats” as well. I dedicate this post to all the swollen headed, ignorant, selfish fools who have run Molalla into Hellish conditions by thwarting free speech, by inhibiting debate, by stuffing in ill-planned development, by talking (to be polite) out of both sides of their mouths,  by trashing and polluting land, by refusing to fire INCOMPETENTS, and by being gluttons sucking at the public  money trough. Those  false “leaders” are accomplishing nothing and are failing to give a damn about the REAL people suffering in Decayville Molalla:Let’s start with the Molalla Thought Po-lice:

There are two  Thought Police forces in Decayville Molalla: mayor “King” Clarke and TEAM. TEAM is sickly co-mingled with the so-called Molalla phone co-op called MCC. A guy I’ll call Mr. CF (Control Freak) thinks that because he runs the show in a couple of pathetic Molalla endeavors he is the new Stalin. Many business owners in Molalla are starting to chafe at being required to give money to TEAM. After all, if you are successful, you don’t need TEAM – and if you aren’t, you have a bad business model to blame and should just fold it up! That’s called the free market!

Mr. CF is actually running right on par with Molalla’s noxious dictator mayor King Mike Clarke in the “we hate free speech” category and is close on the heels in the “tall tales” department.

I’d like to film a “Survivor: Kill the First Amendment” show and post King Clarke and Mr. Control Freak on Redemption Island so we could watch them duke it out for the DICTATOR OF THE WORLD title. Or maybe we would get lucky and they would both be big LOSERS!  It must be something to wake up every day with those kinds of illusions of grandeur. Except, dudes, have you taken a close look at the boxcanyon Decayville called Molalla you are fighting to control? Who would bother to fight for THAT BROKESVILLE?

The Control Freak seems to think that gigantic electronic propaganda reader boards and silly gazebos will make the city “nice”. Take a look at the MCC gazebo BEHIND the concentration camp fence – oh! I mean behind the spiked fence guarding the utility yard. There is quite a statement at the MCC truck/equipment storage facility:  an elaborate gazebo sprang up on the PRIVATE side of the utility yard, while the cold public square provides only giant HARD WET SLABS OF ROCKS as benches. And the “co-op” rate payers are footing the bills – I guess they don’t rate a roof over their heads or comfortable benches to sit on!

The citizens of Brokesville Molalla are gagging about  all the money spent on Mr. Control Freak’s pet projects! Has he stopped to consider that the town is filled with suffering people who might need a rebate on their utility bills? I guess not, since guys who make over $300,000 a year aren’t prone to thinking about the needs of the “little people”. I guess he figures “Let them eat rocks while the truck yard hogs the gazebo” will suffice!

Our not so dear Mr. CF  purports to be protecting a weak at the knees lobbyist – you know, one of those bottom feeding “I’ll say anything for money” types you see crawling around sucking up to the rich and shameless in “government” (I see those paid lobbyists at Legislative hearings and want to gag)  – a woman  we’ll call Ms. Glib Liar.

TEAM pays  Ms. GL  to pretend she cares about Molalla.  Believe me, she’ll say ANYTHING for her paycheck! She’ll sell out diverse community involvement in a heartbeat, she’ll “project” quality of life killing projects anywhere at anytime. And she will turn right around and mouth baloney about how TEAM wants diverse involvement, TEAM wants a fair process – but it NEVER HAPPENS IN MOLALLA and Ms. GL would NEVER dare to advocate for the “people” in public, because her TEAM masters might freak!  If Mr. CF and greedy TEAM says “JUMP” apparently Ms. GL would catapult over the moon. I hope KARMA never hits TEAM Greed, because Mr. CF, TEAM and Ms. GL certainly have plenty of  BAD KARMA to atone for!

And LOL, Ms. GL is NOT LOCAL! She lives far away from Decayville Molalla – in groovy Portland! Ms. GL must enjoy Portland’s great quality of life, with its great parks, its wonderful array of services and shops, its diverse transportation and its walkable neighborhoods. She hogs a salary that most of the struggling real residents of Molalla would give their eye teeth for.

I guess, like everything else, you have to go to Metro to find propaganda  spewing “talent” – especially to find Glib Liars to tell the TEAM’s tall tales with a straight face? What’s up with that? A “local” economic group can’t even throw a juicy  job bone to a LOCAL citizen? A “local” economic group can’t tell the whole TRUTH about BUSINESSES LOST? Are the people who live in Molalla  NOT GOOD ENOUGH TO BE HIRED BY TEAM? Isn’t TEAM supposed to create jobs for LOCAL PEOPLE?

The truth is that “local” is a misnomer when it comes to TEAM. Not only do Ms. GL and Mr. CF NOT live in the city limits, most of the so-called business people running TEAM don’t live in the city, either. Most live far from the city limits in rural mansions far from the madding crowds of the 99%’ers.  Or else, even worse, they live in Oregon’s version of 90201: high-end Lake Oswego!

What a rogue’s gallery of fools! What a bunch of “us first” greedy good old boys and girls. Ms. GL must have to take a long hot shower after getting back to her swell PDX neighborhood every night! She must pinch herself that she didn’t get trapped “investing” in Decayville!

TEAM is skating on thin ice:

The Greed TEAM covets the success of transparent, accountable cities – but TEAM Greed fails to advocate for ethical government! TEAM Greed fails to advocate for quality of life. TEAM Greed advocates for making the rich richer!

The Greed TEAM thinks it can “skate” into creating industrial parks – but fails to understand that it “location, location, location” is everything these days. Without great transportation links to freeways and airports, backwater bergs like Molalla are dead in the water. And why would a developer veer far off the beaten Metro path and then have to deal with CONTAMINATION? Envy is rampant in TEAM for successful cities like Canby.

Bosch has a take on “Envy Hell”:

Check out the ugly, bogus website TEAM maintains. It’s like bad propaganda from the days of Stalin,  with inaccurate postings about long gone businesses. Avison gravel pit has changed hands twice to become Baker Rock! Even Ms. GL must have trouble sugar-coating Molalla’s “offerings”: nasty old hulks of abandoned buildings, pathetic strip malls and contaminated abandoned mill sites don’t make for a go-go tour on the net.

I love that TEAM posts things like ridiculous, outdated 2006 market surveys, carefully preserved as relics of the pre-Great Recession false housing boom days, when local planning dumbbells decreed that fake rock had to be slathered over row after row “stuff em in” cheap cookie cutter houses in ridiculous cul-de-sac dead ends. Those days are now replaced with the GREAT MOLALLA DEPRESSION where the only thing booming is the use of phone co-op funds for silly promotional propaganda – funds that SHOULD be used to help the tanking customers. And never forget the booming foreclosures!

TEAM and Molalla’s former fake “planner” failed to consider that the residential customer “marks” might want an overall QUALITY CITY  – that residents might want to actually walk somewhere and have adequate community parks and open spaces. Those residential investors might have expected good roads – dream on!  Woe is anyone who got trapped in Molalla, the foreclosure capital of Oregon. Molalla’s foreclosure rates actually even surpass Bend! Wow! Something to brag about! How about it TEAM: I dare you to post THAT FACT on your website of misinformation!

Hey TEAM, how about also posting your endorsement of the MILLION DOLLAR SYSTEM DEVELOPMENT CHARGE WAIVER! That alone made me boycott local business owners who signed that document which totally disrespected the need to raise funds for quality improvements. TEAM could care less about community visioning for the benefit of all: TEAM ONLY cares about bodies with wallets – bodies with money – bodies willing to put their money into the wallets of the TEAM members!

