Your Daily Patella-Saturday's Installment, Part Four

[Chief]

http://www.westerndredging.org/cgi-bin/mail.cgi/archive/Local/20070713213913/

http://i128.photobucket.com/albums/p184/thejoerebel/bob4rv.jpg

Date: July 13th, 2007

Don’t let the tax and spend rascal’s tax you out of your home.

Reason #4:

Information provide by the Port is sketchy and inconsistent. Example: When asked at the 3 public meetings the port held in its attempt to convince the voter that increasing their property taxes 132% was a good deal, Larry Paulson, when asked, why not sell the land to private developers, have them pay to develop it. It would keep the property on the property tax rolls. He responded, the port did not want private business controlling huge section of the area the port wants developed and then place an industry on the land that will only require a few employees.

We now read in the columbian that the Port wants to lease, (before we even have a chance to vote) some 50 acres to Rappaport to build a 2nd ethanol plant that will only employ 40 people. That equates to 1 job for each 1.25 acres leased. With 2 ethanol plants, the port will have committed approximately 100 acres, almost half of the 218 acres they want to purchase and create only 80 jobs. If my math is correct, and if the port continues along that path job creation could be as low as 175 not the 6000 being advertised.

Note: In yesterdays columbian, they reported that Rappaport’s Ethanol Plant was going to create 100 jobs. Not too bad how the columbian created 60 more jobs overnight.

You may have noticed at each of the Port Commissioners Public meetings, the commissioners could not answer the questions being asked by the public. Although touted as a meeting with the commissioners, Larry Paulson after the first question took over the microphone and conducted the meetings, answering the all the questions asked. Shouldn't the Commissioners have known all the details before they voted to impose the 132 % tax increase. There was no dialogue between the voters and the elected commissioners. Why?

Note: The attack dogs are starting to come out of the woodwork. Citizens for a Strong Economy are putting up signs (they must have lots of money). We can only hope they are not using our tax dollars to help them take more tax dollars away from us. But we have something more precious than money. Our NO Vote.
A No Vote is a must. At the rate our property taxes are increasing we will, in the not too distant future, no longer own our homes; we will be renting it from the Government. Take a look at what Voltaire said in 1764. Our current politicians have certainly mastered that art form of Government:

In general, the art of government consists
of taking as much money as possible from one
party of the citizens to give to the other.
- Voltaire (1764)

L. M. Patella
CDR USN (ret)

[Chief]

As is my usual practice, I will rebut this fool in depth, but I just have to get my first reaction in now.

What a load of crap. This time he is so far off base with his facts it is not even mildly amusing. This man is twisting facts around as he sees fit, with absolutely no regard for the truth. His recollections of those Commissioner Forums is also completely in opposition to the facts, I was at those meetings and I will be happy to find all of my notes and repost all of it once again.

The simple fact is that Larry Patella and his minions tried to monopolize those forums by attending all three; they asked the exact same questions at every one of the Forums; they received the same answers consistently every time, but still want to pretend that they were ignored.

The Port Commissioners are not as closely involved with the Day-to-Day operations as Executive Director Larry Paulson is. If you attend the meetings on a regular basis you will know that Larry Paulson has an impressive memory, and constantly has facts, figures, statistics, and important, current operational facts on the tip of his tongue. The Commissioners are not down on the docks every day, or out in the warehouses, or talking with the different managers of the many tenants that the Port has, like Director Paulson is every single day.

The Port Commissioners went to the effort to conduct all three of those Forums, although there is no requirement that they do so. I think they were all taken quite by surprise that the opposition to the IDD decision was so vehement, nasty, accusatory, demeaning, negative, and downright rude; especially considering that not one of the people who are bitching so loudly about all of this have ever shown their faces at one of the regular Commissioner meetings. They won't say that in public, because they have more tact than I do, which is why they are elected, and I (along with Larry Patella) are not.

This piece proves that Larry Patella has finally gone off of the deep end, and is willfully oblivious to the facts. His only source of information is his hated columbian, and since they only report part of the story, he is oblivious to the fact that he is completely wrong on this entire question. I can excuse someone who is mistaken about something if they are teachable, and are willing to consider that they don't know everything, and that it is OK to keep on learning things after you graduate from High School.

