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The definition of “Fascism” includes the control of information by a central leader – that means that the leader controls the public information so that the people follow blindly.
You can draw your own conclusions about how that above definition fits Molalla due to the newest action by “your” city:
In the past, the minutes from “your” City Council meetings were posted on the city’s website. That way, all citizens could have quick and easy access to public information about all the important decisions the elected officials make on their behalf.
Now, since the election of Mike Clarke as Mayor in November, there are ZERO POSTINGS OF CITY COUNCIL MINUTES ON THE PUBLIC WEBSITE! Citizens are told to go to city hall if they need the minutes!
How can Molalla expect to become competitive with other progressive, well run, local cities which ALL have open, honest and transparent city government?
It is very easy to compare how local cities value their citizens via a quick google search of local websites for Estacada, Silverton, and Sandy.
Estacada, a city with less that half the residents of Molalla, has a fantastic city website. ALL minutes of ALL public meetings are published in detail. The website makes you excited about Estacada – as do the sites for Silverton and Sandy. These sites obviously value their citizens by making city business highly transparent and accessible – UNLIKE MOLALLA.
So, again, why is Molalla so afraid of public information sharing?
What does Molalla wish to hide?
Why can’t Molalla city hall, which is FILLED WITH HIGHLY PAID CITY EMPLOYEES (that YOU pay for!) post City Council minutes on the web like ALL OTHER LOCAL CITIES DO?
Just take a google trip around to these other city websites and draw your own conclusions – if you had to use the information on the website to choose a place to live, a place to locate a business or a place to visit which cities would you choose based on the websites?
Molalla comes in far and away DEAD LAST in those questions per my “visits” to all these other vibrant city websites.
Molalla can’t pretend any longer that it will have any chance to be a viable city if it can’t even compete in the realm of city websites. In today’s world, fast, concise, and honest information sharing is key to a competitive future – and Molalla is falling backward by the day!
What are ALL THOSE HIGHLY PAID “WORKERS” AT CITY HALL DOING?
Why can’t they provide the basic information on the web that EVERY OTHER LOCAL CITY PROVIDES?
Can you afford to pay for that kind of DISRESPECT?
And – most important – what do they have to HIDE if they are too afraid to post a basic, honest, and transparent account of ALL CITY BUSINESS?
Our current worldwide crisis came from lack of accountability, lack of transparency, and “top down” government that refused to honor the needs of the public.
Your taxes to city government should BUY you a stake in the future here – what are “YOUR” CITY WORKERS AND “YOUR” ELECTED OFFICIALS DOING TO HONOR YOUR INVESTMENT – YOUR STAKE – IN MOLALLA’S FUTURE?
Dear Pathetic Taxpayers of Molalla,
We are the HIGHLY PAID CITY WORKERS of Molalla. Let me tell you, this is a fantastic place to work! The city (you taxpayers!) pay us HUGE SALARIES that are far higher then we deserve – far HIGHER than any of you enslaved private sector taxpayers could possibly get! We are so sorry that you can’t get a PORK BARREL job working for the City of Molalla, but unless you know somebody – like the big shot good old boys who run the town and who protect us special city workers and our HUGE salaries – you don’t have a shot!
Molalla runs on NEPOTISM. It is a wonderful system. All you have to do is know the “right people” and bingo! – you get a job with a cool title and a HUGE SALARY! I really love the “cool title” part – they don’t even care if we have the education or training to do the job. Then, once they hang the “cool title” on us, those “leaders” can be pressured to look at how the other local cities pay people with similar “cool titles” and we can get EVEN MORE MONEY!
Please, please don’t tell anyone that those people working in other cities get those “cool titles” and salaries based on performance and education – we wouldn’t want anyone looking too closely at that. And, for sure, never, ever let it get out that we all get to have OUR ENTIRE HEALTH BENEFIT PACKAGE paid for by you dumb taxpayers!