It’s funny, by allowing a low quality, far from Metro berg to stuff in too many CHEAP ill-planned houses, TEAM actually killed its own mission. Current trends are BACK TO METRO. Here is a telling op-ed about “The Death of the Fringe Suburb” (I suggest TEAM could add some truth to its website by posting this so investors know what is REALLY happening in Fringe Molalla):

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/26/opinion/the-death-of-the-fringe-suburb.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha212

Bosch has some not so kind images for gamblers. TEAM represents the gamblers of all gamblers. When TEAM tells those “little white lies” about Molalla’s growin’, Molalla’s getting great new businesses, Molalla’s got industrial land to pimp, Molalla’s a great family place, it is a sin not to tell the flip side (read THE TRUTH):

Molalla’s a ghost town with shuttered stores everywhere.

Molalla’s downtown features a pawnshop, a giant gun store and piles of dirty bars that no family would venture near (I hear we are getting another symbol of Urban Decay – an antique (or probably more like a junk) mall). So much for “family friendly” attractions in decayed downtown Molalla – unless little Johnny likes to pawn, get drunk and shoot up a storm!

Molalla’s got the highest foreclosure rates in Oregon – Molalla beats out Bend! WOW!

Molalla’s property values are sinking like a stone.

Molalla’s so-called industrial sites never sell because most of them are either undeveloped weed patches or are so filled with toxic chemicals that no one would touch them with a ten foot pole! Molalla can’t afford at public expense infrastructure needed to develop the “clean” sites – and DEQ’s requirements on the contaminated sites would send an investor running  once the dioxins are revealed (who wants that potential liability?). Molalla can pretend those contaminated sites “aren’t too bad” – but if there not so bad, why have they been under investigation since 1983???? Why are they STILL BEING INVESTIGATED???

Here’s the section  called Gambler’s Hell (Note to Mr. CF: I guess the thought police didn’t factor into the  art of the 14th century – Bosch cranked out piles of these images and no one took his paint brushes away!):

Gambler’s Hell is pretty much what TEAM Molalla represents: greedy, thoughtless gamblers hogging down every scrap of public money they can lay their hands on forever losing games of “make us -the 1% – richer” craps. The TEAM Gambler’s Game” is to manipulate  public officials with white lie after white lie, toss the “study” dice and LOSE. Except the money lost isn’t THEIR MONEY – it is OUR PUBLIC FUNDS!”

“We need a truck bypass to get to our industrial sites”. (but don’t look too close because they are CONTAMINATED and event the certified site would represent cost added for contamination capping! Don’t let the Infrastructure Finance Authority hear THAT!).

Wow! The TEAM Gambler good old boys and girls have managed to assemble a wish list that swells well over the 100 MILLION DOLLAR MARK! Gee, that’s quite a gamble for a Blightsville that can’t fill a pot hole and that has a downtown 4-way stop that rates a great big “F” on the ODOT scale. Financial facts about where Molalla really stands are sure to catch up one day soon and bet it won’t be pretty!

No worry though. Ms. GL, the frail flower TEAM propaganda mouthpiece from PDX, is more than happy to troop around claiming the polluters and the sleazy gamblers “need” a giant truck bypass. How WOULD those gamblers “study” that project? Why, you guessed it!: beg for more PUBLIC GRANTS! Can’t you see her, dressed in a cute Molalla cheerleader costume, shaking her false “Molalla’s growing, businesses are coming”  pom-pom, begging for public funds?

And gifted “I speak out of both sides of my mouth” Ms. GL CLAIMED that TEAM wanted more citizen involvement – but you can bet she was right there, front and center, at City Council, jamming the crap Forest Rd study grant through WITHOUT those pesky citizen round tables she CLAIMED were needed! Nice “work” if you can get it!

This week’s DEQ meeting put TEAM’s crass greed in the spotlight. After we heard about the fortune it will cost to even finish testing for contamination (let alone the cost of mitigation!), after we heard about the nasty known cancer causing contaminates at Floragon and at Avison Mill #1 (even “certified” means STILL CONTAMINATED!), after we heard that limited exposure was necessary to protect humans at Floragon from the southern contaminated dip tank areas, after we heard a sad older man ask about what potential health effects he might experience after working at the nasty mills, Ms. GL actually had the gall to ask if TEAM could MARKET the crap buildings in the south end of Floragon, right in the epicenter of CONTAMINATION!

That was a stunning moment that totally defined TEAM GREED: That after hearing there was a limited number of days per year humans could be exposed to the dioxins/furans/petrochemicals Ms. GL would  even have the gall to ask such a self-serving question. Yes Ms. GL, if you wish to expose MORE HUMANS to MORE POSSIBILITY OF CANCER by exposing them to DIOXINS, FURANS, PETROCHEMICALS, go right ahead and market your crap buildings and crap contaminated lands – that is, if you can find an “investor” crass enough, callous enough, dumb enough to bite!

Go ahead, expose more people – maybe someday the former Molalla mill workers will get smart and compare notes about local rates of CANCER. Remember BAD KARMA waiting to happen? BAD KARMA isn’t hard to find when you deal with TEAM.

Read the handouts Ms. GL: “DEQ expects that a remedy will be identified to address long-term exposure risks. Risk analysis will include people, fish and wildlife”.

Get it: “Will be identified“? “ Expects“? So if Ms. GL wants to “market” the nasty buildings on South Floragon she had better goose her client, the former mill owner, to get a move on with the big bucks needed for the “costly and complex” investigation that is “taking so long“.

What investor would be foolish enough to want to post workers in a site with known cancer causing contamination? Life is cheap in Molalla: TEAM can surely find some company that has been rejected from other places – some polluter who knows that, per ex-mayor Foster “Pollution is TRADITIONAL IN MOLALLA“.

We all remember Scott’s Fertilizer – rejected by a string of cities that put quality of life and health above jobs. Scott’s made life miserable for Molalla residents for years – all in the name of  “Molalla needs business”. Surely Ms. GL can dredge up some bottom feeders like Scott’s, rogue businesses  that have to hide out in desperate bergs like Molalla.

Speaking of bottom feeders and disrespect for citizens, I hear there will be “work” on noise ordinances since growing  “business” at the Buckeroo has been polluting residents with NUISANCE  NOISE from loud and noxious events.

Bosch has a “Musician’s Hell” for that problem:

Never forget – one man’s “music” is another’s NUISANCE. Citizens are entitled to quality of life and that doesn’t include tolerating NUISANCE NOISE. Who knows, maybe a class action suit will be required if the clueless “leaders” try to put “business” before peace and quiet! “Deafening ear levels” didn’t cut it, even in the Middle Ages!

So, like Bosch, we’ll all be slyly watching and using our big FREE SPEECH “bats” to make certain that accountability, transparency and respect for ALL CITIZENS keeps Hellish Molalla at bay:

The Molalla “leaders” and TEAM can try to cut away our FREE SPEECH rights but we’ll escape the inferno if we don’t back down:A financial inferno is about to befall  Molalla. A financial inferno has already hit the hapless people lured to Molalla during the housing boom. TEAM can’t hide the facts about the contamination and the extremely low quality city it pretends to market. TEAM can’t hide the facts about the residential meltdown. TEAM can’t hide the empty storefronts – putting displays in windows doesn’t fool anyone. Watching, listening and uncovering the facts will keep the rats at bay:The TEAM 1%’ers can try to steal our public money and our quality of life, but keeping one eye wide open and preserving FREE SPEECH will toss the rapacious TEAM RATS off our backs… be sure to  BOYCOTT MOLALLA – IT’S TOXIC!

This was painted long, long ago: but the same social injustices – where the rich steal from the struggling poor and the rich eat, drink and be merry on the backs of the working class – play out today in the DECAYVILLE CALLED MOLALLA.  The social justice revolution might not have quite sunk in yet in Molalla, but as the merchants play the local residents are swimming for their very lives.

Last night, Molalla’s pathetic excuse for a City Council yet again showed who owns their asses: the greedy, “we take our money out of town and run for our mansions”, sleazy business owners aka TEAM are running the show – and stealing the future of the actual residents.