What I cannot, and will not excuse is someone who is willfully disregarding the truth, the facts, and is deliberately lying about an important public issue like Commander Patella is. This behavior is beneath a Retired, Senior Naval Officer. I take no pleasure in saying any of this, and in fact I regret like hell that it is necessary to continue beating on Larry Patella. But as long as he continues to peddle this swill around town, via email, to potentially several thousand people, I will continue to rebut it with the truth, and with fact.

More later, regretfully developing...

[Chief]

Don’t let the tax and spend rascal’s tax you out of your home.

Reason #4:

Information provide by the Port is sketchy and inconsistent. Example: When asked at the 3 public meetings the port held in its attempt to convince the voter that increasing their property taxes 132% was a good deal, Larry Paulson, when asked, why not sell the land to private developers, have them pay to develop it. It would keep the property on the property tax rolls. He responded, the port did not want private business controlling huge section of the area the port wants developed and then place an industry on the land that will only require a few employees.

The only thing on this page that is sketchy and inconsistent is Commander Patella's memory. Larry paulson did indeed use that analogy, but the entire example he used was, that the Port Commissioners wanted to avoid having a private company buy the Alcoa/Evergreen site in part because they wanted to avoid someone building 200 acres of warehouses that employed only 20 or so forklift drivers.

The other good reason for the Port to retain control of that land is because the Rail Access Project for the Columbia Gateway Project goes across a section of that property, along with the new access roads and overpasses. Take another look at the <a href="http://clarkblog.org/index.php/topic,1512.0.htmll">Port of Vancouver Alcoa Property - Conceptual Site Development Plan</a>. If you take a moment and look at the multiple views that the Port provided us in that presentation, you can clearly see the new infrastructure that the Port will provide to service that site, you will realize that no private company would ever consider anything of that scope, and that nothing about those images is eiter "sketchy" or "inconsistent" as the Commander implies.

The supporting infrastructure is exactly what the Washington State Legislature expected and required the Port Commissioners to consider, when they wrote the laws that define how the Port shall do business. I have multiple reading sources on that posted in "The Law" here at Clarkblog, and I encourage you to go read them. You might be surprized at how direct the wording is, and how clearly the Commissioner's duties are defined.

We now read in the columbian that the Port wants to lease, (before we even have a chance to vote) some 50 acres to Rappaport to build a 2nd ethanol plant that will only employ 40 people. That equates to 1 job for each 1.25 acres leased. With 2 ethanol plants, the port will have committed approximately 100 acres, almost half of the 218 acres they want to purchase and create only 80 jobs. If my math is correct, and if the port continues along that path job creation could be as low as 175 not the 6000 being advertised.

Note: In yesterdays columbian, they reported that Rappaport’s Ethanol Plant was going to create 100 jobs. Not too bad how the columbian created 60 more jobs overnight.

Clearly the Commander has failed or refused to read up on the pertinent details of what he is trying to discuss. He is mixing pieces of different issues, the ethanol plants of two different companies, and the additional biodeisel fuel refinery, along with his own type of "arithmetic", along with mis-quotes from his arch enemy the columbian to make yet another belabored point.

He is completely wrong on his facts, and I am not going to demonstrate it all over again. I have repeatedly cited the proper sources in Parts I, II, and III; the same references still apply, and I think it is clear to even a casual reader that nothing he says in this section is valid in any way.

You may have noticed at each of the Port Commissioners Public meetings, the commissioners could not answer the questions being asked by the public. Although touted as a meeting with the commissioners, Larry Paulson after the first question took over the microphone and conducted the meetings, answering the all the questions asked. Shouldn't the Commissioners have known all the details before they voted to impose the 132 % tax increase. There was no dialogue between the voters and the elected commissioners. Why?

He jumped in because of you, and people like you Larry, who were hostile, nasty, rude, accusatory, confrontational, and very, very insistant on not accepting any answer from the Commissioners. I was there Larry, remember??

Nancy Baker's Forum was a good example. As nice as she is, and as open as she is, you and your minions overwhelmed that lady and mobbed her with your confrontational and unreasonable lines of questioning. You people had a "yeah but" for every answer she gave, or would come right back at her with the same question presented from another angle, or would ask some question that was based on a completely mistaken premise that really only the Executive Director is qualified to answer.