So, you clueless and pathetic taxpayers, thanks so much for looking the other way about how Molalla is run. We “cool title” city workers sure hope you are all working overtime on your sad private sector jobs, because it is costing more and more to keep the Molalla NEPOTISM afloat. We need your money badly and we could never get this kind of FREE RIDE anywhere else, so keep those bucks coming!
And never, ever complain about our INCOMPETENCE and HUGE SALARIES. I know other cities have professional planners, city managers who respect the public, competent clerks, and websites that clearly post all public information. But since we run on NEPOTISM, there is little chance of anything professional happening here anytime soon.
So don’t go to our Molalla website looking for honest information because we are either too lazy, too incompetent or have too much too hide to post PUBLIC information there! We wouldn’t want you reading about the City Council actions, or the Budget Committee actions, or the Urban Renewal actions because you taxpayers might start to notice the dumb and corrupt stuff we do and – God forbid! – OBJECT AND REVOLT!
We certainly wouldn’t want you to read about the insane back biting and fussing about ‘LEAKS’ that seems to take up most of the City Council’s time. You might figure out that the Council is often more interested in KEEPING SECRETS FROM THE PUBIC than working to make Molalla a successful and vibrant city. Even we wonder sometimes what that crazy Council is worried about hiding – after all, isn’t the Council supposed to be working for ALL THE PEOPLE of Molalla?
We are a bit amazed that the MOLALLA CHAMBER OF COMMERCE looks the other way about all of NEPOTISM AND INCOMPETENCE. Maybe the Chamber is so hooked up with the good old boys that it doesn’t dare to complain that Molalla is in the Dark Ages compared to the way local, successful cities are run?
Maybe the Chamber is just happy spinning its wheels and watching Molalla continue its sad, downward spiral? We certainly don’t care what happens to you PATHETIC TAXPAYERS or about the FUTURE of Molalla, as long as Molalla NEPOTISM PROTECTS OUR HUGE SALARIES, UNHEARD OF BENEFITS, AND OUR UNDESERVED “COOL TITLES”.
Keep up the great work, you DUMB TAXPAYERS. We hope we don’t BLEED YOU COMPLETELY DRY! Like vampires, we feed on you to stay alive!
Laughing all the way to the bank,
MOLALLA CITY EMPLOYEES
URGENT MESSAGE! CRIMINALS COMING TO STEAL JOBS FROM HONEST CITIZENS!
The council is approving a plan for slave prison labor to come to WORK HERE – TO STEAL CITY WORKER JOBS!
What do you think about that – couldn’t you or your children use a JOB HERE?
Tell the city not to use SLAVE LABOR!
Gee – Molalla City Hall might be setting RECORDS for how often citizens have to contact the County District Attorney to view simple PUBLIC DOCUMENTS!
Be aware Molalla – City Hall is taking lessons from North Korea on how to suppress public interaction. Maybe that is where the City Recorder went for “training”?
I am now almost on a first name basis with the DA. If anyone out there knows how to register Molalla City Hall for an award for the most paranoid, most secret, or most interfaces with the District Attorney over PUBLIC INFORMATION, let me know as I am keeping a running “tab”of outrageous suppression of PUBLIC RECORDS.
Take a look at the next year budget that is at the library for Molalla.
Look for the SDC accounting for past years for sewers, roads, parks, etc.
What you will find is a bunch of columns of zeros for all the boom years. What happened to ALL THOSE PUBLIC FUNDS that are, by law, supposed to be accounted for EACH CALENDAR YEAR?
Did the city “forget” to collect them from developers?
Did “plannin” fail to impose the fees – or did “plannin” simply make “special deals” with developers for “in kind” work so no real money EVERY GOT ACCOUNTED FOR?
Silverton, at the drop of a hat, forwarded YEARS of detailed accounting for all their system development charges.
Molalla had to be contacted by the Clackamas County DA when it failed to honor a request to see past accounting for SDC’s – now it is apparent why it took months to produce even bogus numbers – because there are no records!