It’s the same kind of social injustice playing worldwide, with the giant multi-national corporations running the world shadow government, except in DECAYVILLE Molalla it’s a lot of polluters who made their big bucks porking – and POLLUTING – the environment. After stealing the quality of life from Molalla, they take their ill-gotten money to Lake Oswego, to the ranch in Scotts Mills, to the serene rural countryside of Mulino and to all the other mansion lands far from DECAYVILLE’s city limits. God forbid that the greed TEAM move into the low quality, tanking city limits and live next to the peons they pork!

The only difference from the world shadow government is that the DECAYVILLE puppet government is a lot poorer and a lot easier to manipulate!

TEAM forced years of profligate spending on the now loudly defeated urban reserve – a “plan” to benefit a handful of rich out of towners – with Dictator mayor Clarke and Councilors Rogge, Thompson, Wolfe and Pottle voting YES to the bitter end. The result? Hundreds of thousands of public funds wasted. More like MILLIONS if anyone had the guts to follow that trail of shame!

Now, we can throw Needham into the “I work for the rich out of towners” of TEAM greed because unbelievably he, too, voted to throw public money down the dark road to nowhere for the never gonna happen road to TOXIC FLORAGON: the hellish abandoned mill site that eats public money. It has festered away, leaching dioxins/furans and petrochemicals into the waters of Bear Creek and into the groundwater for decades – but do you think the “city leaders” give a CRAP about that? No way do they have a moral compass! They could care less about the environment, social impacts or the people drinking from nearby wells. It’s all about serving their sleazy TEAM greed masters.

The lies and the money trail on the TOXIC ROAD TO FLORAGON will eventually luckily sink  Molalla’s SHIP OF FOOLS. When the greed boat gets too overloaded with bloated pie in the sky aspirations that never come true – like drunks on a binge – the boat will sink! Spend away SHIP OF FOOLS, ignore the peons you were supposedly elected to represent!

Sooner or later the ‘cry wolf’ grant trail will swing around and when you REALLY NEED SOMETHING the grant door will slam shut in your faces!

As the so-called leaders -  the Molalla SHIP OF FOOLS councilors  (who are too lazy to research probable outcomes before risking public funds on nonsense) – pile up misused public funds, it will be easy next election to trot out their money wasting path of shame.

The TOXIC ROAD TO FLORAGON/AVISON stretches way back into the mid-2000′s when the former fake, incompetent planner got a $300,000 fistful of grant money to ‘plan’ the still barely touched 4 Corners Industrial Park. If you want to see something really ugly, take a ride up the stubbed out ‘Commercial’ road to view the semi-trucks clogging the road and to eyeball the piles and piles and piles of nasty plastic trash. It is quite a contrast to well designed and landscaped industrial parks in quality cities like Canby!

But as former mayor Foster said on the record at a city council meeting “POLLUTION IS TRADITIONAL IN MOLALLA”. No joke – that’s on the record. Nobody in Molalla ever heard of landscape designers or street trees, let alone a sustainable land use plan.

Don’t miss the concrete plant just around the corner – it, for years, has been in FULL VIOLATION of its conditional use permit.

But par for the course in Molalla: the SHIP OF FOOLS will only crack down on the little guys with nuisance yards. God forbid that anyone in TEAM greed has their business boat rocked because only $$$$ count.  If you are one of the oppressed residents the only function you have is to hand over your tax $$$$ to the SHIP OF FOOLS and the GREED TEAM. Who cares if on your long commute to try to stay in your massively underwater house in low quality Molalla  you have to look at the concrete MESS?

Who cares if your kids don’t have decent places to play? Who cares if the city looks like a garbage heap? Who cares if you lack sidewalks and bike lanes? Who cares if your kids are playing at TOXIC FLORAGON? You peons are trapped now and the SHIP OF FOOLS  has its fists on your future! They only want to spend your money on “projects” that TEAM greed favors. Who cares if downtown DECAYVILLE MOLALLA is filled with bars, gun shops and pawnshops!

The big laugh is that the current puppet of the rich Council never knew that the $300,000 PUBLIC MONEY GRANT  had already produced copious engineering drawings to build out roads in the ugly dirt pile called 4-Corners Industrial Park. But hey, at least the dirt out by 213 and 211 is CLEAN dirt, right?

So after a year of fussing about a feasibility study to connect so-called industrial sites (the majority of which are CONTAMINATED SITES OWNED BY THE FORMER AVISON MILLS) the bomb dropped this week when the  “we never know what facts are” Council saw that it ALREADY HAD plans for 4- Corners. The hook is the plans amount to over 3 MILLION DOLLARS to flesh the ugly piles of dirt into roads and sewers and storm drains and sidewalks and … well you get the picture: Molalla’s too broke to implement a thing!

Decayville Molalla barely has a cent to rub together these days, so why worry about THREE MILLION DOLLAR PLUS industrial parks when the Molalla SHIP OF FOOLS can move on and pork the public to study a:

ROAD TO NOWHERE!

You got it folks – we’re studying a ROAD TO NOWHERE on so many levels it makes your head spin. Here  comes the trucker heading toward Molalla Ave – wait! It can’t make the turn! Wait! Molalla Ave is flooded! Wait! Ona Way is too narrow! Wait! There’s no outlet to 213!

HELP! HELP! HELP! Is there a DUMBER city on planet earth?

The road can’t be built through wetlands, it is an old forest road right of way that is a bermed up local access only mess built LONG BEFORE  – oh! no! – STATE AND FEDERAL WETLANDS LAWS!

Hell, who cares about State and Federal Laws, right? The SHIP OF FOOLS can’t even understand its own Goal 5 Natural Resource mandate – after years and millions of dollars wasted on weak new comp plan (quote):

3. Maintain natural wildlife corridors along protected creeks and drainageways.

4. Give priority to preservation of contiguous parts of that network which will serve as natural corridors throughout the City for the protection of watersheds and wildlife. (end quote)

But that kind of ignorance  would never stop the SHIP OF FOOLS Molalla City Council. The millions of dollars wasted catering to TEAM greed on the certain to fail urban reserve proved that. They’ll zone right in on wasting more public money without a moment of research!

You can lead fools to facts but you can’t make them think!

DEQ has already taken the FLORAGON TOXIC MILL owners to court to force testing. The people of Oregon have already wasted almost a half a million dollars ‘helping’ the scoff law FLORAGON/AVISON POLLUTERS with no end in sight. The Oregon lottery funds already dumped HALF A MILLION DOLLARS and the testing is only barely at “phase one”.

But hey, the SHIP OF FOOLS COUNCIL wants to dump some more ‘help’ by studying an impossible ROAD TO TOXICVILLE.

It is kind of poetic justice, isn’t it? When you have a city with such a low quality of life that its children are flocking to the abandoned buildings at CONTAMINATED FLORAGON to find a place for a skate park because the city is too broke after catering to the rich out of towners to provide proper parks:

Check out the run-off right where ‘Johnny’ is playing – you can bet that water is leaching dioxins/furans and petrochemicals.

Let’s hope ‘Johnny’ has a strong immune system that can fight cancer causing toxins lodged in his fat cells.

Let’s hope he thrives on heavy metal poisoning.

And let’s hope that ‘Johnny’s’ playhouse isn’t harboring any bad guys.

And let’s hope Johnny and his friends and the homeless aren’t afraid of asbestos filling their lungs as they sleep and play in  FLORAGON.

Take a gander at the Molalla’S FLORAGON SKATE PARK PLAYGROUND/ HOMELESS CAMP:

Only a callous SHIP OF FOOLS would ignore the hazards of this site – an unposted, unfenced hideous mess in the city limits! And only a callous SHIP OF FOOLS would vote to spend a cent on a road they could never afford to build and that would violate environmental laws. Only a callous SHIP OF FOOLS would cater to the rich and ignore the need for decent parks, roads and other infrastructure improvements in DECAYVILLE MOLALLA.

