Wow! Today's Peninsula Daily News reads like a sort of Greatest Hits of Port Angeles shit. So many familiar themes that come up over and over again. Readers can be forgiven for feeling a sense of deja vu when seeing headlines like...
Woman hit by car in Port Angeles dies
One you've seen before, and will doubtlessly see again, no matter how many City Council members stick their head in the (freshly pounded) sand is...
Port Angeles declares water shortage alert
And then there's the headline that, in classic PDN style, contains a typo that actually makes it both more sad and more true...
Peninsula gains job - but average pay down
I do have to wonder who the lucky person was who gained that one job the headline refers to. Good for them! As for the rest of the town, it's pretty bleak, what with wages down and all. Partly that's due to forces beyond any one person's control, but it's also partly due to local leaders actively working to keep wages down in Clallam County.
Leaders like, say, Randy Johnson, who is touted by local hack Laurel Black in a letter to the editor.
Then, in an attempt to get at those larger forces supposedly leading Port Angeles - and America - down the road to ruin, there's also a letter from Glenn Wiggins attacking Hillary Clinton, for being corrupt. I guess a connected and corrupted good old boy like Glenn ought to know what he's talking about, eh?
All in all, what with the old men being touted, the old men attacking, and the old stories cycling around for another go...It really is deja vu all over again.
We added a job!
ReplyDeleteIt's another GREAT day in Port Angeles! Whoo-hoo!
I will partly disagree with this: "As for the rest of the town, it's pretty bleak, what with wages down and all. Partly that's due to forces beyond anyone person's control... "
ReplyDeleteYes, this is partly correct. But, as has been written about here so much over the past year or more, most of the problems in Port Angeles are the result of bad decisions, made by the sad excuses we see calling themselves the local leadership.
Anyone who goes outside of Port Angeles sees communities that are thriving and vibrant. Real estate doing very well, businesses growing, and people out enjoying their lives.
But in Port Angeles, it is just one story after another of bad news of one kind or another. A few posts back, you raised the questions about the lack of "quality of life", a quote from NOAA when explaining why they decided not to move their west coast operations facilities to Port Angeles. They didn't want to subject their employees to Port Angeles.
Within that thread was the recounting of when it was proposed yto plant trees on the main roads leading into town, in an effort to improve appearances. That was voted down, because council members were so short sighted, they thought it would cost them money to clean up fallen leaves. Being morons with no vision, they couldn't understand that improving appearances increases property values and tax revenues.
There are so many examples of how the areas' "leadership" has failed the community, and we see the results, every day.
Believe me, I wasn't letting the (lack) of local leadership off of the hook. I just wanted to make the point that Port Angeles is also subject to laws, forces and changes that occur outside of its boundaries - despite the provincial thinking of some. The fact that Port Angeles continues to fall behind and out of step with that outside world, as well as having those embracing the backwards ways, means the community is doubly hobbled.
DeleteSorry, I didn't mean to say you were letting the locals off the hook. I mean, really!
DeleteThe song retains the lame...
ReplyDeleteThe Turd Tank is going to cost us at least $50 million. The CSO problem it addresses could have been fixed, not treated, but FIXED, for far less than that.
ReplyDeleteImagine if instead the city had not only FIXED the problem for less money, but had then spent half that amount on building a reservoir or two. Then we'd have a cleaner environment, a problem solved, a waterfront without the Turd Tank, less debt, and an increased capacity to deal with water shortages and climate change.
But no. We got the Turd Tank, we got the fake beach, and we got the debt. The only place the city went low budget on us was, ironically, the 8th St. bridges and proper barriers. Now we've got the debt, the jumpers, the Turd Tank and visual blight, and less ability to deal with any and all problems - because of the massive debt.
Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. But our city leaders can't even seem to meet that low bar. They do everything wrong, every time.
From Politico today:
ReplyDelete"If Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton sometimes seem like they’re talking about two different Americas, there’s a reason: Their voting bases pretty much live in two different Americas. Clinton voters are concentrated in cities, in the nation’s denser and more diverse areas; Trump voters dominate rural areas and America’s wide-open landscapes.
As a lot of political observers have noted, Trump’s grim-sounding language about a downcast America makes more sense if you realize just what’s happening for his rural base. And buried in the Census Bureau’s new report on income, poverty and health insurance, released Tuesday, are two piece of further bad news for rural America—trends that could keep shaping politics well after November’s election.
For Americans living in metropolitan areas, inflation-adjusted household income rose by 6 percent from 2014 to 2015—a robust bounce back from the recession. But for those living outside those areas¬—totaling more than 40 million Americans—household income actually fell by 2 percent. The numbers on poverty reveal a similar trend. The number of people in poverty in rural areas did fall by 800,000, but that doesn’t appear to be because people are escaping poverty: Instead, people are simply leaving. The rural population, in that span of time, declined by five million people. Taken in total, the rural poverty rate actually rose slightly, by 0.2 percentage points. In the rest of country, the poverty rate declined by 1.4 percentage points.
The Census numbers come atop other findings about the worsening plight of rural Americans: they also face increasing addiction rates and increasing suicide rates. But Tuesday’s Census reports reveals just how unevenly distributed the economic recovery has been. Cities have bounced back, but the gains haven’t spread to those Americans."
Sounds like a spot-on description of Port Angeles, right down to the suicides.
But - serious question - do the leaders of Port Angeles consider it to be rural? Or, do they see the town as the "cosmopolitan" center of a rural county?
DeleteSame old stories, same old question: what are each of us gonna do about it?
ReplyDeleteLaurel Black's opinion is good enough for me. Vote for whoever is running against whoever she is supporting.
ReplyDeleteThey just fixed the typo a few minutes ago...The job is now jobs.
ReplyDeleteAs of...|Wed Sep 14th, 2016 4:13pm|
Off topic, but for those following, and those that care about the waters off our coast, Victoria voted near unanimously on a plan to build a tertiary treatment system.
ReplyDeleteAfter decades of political idiocy, the city was forced into accepting having the process almost completely taken out of their hands, and the plan was drawn up by a Provincially appointed "Project Board".
The City had to have a specific plan approved by Sept. 30th, or lose $500 million in funding.
Everyone but one was all smiles today, and gave themselves a round of applause after the historic vote.
Tyler
Also today, the Chamber of Commerce released a grandiose "draft" of a "5-year Strategic Plan." Don't bother wading through the morass of empty rhetoric. It all boils down to the very last word in the doc: "incentives". Meaning that the grand "Plan" is to keep on whoring for grants in the hopes of generating a measurable economy.
ReplyDeleteSame sad song indeed.
And what's so tragic about the grant-whoring is that with this inherent carrot-dangling, outsiders control what goes on here.
Plus it ain't nothing but socialism/welfare for the businesses that do the whoring. What great entrepreneurs, unable to generate revenue without sucking the big teet.
Like so many other topics revealed here (and only here), the abject lack of vision (aside from spotting a good tree to fell) is our local problem. The driving out of Microsoft, and all the other inquiries made which were guaranteed to bring in some money, is what holds this place back. As in backwater.
But that's just the way we like it here.
If you've got an electronic copy of that drafty draft, I'd certainly appreciate it if you could email it to me here. Just to stay up to date on the latest grant whoring technology, doncha know.
DeleteThey shoe-horned it in on the front page of their web site (portangeles.org).
DeleteNot a .pdf, but a "downloadable" Word doc!