People were asking the Commissioner financial questions, and the Port Auditor Maggie Smith jumped in to answer those questions too. Why aren't you bitching about that too, Commander??

It was not a matter that the Commissioners could not answer the questions Larry, it was a fact that the entire Senior Port Staff was on hand to address the specifics of people's questions. If someone could give a better answer than the Commissioner could, I think it was a plus that we could get the accurate answer, right from the person who was directly managing that specific aspect of day-to-day Port Operations; and I am grateful that the Commissioners were wise enough to have the Staff on hand, and gracious enough to yield the floor at their Forum, to let the Port Staff interact directly with the Public.

Try that at City Council Larry. See if you can interact with the Mayor directly, and have Lloyd Tyler on hand and eager to jump in to that conversation, and take all of the time that is needed to answer your particular questions.

Note: The attack dogs are starting to come out of the woodwork. Citizens for a Strong Economy are putting up signs (they must have lots of money). We can only hope they are not using our tax dollars to help them take more tax dollars away from us. But we have something more precious than money. Our NO Vote.
A No Vote is a must. At the rate our property taxes are increasing we will, in the not too distant future, no longer own our homes; we will be renting it from the Government. Take a look at what Voltaire said in 1764. Our current politicians have certainly mastered that art form of Government:

In general, the art of government consists
of taking as much money as possible from one
party of the citizens to give to the other.
- Voltaire (1764)


Well, at least you had the decency to stop quoting Ronald Reagan (and mis-spelling his name...)

Here we go again with the wild accusations, only now it is "Citizens For a Strong Economy" that the Commander thinks is in bed with some government agency who may be feeding them out tax dollars (and presumably without a "Vote by the People" too...).

Again it is not the strength of the Commander's proof, it is the seriousness of the charge that counts in the Commander's mind. Cute little catch phrase that the Commander is using these days, and I wonder if we will see it pop up soon in some of Jerry Oliver's campaign literature, or on his website; since Commander Patella is one of Mr. Oliver's Campaign Advisors in his quest to unseat Commissioner Arch Miller.

Good luck with that strategery there Jerry, and I will be looking deeper into that particular issue this weekend...

Folks, this has become quite tiresome. Yesterday I wrote over 2500 words on part III, the day before I wrote 1500 words on Part II. I have no intention of shooting for 5000 today, because thi sMoon-battery simply doesn't warrant that much more attention.

You are entitled to your opinions, but you cannot have your own set of facts. I hope that readers of this blog will take the time to do a little reasonable analysis of what Patella is saying, and discount anything he tells you about the Port of Vancouver. He clearly does not know what he is talking about, he is deliberately ignoring factual data, and is cherry pciking for details that match his workd-view agains the Port, and blowing them completely out of proportion in an effort to reinforce whatever point he thinks he is making.

Anyone who urges anyone to vote based on what Larry Patella tells them is misinformed at the very least, and complicit in spreading what amount to outright lies at the very worst. The mis-information campaign that these opponents of the IDD are waging is absolutely shameful, and you people ought to be embarrassed to identify yourselves with this kind of tripe. Writing and spreading this kind of inflammatory and irrational garbage is not something to celebrate as just another Senior Citizen exercising their right to free speech.

This man is out trying to influence a very important public issue, one that is on the Official ballot that is going to be mailed out in 19 days or so. Larry Patella is lying to people here in Vancouver and it has to be stopped, or at the very least rebutted every time he does it.

Don't buy into this garbage my friends.

[Chief]

I have another thought on those Commissioner Forums that the Port conduced....

At each one of the Forums, the Port's Communications Staff stood at the front of the room with an easel that had a large pad of blank white paper on it. One of the staff stood there, and wrote down every single question that was asked at each one of the Forums.

I will make an inquiry to the Port, to see if they have a summary of those questions that is suitable or available for release. The Columbia Crossing Project did the same thing at their Public meetings and have those results collated and available at thier website for review. Such a report form the Commisioer Forums would go a long way toward proving the repetitive nature of the questions at those fourms.

Developing...