The best nugget that came out of the SHIP OF FOOLS meeting last night was the FACT that, in spite of a year of lies that Molalla owns the entire right of way through the swampland forest road, the truth is that the County actually owns part of the route! HA HA!’

And the clueless SHIP OF FOOLS, as usual, was cleverly manipulated into accepting the County’s kind offer to do the ‘study’ of the swampland road to nowhere! So at least the money wasted proving the obvious negatives – the obvious FACT that the swampland and the social aspects and, most of all, the County’s ownership of part of the right of way will kill a truck bypass – will feed the County coffers.

The County is on a massive campaign to provide local rural hike/bike routes. Hint, hint: Do you think the SHIP OF FOOLS Council is smart enough to see where the County’s administration of ‘their’ study of the swampland road to TOXIC nowhere is going?

Stay tuned because I can guarantee that TEAM greed and their puppet SHIP OF FOOLS Council is about to learn A LOT about sustainable transportation planning, environmental protections and the need for clean recreational opportunities in DECAYVILLE MOLALLA.

TEAM greed and the SHIP OF FOOLS might have won the skirmish but they for sure won’t be winning the  swampland truck bypass war with the County playing General!

And congratulations to the ONLY Councilor who stood up to prove he wasn’t a puppet of TEAM greed. Councilor Steve Clark had the courage to state that Molalla had far more pressing needs in the city limits and asked that the grant for the Road to TOXIC LAND Floragon be tabled for six months. Needless to say, he was smart enough to VOTE NO. Good job! At least one Councilor in Molalla understands who he is elected to represent! (hint: the PEOPLE WHO LIVE IN THE CITY OF MOLALLA!).

We are making a list of those who vote to ignore the needs in DECAYVILLE and who cater to the petty bourgeois rich out-of-town business enemies of the people of Molalla. Next election it will be a lot of fun to point out which candidates represent social justice for the trapped taxpayers and which were puppets of TEAM greed.

Let’s take a look at the dioxin/furan/petrochemical contaminated excuse for Bear Creek as it struggles out of a culvert at TOXIC FLORAGON as we say goodbye.

I hope the Avison family is cozy in their far from Molalla mansion counting their bucks and enjoying a clean and pleasant environment – maybe the Floragon testing and clean up will hit them where it hurts -  in their wallets! Anyone who dodges blame for the FLORAGON CONTAMINATION shouldn’t be allowed to cross the city borders and pretend their have a say in DECAYVILLE’S future!

As the CONTAMINATED water heads down to the unwitting landowners, I hope the city manager is inviting the supposed interested buyer for CONTAMINATED FLORAGON to the Dec. 7 DEQ meeting at the Molalla Adult Center. Full disclosure should be the ticket for a sure SALE FAIL. Have a great day, SHIP OF FOOLS. I hope someday some sends a TOXIC CREEK your way, threatens your rural lands and steals your hard-earned $$$ to feed a GREED TEAM while you tank in a low quality city.

Doesn’t the old saying go that “turn about is fair play”?

I believe in KARMA. How about you, GREED TEAM AND MOLALLA COUNCIL SHIP OF FOOLS? What’s YOUR KARMA SCORE LOOKING LIKE  THESE DAYS?

Come on down, bring your sleeping bags and enjoy the FUN at Molalla’s homeless camp skate board park – the more the merrier! How about a Second Friday FLORAGON  CONTAMINATION celebration, TEAM greed? Maybe a steak, movie and dioxin night for RP? Endless possibilities await: I smell a study grant coming on, don’t you? The door is open, come on down to MOLALLA’S  FLORAGON TOXIC FUNHOUSE:

3. Maintain natural wildlife corridors along protected creeks and drainageways.

4. Give priority to preservation of contiguous parts of that network which will serve as natural corridors throughout the City for the protection of watersheds and wildlife. 

How’s about a GREED TEAM and SHIP OF FOOLS fish fry?

I hear petrochemicals, dioxins/furans add that ‘SPECIAL SOMETHING’ to the critters – that is if they SURVIVE!

Be sure to hide the kiddies eyes during the DIOXIN FISH FRY because you never know what might crawl out of CONTAMINATED FLORAGON, maybe as the years go by we’ll get some critters that look like this:

And don’t let the kiddies look at the farms near POLLUTED BEAR CREEK, you never know, maybe Molalla can start producing freak animals (remember, former Mayor Tom Foster said “Pollution is traditional in Molalla!):

Hey TEAM GREED – maybe there’s a  MOLALLA TOXICVILLE $$$$ hook here you missed! I smell $$$ crawling out of the CONTAMINATED SLUDGE! Go for it! Get your PAID LOBBYIST FROM PDX out to stump for the TOXIC CARNIVAL. Nothing else is working! You can be the CAPITAL OF MUTANTS, the CARNIVAL OF FREAKS. Let’s put on our hazmat suits and get some nets and see what we can dredge out of the CONTAMINATED SEDIMENT of contaminated Bear Creek! You could have a Second Friday TEAM Freak Show Carnival if the contamination continues without abatement!

BOYCOTT MOLALLA: IT’S TOXIC!

Visit Friends of Bear Creek for more information about TOXIC MOLALLA MILL SITES and to see what Bear Creek SHOULD look like:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Friends-of-Bear-Creek/260482610665309

Visit DEQ for more TOXIC AVISON information:

http://www.deq.state.or.us/lq/ECSI/ecsidetail.asp?seqnbr=9

But I’m getting ahead of myself. First, there was an attempt by failed, pathetic city manager Atkins to jam through a house moving ordinance. Could that have been at the behest of unethical Mayor Clarke whose neighborhood was just impacted with house moving? That’s about the kind of insider deal Mayor Clarke would advocate: spend public money in secret in a hurry without asking the Council for something that impacts HIM – and then try to jam it through without giving the public a chance to comment!

Ha, ha Atkins and Clarke: You two losers lost again when 3 Councilors refused to play ball and the ordinance failed. Next time, use due process. Hopefully for sleazy, on the way out Atkins there won’t be a next time.

But, drum roll please: The Council left regular session and opened a work session to consider the massive failures of “I’ll say anything you want to hear” lawyer Crean.

I bet Crean started to feel like this (you may know that saying “liar, liar, pants on fire?):

But wait!!! Mayor Clarke, coward of all cowards, got up, mumbled he had to visit with family and LEFT!  It certainly appears that COWARD MAYOR CLARKE didn’t have the courage to watch his boy toy Crean in the HOT SEAT. Or could it be that COWARD MAYOR CLARKE was afraid the HOT SEAT of failure would reach out to include his sorry ass? Maybe he was feeling a burning in his undies as well?

I’m betting on the “extend to Mayor Clarke’s sorry ass” scenario because the good old boy cabal of Atkins, Mayor Clarke, Crean, ex-fake planner Potter and the land speculators were all, in essence, sitting in that HOT SEAT with pathetic squirming lawyer Crean.

An honest, responsible mayor would never have left this important work session designed to vet the sins of Crean. But hey, when Crean’s sins are Mayor Clarke’s sins I guess Mayor Clarke figured it was better to go hide at home than to face the music in public. I guess he doesn’t like burning in public when the truth unfolds!

That running away from the truth was just another sign that time’s up for the nasty reign of King Clarke. It’s time to step down, little man Mayor Clarke: if you can’t take the punches then it don’t mean a thing. You certainly can’t face the music anymore – it is too easy to trace your self-serving waste of public funds! You are nothing but a tool of the good old boy cabal.

Or maybe we should hope silly, lost, weak mayor Clarke actually tries to run again so we can chew him up in letters and at public debates where he would  FORCED TO TALK IN HIS OWN HOT SEAT OF FAILURE. Below is how “mayor” looks when his is faced with strife and he would certainly be faced with a boatload of loaded questions in the next election – like WHERE DID ALL THE MONEY GO and WHO KNEW WHAT WHEN?

