Letter: City ‘set barn on fire then put it out with gasoline’

Published 10:00 am Tuesday, October 20, 2020

To the Editor:

I attended the “work session” that the city of John Day (CJD) hosted with our Grant County Court (GCC) on Oct. 14. The CJD has chosen to set the barn on fire then put it out with gasoline. Let us put this into perspective. The CJD controls 23% of the population. The total numbers of taxpayers are less than that. Their boundaries are only 5% of the area in this mass county. They have chosen to overlook safety issues (airport road). Offering internet that Ortelco already has across the street and cheaper as I see it. The CJD is blaming the people of this vast county, mostly agriculture, for their unaccepting of an alternative of keeping the current pool open. This mind-boggling decision move lies directly on the CJD as well as the John Day-Canyon City Parks and Recreation District. I will also throw the John Day Swim Team organization into this fray, who has based their selfish emotional narrative by using children as props and now lost it for all.

The county court has chosen to keep this charade up and investigate these things “again.” I hope that the court will not put their emotions into this as they have in the past, and I heard some yesterday. They talked about intergovernmental cooperation, about spending without including outlying areas both north and south. Keep in mind there are a whole lot of intragovernmental issues that they need to fix as they still have not solved starting with the Canyon Creek fire. The next election cycle begins March 2021, or before.

Bob Pereira

John Day