To the Editor:

After reading your article “Court signs on for broadband,” I have come to the conclusion that our county court just got rolled over by the ever-aggressive city of John Day. The statement for passing was “Improve the lives of residents in the county.” This was a hurried decision by the county court to appease a special interest, and the two voting members need to reconsider and take all of the residents of this county into consideration. In the past couple years, they seem to put special interest groups ahead of the citizens. We all will be paying for this, and if we pay 60 percent of the liability, then the county should be the leading figure. What you did was create yet another government entity accountable to no one. There was no cost figured into it, antiquated method of delivery and, last but not least, the county should not be in competition in a private-run utility. Satellite delivery is going to be the future in internet and cellphones. Overhead lines are a thing of the past.

The city of John Day has taken action to get every grant, bond and community funding possible to fund its Seattle agenda. Not once, other than public safety, have I heard them cut funding to balance a budget. Like the county, I still haven’t seen any actual business model for this “Schumer” gateway project to be successful, and with all these grants only come more unfunded mandates. This, in turn, is their own whining reason for a budget-control issue. Like the 911 levy attempt, they went another route on the internet and were successful.

Maybe it is time to get a county political action committee to oversee a way to guide the county court. This way the rest of the county will have a say in decisions. And as a person who has voted to elect both court members who voted yes, I will not vote for them this fall, and I hope this encourages others to vote Judge Myers out. Maybe we can reverse this action, as we can leave this intergovernmental “agreement.”

Robert Pereira

John Day