Goodbye little man mayor Clarke! It was hilarious beyond belief – cathartic really – to sit two feet from Crean with a tape recorder and video running and get Crean’s lies and half-truths on record. He started to look like the critter above – gasping for air and choking on lies.

The first hot seat topic – how Crean could have “represented” Molalla into HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS OF WASTED PUBLIC FUNDS ON YEARS OF PLANNING FAILURE – brought some zingers.

Crean failed to admit that it was a LIE to claim in public at a hearing in October 2008 that “Molalla has to do this” -i.e. Molalla “has to” do a comp plan/urban reserve. Crean actually butted into community testimony to tell that LIE.

Little towns of less than 10,000 residents don’t have to legally worry about comp plans. DLCD already knows that any city that is that small isn’t growing and likely does not have the  money or skills to do complete comp plan updates. But what a windfall that desire was for Crean and the consultants – can’t you see them licking their lips back in the early 2000′s as they anticipated the piles and piles and piles of public funds they could hijack, hanging in their roosts, waiting to suck up public money:

Crean, Atkins and Winter$$$$$$$$$$$Brook  consultants took the public for the expensive ride of all rides on the now DENIED URBAN RESERVE. They had ZERO stake in the future of the Molalla community – none of them live here – they were just interested in sucking the blood out of the community:

Little man pathetic mayor Clarke and his nepotism crew in the form of the idiotic Molalla planning commission, Atkins and the untrained fake planning director did the hand feeding of public blood money to Crean and Winterbrook till the City was sucked dry – or really, beyond dry, till they racked up a HALF MILLION DOLLAR PLANNING DEFICIT!

Guess who Crean (captured on tape) tried to blame for the GIGANTIC, EXPENSIVE PLANNING FIASCO? The County planning staff and the BCC! I can hardly wait to get my audio recording down to County so those HONEST PROFESSIONALS can see the kind of liar Molalla retains – and pays! Crean stabbing the County in the back in the name of defending Molalla’s ridiculous planning was a gross misrepresentation of FACTS!

In short, the discussion was about Crean’s capacity to:

That’s right – Crean’s greatest talent is burning up public money without any attempt to mitigate or to guide Molalla to acceptable solutions.

He LIED about Sandy’s planning path. Sandy, per now retired County planners Doug McClain and John Borge, years ago tried to pull a “Molalla”: Sandy tried to claim a far too high population projection. Sandy quickly saw the light – that it could not buck County – so Sandy quickly reversed course and worked WITH County to a successful end. So Crean, stop using Sandy as an example, some of us actually talked A LOT with the professionals at County over the years of your abuse!

It was funny to have Crean’s cohort “David” step in. Checking on “David” at the firm, it is apparent that “David” outranks Crean – “David”, though apparently younger, is a full partner. I guess the firm is smart enough to know that Crean is only associate material at best.

“David” tried to assure us that they aren’t rich folks, that the lawyers don’t have:

And that they aren’t using rolls of public:

to wipe their greedy asses.

But what’s that old saying about “Me thinks thou does protest too much”? If they were burning up public money for years with ZERO RESULTS  it is time to FIRE THEM.

I could document  Crean’s planning lies with all the negative feedback letters and documents from County and State dating back to Feb. 2007 till the cows come home, but Crean’s next revelation about the Hart Street million dollar SDC waiver fiasco was the funniest yet.

In NO UNCERTAIN WORDS Crean spit out that HART STREET DOESN’T CONFORM to transportation planning rules and that the project shouldn’t have been passed by the Molalla planning commission. Seeing the so-called chair of the Molalla planning commission sitting with his head literally in his hands was another nice touch. How about getting some honest people – some ethical people – on city committees for a change?

What kind of fools believe that they can pass forward planning garbage without eventually getting  caught in their own unethical greed trap? Influence peddling a la Molalla planning has already cost hundreds of thousands and produced FAILURE. The public of Oregon just wasted $43,000 on a transportation grant to “study” the million dollar SDC waiver project. Any ETHICAL person who reads the file (I have read it and gagged) would quickly see the project doesn’t have a leg to stand on.

Molalla can’t afford the traffic fixes required by ODOT for Hart Street, the developer simply wants to take a profit and run with his profits I hear (how’s the weather for car racing in Nevada these days?) and Crean didn’t have the professional guts to stop the fiasco before it came before the council twice!

I won’t bother to waste time outlining the insane discussion of public information request law. Any lay person knows that when outlandishly huge requests come in a city or to a  public entity, they must charge for the work to assemble the information packages. Period.

But the fussing and the billing and the unequal treatment will continue in Molalla as long as there are  “take the money” and run  people like Crean and Atkins porking at the public trough:

STOP THE PIGS! Molalla is getting a savvy new city manager, Molalla has finally seen the light and contracted planning to the professionals at County and the City Council has started to actually research issues and to buck against mayor Clarke’s TEAM NEPOTISM. Nobody who sat through the Crean on the Hot Seat session should have any doubt about it:

MOLALLA NEEDS A NEW LAW FIRM!

So tell your friends, if they heard screaming and saw a flash of light running away from City Hall last Wednesday just after 9pm, not to worry. It was just the sound of “Liar, liar pants on fire” Crean fleeing. It is time to tell that “JERK” (word used by state planning official to describe Crean) to go flush public funds at some other hapless city because WE HAVE HAD ENOUGH:

Rumor has it the fake planner at fault for the horrific mess that is the City of Molalla might want to try to sue to get his job back! Don’t you wonder what lawyer would be prepared to “defend” the record of Molalla’s fake planner (oops  – that’s EX-PLANNER, we all danced the day he became an EX-PLANNER!). Maybe the lawyer for the ex-planner looks like this:

After you bust a gut laughing about any lawyer willing to defend the ex-planner’s record, step back and think of how hilarious it would be for that boob to have to sit under oath and try to defend his YEARS OF FAILURES AND HIS YEARS OF ABUSE OF PUBLIC MONEY!

First, harken back to the early 2000′s when said fake planner defaulted on a student loan and had his insurance license jerked out from under him. Juries don’t like people of low character – they see them as scammers who aren’t trustworthy. That default/loss of professional license would be a big time fork into fake planner’s case! Don’t you wonder if he EVER paid off his public student loan – or, if, as usual, fake ex-planner ripped off the public and defaulted. I’d be glad to bet that he NEVER paid back what he owed.

In 2006, fake planner LIED to the Palomar pipeline speculators by saying that he would know by spring 2007 how many acres of EFU land he would add to the city. That NEVER CAME TRUE! But lair of a  fake planner was out in public telling lies fossil fuel speculators behind closed-doors: I guess the INCOMPETENT liar didn’t realize that, even thought he couldn’t keep accurate records to save his life, other agencies could!

It is too bad that fake planner failed to go to college to learn how to read and write. In Feb. 2007, fake planner got a great big negative reply from DLCD for an under the radar screen “proposal” to expand the city limits to help land speculators. This document proved in 2007  that fake planner was in WAY over his professional head, because DLCD actually begs the city to GET A PROOFREADER and talks about spelling, paragraph structure and all the other elements needed to produce a literate document.

And in the NEGATIVE REPLY there is a curt paragraph advising Molalla that growth will slow and inviting it to give up worrying about new land. Any COMPETENT planner would have read that and advised his city to regroup and concentrate on infill.

Did Molalla get the picture then? Oh! No! Fake planner and his best buddy cronies (like Dictator mayor Clarke) stuffed that NEGATIVE REPLY away from prying eyes and merrily proceeded to waste years and hundreds of thousands of dollars of public money on a fool’s quest for a giant urban reserve.

Instead of presenting the DLCD letter, they jammed through a baloney “population resolution” endorsing the very population figures DLCD would dispute – and failed to follow correct process by failing to submit said ridiculous resolution to the County for legal adoption.

Oh, what tangled webs fake planner weaved, when he practiced to deceive (and especially when he sank Molalla into a HALF MILLION DOLLAR PLANNING DEFICIT).

In the process of wasting public money on  pizza planning parties (really – I have seen the emails!) the fake planner received stacks of advisories from the State and County about what would be acceptable. Did fake planner listen? NO.

When the 2008 hearings approached, DLCD came and IN PUBLIC told fake planner and clueless city leaders to ACCEPT SAFE HARBOR POPULATION, PASS THE DOWNTOWN MASTER PLAN AND PARKS PLAN AND USE MODEL CODES – and then go to sleep!

Did fake planner listen to THAT ADVICE? NO!

He held years of expensive hearings and produced years of “minutes” that failed to honestly reflect what was said in public (That’s easy to prove – unless fake planner failed to produce the legally mandated audio recordings of ALL THE HEARINGS – either way, he is professional toast!).

Most of all, fake planner used nasty, bottom feeding city lawyer to LIE to the crowd at the first hearing – the SLEAZY lawyer actually stood up in public, on the record and said “Molalla HAS TO DO THIS”. There is no state mandate for tiny little towns under 10,000 population to do anything in terms of comp plan updates and especially in terms of 50 year urban reserves. And never forget, every time the bottom feeding lawyer had to step in and cover the fake planner’s fat ass the $$$$ flew out of the city’s coffers and into the hands of the lawyer. Sweet deal for the lawyer and the consultants.

Fake planner refused to honor DLCD’s and citizen’s pleas for a neutral moderator. He was such an arrogant control freak that he said “That’s for when we are fighting about what land to add”. LOL we never got to that point – he was DEFEATED long before anyone could add land. He couldn’t run a fair and honest meeting/hearing to save his life!

And, at the height of the “stuff em in, we need to grow frenzy”, the fake planner actually was allowed to hire a REAL EDUCATED PLANNER – a great educated guy with customer service skills who was honest! Needless to say, that REAL planner didn’t last long – because as the planning costs mounted to defend what was FOR SURE going to fail and the housing boom went to bust, the fake planner began to go into deficit spending.

We can trot out all the deceptive soil/wetland maps that don’t conform to State records – maps fake planner morphed to please his speculator masters. When a wetland is clearly shown on State maps and fake planner, after numerous complaints that his map failed to note a wetland, failed to correct the map, it would certainly look like fake planner was deliberately presenting FALSE INFORMATION at official hearings. But hell, it is Molalla and fake everything is the hallmark of the place that lacks ethics.

I won’t bother to outline the dates of all the NEGATIVE LETTERS from State and County that poured in to the FAKE PLANNER from fall 2008 till the final great big DENY from County in spring 2011. We’ll save that big pile of paper for the court case. We’ll all ask the fake planner ON THE STAND UNDER OATH if he even read and understood the piles of paper (I doubt that he could read or understand it – when you are an uneducated, arrogant boob protected by NEPOTISM and are the puppet of a cabal of greedy good old boy speculators you think you are above the law).

I’ll never forget the stunning moment at a County meeting where I asked a County planner how the Molalla “plans” were coming – before formal hearings began. In front of a room full of County community leaders, the senior County planner giggled and said “Molalla planning came to County recently and it was CRAZY”. Can you imagine – the Molalla planning effort lead by a fake planner called “CRAZY” in public in front of responsible County leaders!

In fact, getting fake planner on the stand where he would have to TRY TO TALK would be the best gift of all. In the 7 hours of the two official hearings at County that resulted in the great big (EXPENSIVE!) DENY, the fake planner waddled once to the stand  when asked to explain where the vital list of buildable lands was, he said:

“I COULDN’T SAY” and waddled back to his seat in the peanut gallery.

Do you get it yet?

The highly paid, so-called planning director of a city, at the most important hearings his city had faced, after spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on lawyers and consultants, in a do or die minute, said:

“I COULDN’T SAY“.

That is the story of fake planner in Molalla. When asked in public to explain the two paths – quasi-judicial and legislative – in Oregon planning, the fake planner COULDN’T SAY.

And six months after he was asked to explain those paths (and the city manager explained the paths in front of fake planner) the fake planner incurred a legal bill – the bottom feeding lawyer actually billed the city for time to try to teach the FAKE PLANNER the difference between the two planning paths! Hello – any LITERATE person can learn that in a couple of minutes on the web! But obviously we aren’t dealing with “literate” when we study the INCOMPETENCE of the ex-fake planner.

The ex-fake planner can’t win for losing – his inability to get the DETAILS correct is legendary.  He recently sent a garbled letter to the city council trying to advocate for Hart Street. In the illiterate rambling letter his first gaff is to say that DLCD required upgrades to the wastewater system! Hey illiterate fake planner: DEQ is the agency that rode Molalla on wastewater issues – DLCD has NOTHING to do with that!

Wow, the fake planner must be getting pretty hot and squirmy on the stand by now! But we still haven’t addressed all the ways he trashed the city’s finances and future via INCOMPETENCE.

We haven’t hit on the horrific mess he made of the grids of the city: there is no bigger no-no in planning than creating piles of dead-end streets and failing to provide adequate parks and open space for EVERY NEIGHBORHOOD. We’ll talk about the lack of walking and bike routes to get to shopping centers. We’ll talk about the apparent corruption in the lack of years of SDC accounting and all the ‘work in kind’ deals the fake planner cooked up with developers.

Most of all, we can now prove conclusively that the horrible planning and lack of SDCs have created an exceptionally LOW QUALITY city that now literally leads the State and County in foreclosure rates. Month after month after month Molalla lead the pack in foreclosure notices. In July, one out of every 160 houses got a notice and in August one out of every 233 houses in Molalla got a notice. In comparison, Deshutes County was one out of 258, Clackamas County was one out of 451, and Oregon at large was one out of 621.

Molalla has ALWAYS been far, far ahead of Oregon cities’ rates of foreclosure. Low quality in times of bust spells doom.

I get a kick out of Stacy Court, a dead-end street condo abortion now on the foreclosure auction list. It’s a perfect example of the INCOMPETENT PLANNING foisted off by the fake planner. Stuffed in on a dead-end, it is listed as being -678,258 loan to equity ratio. That means that the developer of the abortion is underwater $678,258!

Anyone dumb enough to have allowed that hideous “planning” should be locked up! If you know anyone looking for tanking real estate in a totally low quality, decaying by the minute berg, have them call the EX-FAKE PLANNER for a tour of his handiwork! The defaults, foreclosure auctions and empty houses are piling up like cord wood.

Ex-fake planner could start a consultant business called “HOW NOT TO DO IT”. He could lead tours to display his carnage – hell, I’d be happy to supply the YEARS AND YEARS AND YEARS OF NEGATIVE FEEDBACK and the transcriptions of the 7 hours of hearings where all he could say was “I COULDN’T SAY”.

That’s what we can look forward to when ex-fake planner waddles to a new court and the chair creaks under the lies:

“I COULDN’T SAY”

“I COULDN’T SAY” is the theme song of Molalla’s abject and demonstrable failure. Anyone who gets a license jerked due to default on public loans (loans WE ALL FINANCED) and anyone who pretends to be a professional without a scrap of training (shall we trot out the credentials of the real planners who work in other local cities and compare what their education is next to the non-education of fake planner?) deserves to sit in the hot seat and say:

“I COULDN’T SAY“

Hey, fake planner, you can’t get away with saying “I COULDN’T SAY” in a trial!

The rest of us – those of us who read, who fact check, who look at budgets, who track the charges from lawyers and consultants for the bad planning, who understand the goals of the state and who understand how fake planner couldn’t produce anything that conformed – will be happy to step up because:

WE CAN SAY THE MOLALLA EX-FAKE PLANNING BOOB WAS INCOMPETENT AND WE CAN PROVE HE WASTED YEARS AND HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS OF PUBLIC FUNDS ON TOTAL GARBAGE.

We CAN SAY that the city of Molalla was a whorehouse of bad planning and wasted opportunities.

We can get the soon to be ex-city manager and the dictator mayor on the stand and grill them about why they allowed an uneducated boob to trash the city’s future and suck the public funds dry on garbage planning. I’d LOVE to see them under oath, trying to defend the guy they protected via blatant NEPOTISM. Getting Dictator mayor Clarke under oath and poking at him would finally get him to talk in public – maybe that’s the only way to get him to open his mouth!

Like the INCOMPETENT FAKE PLANNER THEY PROTECTED, if city employees or the elected leaders get plopped on the stand, they can’t say “WE COULDN’T SAY” under oath. They will have to answer the questions!

I smell sewer gas about to escape from City Hall if fake INCOMPETENT planner drags anyone to court – because any public official can end up on the squirming on the stand! Come on down, Dictator Little Hitler mayor Clarke, come on down failed manager Atkins and let’s hear what YOU will say on the record.

Little Hitler mayor Clarke and pathetic Atkins on the stand under oath would be like pulling legs off ants and watching them burn up under a magnifying glass in the sun.

Follow the money, follow the documents – what a hoot to drag Molalla further through the mud of NEGATIVE PUBLICITY.  After all, nothing else is happening in Decayville Molalla, we may as well get some more great negative propaganda out to the public so no one else gets duped into moving to the Town that was BORN TO LOSE!

Ain’t free speech grand? Don’t forget to share this account with the lawyer – I’ve actually got the FACTS to back up my story, do YOU fake planner? How’s that student loan default going?

Here’s about all fake ex-planner can expect to get after a trip under oath before a jury:

Now, the proof of the FAILURE of sleazy fake Molalla City Manager Atkins and nepotism loving dictator mayor Clarke  is in and it is NOT PRETTY:

Atkins offered a  three-month severance to pathetic fake planner Potter WITHOUT VETTING IT TO THE CITY COUNCIL (I bet dictator mayor Clarke knew!).

Atkins was slapped back by the City Council. Council said  NO WAY did they want to give loser Potter a reward like that.

Then, the “when will the Council ever get the picture that Molalla is being ripped off and fire him?” bottom feeding city lawyer Chris Crean claimed it was OK to cancel the severance offer.

Potter finally hit the unemployment lines – and the taxpayers CHEERED!  The chains of years of ugly, insider trading, costly and incompetent pretend planning where over!

But wait! Behind closed doors, the Council had to grapple with a lawsuit by incompetent, departed Potter. And guess what: Atkins and Crean were wrong – evidently they should NOT have cancelled the offer (really: they should not have MADE THE OFFER IN THE FIRST PLACE!) because Molalla has just caved and paid the following to fake ex-planner from Hell Potter:

$17,000 for severance
$4,455 for vacation
$2,376 for penalty
$922 for attorney fees

Wow – couldn’t and shouldn’t  ALL THAT PUBLIC MONEY have gone for all the backlog of city needs – roads, parks, sewers, real planning for sound projects – you know, the kind of RESPONSIBLE money management that is ongoing in all the other transparent and accountable cities that surround us. Other local cities are not embroiled in insane lawsuits and recall campaigns based on a dictator mayor’s paranoia and illusions of grandeur.

When will someone get the courage to TIE ATKINS’ HANDS AND GAG HIS MOUTH TILL THE NEW CITY MANAGER GETS HERE? Better yet, why not just kick his ass to the curb and appoint a  temporary manager?  NOTHING could be worse than the damage Atkins has done – can Molalla risk another day of this abuse and insider trading?

My big dog Teddy would be happy to come down and pretend to manage – he can’t talk or sign anything so no more horrific waste of public funds could happen and no more self-serving lies could come from the city manager’s office!

And, when will the Council get the courage to CANCEL THE TICKET of the really, really, REALLY BAD LAWYER CREAN who has cost the city HUNDREDS OF THOUSAND OF DOLLARS IN BAD ADVICE?

Never forget: The financial records of Molalla are FILLED with HUGE BILLS from Crean for the now totally failed and denied urban reserve planning. If nasty Crean had had his way, the half a million planning deficit would still be growing so Crean could flit and flutter around real policy makers and continue to lose at LCDC.

I have a hilarious public record from DLCD where a top state official calls Crean a “JERK” in an internal email. I have shared that with City Councilors – WHY IS “JERK” CREAN STILL WORKING FOR MOLALLA AFTER YEARS OF BAD ADVICE AND FAILED LEGAL CAMPAIGNS?

What does having a “jerk” for a lawyer tell the world about Molalla?

The best news I am hearing is that NEPOTISM LOVING, DICTATOR MAYOR CLARKE is seeing the writing on the wall: with an honest, savvy new manager coming and  with the current  pro-active Council,  there aren’t going to be more insider trading chances to steer Molalla into the DITCHES OF FAILURE TRYING TO APPEASE CLARKE’S GOOD OLD BOY CABAL OF GREED.

I hear Clarke will throw in the towel and not run for mayor again. Maybe we could get really lucky and Clarke will resign because he can’t take being odd man out (and he will be REALLY ODD MAN OUT in the new configuration of city management!).

You would truly have to be a fool to try to defend in public the “record” of Clarke’s ridiculous, ignorant reign. His LOL letter to County trying to buck the certain defeat of the urban reserve is enough to make a voter gag (he sounds like the petty dictator of some tiny banana belt backwater trying to make a deal with a real country!).

I almost hate to see Clarke fail to run because any attempt to be re-elected would produce such vitriol from those of us who have the files, facts and the timeline of Clarke’s “we built houses” disaster. And if he is stupid enough to try to run, he would have to appear in public and debate – oh, please, can we see DICTATOR CLARKE stutter, shuck and jive and tell some more lies in public debates! Laughs ahoy!

Dictator Clarke’s “stuff em in” pseudo economic policy is fast unraveling at his walk of shame feet: 200 houses sitting empty in Molalla and one out of every 160 houses got a foreclosure notice in July alone and a so-called “downtown” that looks like ghetto deluxe.

Heap on this new, abject loss of city funds to  plannin’ guy Potter – the uneducated in planning, local ex-cop buddy of nepotism lovin’ dictator Clarke – who alienated every person he met and trashed Molalla for decades via the worst urban non-design known to man.

City of Molalla: land of no sidewalks and dead end streets! Land of no trees, no parks and no open space. Land of no SDCs. Land of decay and blight. Land of unpaved or inadequate streets. Land of dangerous ditches. Land where “aspirational planning” tanked the budget and stole any future. Thank the good old boy VULTURES!

Thanks for the decay and blight, Clarke! Is your vulture belly full of destruction yet? Are you happy you ran Molalla’s future into the ground? Have you and your greedy good old boy cabal picked the public coffers bare enough yet? Are your Vulture bellies full yet? Fly out-of-town, because there isn’t much to gnaw at anymore, you picked the bones of the city clean. PHEW!

Enjoy the empty crumbling storefronts, the drunks in the copious dirty bars, the pawnshop, the gunshop – all are signs of the lowest a city can go before it entirely disappears and becomes a Ghost Town.

But hey, death and blight are things that VULTURES love! They swoop in and pick the bones and guts out of their prey and then fly away to find some other dead thing to pick on, leaving a gutted hulk for others to clean up.

The clean up after dictator mayor Clarke’s IGNORANT CARNAGE will be horrific, especially since he never understood a thing about demographics or the current economy which favors Metro areas over tiny, decayed boxcanyonville GHETTOS like Molalla.

But sometimes VULTURES eat something that doesn’t agree with them.

When Molalla Vulture poison in the forms of new leadership (a united, informed Council), demands for transparent, accountable government, COMPETENT, TRAINED CITY EMPLOYEES (County Contract Planning and the new City Manger) and ongoing outrage over NEPOTISM hit the public’s radar screen, little petty dictators like Clarke will bite the dust – or be kicked to the curb.

Behind closed doors, fact twisting, failed government by petty dictators like mayor Clarke can’t survive the light of day in modern America – and the glare of the spotlight on DICTATOR Clarke is getting brighter in Molalla every day!

Let’s haze the Vultures out of Molalla!

Good bye to bad rubbish!

RIP MOLALLA GOOD OLD BOYS:

It’s funny to hear the stories about the Molalla Troglodytes making their last stands before civilized leadership in the form of young, savvy, educated Ellen Barnes takes over as City Manager in October.

The Molalla Troglodytes are up in arms – she was not their choice. They can see that their forms of influence peddling, insider trading, nepotism and unethical use of public funds (promoting private gain for land speculators at public expense – and LOSING!) are about to come to an abrupt halt at city hall.

Ms.  Barnes is an exceptionally brave woman to even take on the challenge of “managing” those warring Troglodytes.

In the meantime, anyone who got the paper yesterday can join me in gagging over the picture of failed city manager Atkins – the worst of the Troglodytes – getting an award from Troglodyte war chief “mayor” Clarke.

Pray tell, what could you put on an award plaque for a nasty piece of work like Atkins who “managed” to alienate just about everyone around?

You could say:

Thanks for driving Molalla into over $500,000 in deficit spending doing the work of the Troglodyte land speculators and the fake planner, only to get a great big DENY!

Thanks for your inability to foster diverse citizen participation and always defaulting to the same tired, greedy losers who by and large don’t even live in the city limits (more on that later in the post).

Thanks for never personally investing in the Molalla community – you always lived somewhere else and never had a stake or interest in the long-term health of the Molalla community.

Thanks for leaving a deeply angry and divided city – with ugly threats now going on from all sides. You were a TOTAL FAILURE AT BUILDING CONSENSUS!

Thanks for failing to connect Molalla to the greater world of ideas: You failed miserably to lead the city into compliance with State and County goals. You failed to educate the city about where it actually stands in the current deeply depressed economy (hint: off the beaten path failed resource based bergs like Molalla don’t have a rosy future and HONEST managers would work to promote realistic goals – NOT  pie in the sky new roads or giant border expansions, not movie houses and high end steak houses!).

Thanks for always doing your best to thwart public information sharing, accountability and transparent government.

Thanks for playing favorites with information and for retaining a low ball law firm that ripped the city off over and over again with BAD ADVICE.

Thanks for totally ignoring the needs of the citizen investors who suffer the highest foreclosure rates because they live in the lowest quality city. (Maybe the Sunrise Acres residents could present nasty Atkins with a video of their outrage at the “you pay for your own city streets road repair” meeting this spring – that certainly was a GREAT example of what the real, suffering people of Molalla feel about Atkins: no plaques, just pitchforks to run him out-of-town!).

Thanks for failing to implement even one quality of life change – no new parks, no significant neighborhood road repairs, sidewalks or bike routes were funded, let alone built, during Atkins time around the Troglodyte camp fire. Atkins and the Troglodytes just took their spears and tried to bully the County and State – and they LOST!

Thanks for watching the city turn into a downtown business ghost town: Atkins was so busy with pie in the sky garbage I guess he didn’t notice the stores were going out of business so fast it makes our heads spin.

And, most of all, thanks for leading the city into a mess when you offered a 3 month severance package to the fake planner without asking the Council FIRST. That alone should have been enough to immediately boot your ass out to the gutter!

In short, thanks Atkins for hogging a giant paycheck while you helped set the fires that now make Molalla burn with anger. Now you can ride away in the sunset laughing all the way to the bank, leaving decay and blight behind for others to deal with.

And did you know: Atkins had the gall at the citizen’s committee considering the final four city manager candidates to ask in public if Molalla was “ready” for a woman city manager!

Talk about a sexist and a leading question. PHEW! I guess the idea of a smart, savvy, educated, young woman leader must be scaring the faith based greedy local Troglodytes?

After Atkins, Molalla would be ready for a dog or a monkey to “manage” – at least animals wouldn’t know how to spend and make secret deals that put the city in deficit spending or into potentially libelous situations.

At a meeting last night, a  woman who had the unfortunate experience of trying to participate in the comp plan hearings (where the lawyer Atkins kept retaining LIED to the citizens and said the city “has to do this comp plan” – I was surprised the “lawyer’s pants didn’t start to burn with that statement!) shook her head and said “Was it really only 4 years Atkins was here? It seemed more like 8, it was SO BAD”.

And speaking of the so-called “citizens committee” chosen by Atkins to interview the city manager candidates, of the 11 “citizens” asked to participate, only 1 or 2 lived in the city limits.

Of the 11 people chosen by Atkins, fully 7 were BUSINESS OWNERS WHO DID NOT LIVE IN THE CITY LIMITS.

There were no people on the “citizen’s committee” who represented Sunrise Acres or Big Meadow. There were no Hispanic names on the panel. There were no senior citizens on the committee.

I can hardly wait to trot out that list of “citizens” next time anyone has the gall to complain about people “outside” the city limits making comments about how the city does or doesn’t function! If ever there was proof of “cherry picking” from OUTSIDE THE CITY LIMITS that list will stand as the best evidence ever!

That committee was simply mostly same tired retreads from TEAM and the planning commission: people whose only interest is to get their hands into the wallets of the city residents so they can drive out-of-town to ‘SOMEWHERE ELSE’ at the end of the day.

Most of those out of towners aren’t worried about the long commutes of the trapped working people or about the lack of parks for the families or that the kids risk falling in giant ditches and don’t have safe ways to walk or bike around town: They ONLY CARE about GETTING THE MONEY. Or TAKING THE MONEY AND RUNNING LIKE ATKINS!

But the good news is that Ellen Barnes quietly but firmly explained at the Monday open house that she believes in and works hard to achieve DIVERSE CITIZEN INVOLVEMENT. She said she made the Gold Beach city council get out and meet the people – all the people, not just the business class. She believes in transparent government and in honest newsletters to report the state of the city. Wow! Can you imagine those things happening in Molalla?

So mark your calendars and watch the Greedy Troglodytes cast around for the next month as their influence peddling starts to fade into the sunset. I can hardly wait to see what new eyes and ears uncover in the Atkins Troglodyte files at city hall. Given the things I have uncovered with struggle in the past, I bet it won’t be pretty.

Good luck Ellen Barnes – you already are the ONLY one who deserves an award plaque for coming to meet and “work with” the Troglodytes. But anyone who has been outside of Decayville Molalla has the upper hand over the Troglodytes because they are not a worldly bunch. Troglodytes only can survive by controlling the message and that is surely about to end!

So a “good riddance to bad rubbish, hale and hearty farewell: how fast can you get out of town?“  to nasty, “I play favorites”, failed “manager” Atkins. I don’t know if the city can handle the whole truth about the damage you have done but I sure hope the whole story is told in detail someday. We want to hear about EVERY UGLY SKELETON YOU HAVE ATTEMPTED TO HIDE!

Sadly, the money is long gone and now the city will have to suffer for years to come! No amount of Molalla good old boy Troglodyte spear thrashing will make a difference now – all that is left is cheap posturing and empty slogans around the dying campfire of failure.

It truly looks like the end of the Troglodyte era – the truth about Molalla’s prospects might not be pretty but truth is FAR BETTER than the jingos and the waste of public funds perpetuated by Atkins trying to keep up the fraud that Molalla is growing: Molalla is ONLY growing foreclosures and blight!