How can anyone pay taxes to a city that can’t account for YEARS OF PUBLIC FUNDS THAT BY LAW ARE SUPPOSED TO BE ACCOUNTED FOR EACH YEAR IN DETAIL – and those funds are, by law, supposed to be used only for the funds they were collected for – like park SDC’s to parks.
The park fund is a JOKE – how sad that people looked the other way while “someone” allowed the funds to disappear. Where oh where could all those $$$$$$$$$’s be? Years and years of SDC $$$$$$$$$’s unaccounted for!!!!!
Hey – speaking of transparency – has anyone heard a word out of the supposed “leaders” of Molalla lately about the state of the city? What DO those pathetic “elected” folks do – or are they all incapable of picking up a pen or hitting a computer key and telling us all how great a job they are doing?
Oh, I get it – maybe they are SILENT because they aren’t doing such a hot job for Molalla – otherwise they would be communicating via letters, op-eds, town halls, etc to keep us all informed about the state of the City.
How about it Mayor Clarke and your band of mute followers – how about some words of wisdom to assure us that we live in a place where “leaders” actually know how to speak and write and think – REAL LEADERS have opinions and REAL LEADERS share their opinions freely.
The SILENCE is deafening.
I found a funny statement on the Molalla River Alliance website. City Manager John Atkins is one of a two person “outreach ” committee to promote the Molalla River. One of the goals of this two person committee is stated as follows:
“Distinguishing cultural, economic and political influences which may contribute threats to, or may enhance opportunities for, the Molalla River;”
I wonder if Atkins/Molalla River Alliance have ever heard of the concept of CONFLICT OF INTEREST?
How can the City Manager of a SPRAWL HUNGRY TOWN that pipes wastewater INTO THE RIVER, that has no valid interest in producing a detailed Goal 5 NATURAL RESOURCES REPORT or in protecting said resources, that is the most scoff law “pollution is traditional” (quote Ex- Mayor Tom Foster) city around, and that sees prime resource land as nothing but fit for the bulldozers for more ill-planned, parkless developments, even PRETEND with a straight face to be working on looking at “cultural, economic, and political threats” to the River?
How can the Alliance pretend that Molalla has any interest in anything but EXPLOITING the fragile resource that is the River? How can the Alliance pretend that Molalla’s growth dreams are anything but an EXTREME threat to ALL of the Molalla River, which is an eco system supported by lands and water features that cover many miles on all sides of the actual corridor?
It seems extremely disingenuous to give this obvious toss- off publicity shot to Atkins when Molalla has treated local lands and water ways as nothing but a sewer system/dump for years. Get the pipe out of the River, stop spraying waste water that is polluting ground water, show respect for ALL OUR NATURAL RESOURCES, tear up the Urban Reserves/UGB expansion plans, take care of the city problems, reform SDC’s so there is some MONEY to fix leaking and crumbling infrastructure and build CITY parks, Atkins – and then maybe someone could take your “outreach” seriously.
Respect has to be a two way street – and putting “Atkins” next to a statement like the one above while allowing the insane Urban Reserve map to stand shows what baloney this “outreach” really is. And when does the “Alliance” get the guts to weigh in on the Urban Reserves – or doesn’t it have the courage to contest that outrageous and outlandish city proposal to ultimately destroy 2,200 acres of prime resource lands while Molalla ignores 100’s of acres of brownfields and crumbling infrastructure – is it all about “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours”? Or “I’ll look the other way if you’ll play nice”?
Hasn’t the City of Molalla already EXPLOITED the local environment enough for a century? The future of the Molalla River should not be proffered as a publicity stunt for Atkins.
Oregon League of Conservation Voters (OLCV) rates “our” Rep “Vickie” Gilliam at a miserable 25% on the environment – but he is surpassed by the nasty 10% rating given to “our” Senator Fred Girod. I guess those big bucks polluters and foreign fossil fuels shills know whose palms to grease.
There was a fascinating story in the 9-27-09 Oregonian “After years in Oregon politics, Thornes find way home” about Mike, a former state senator, and his wife Jill Thorne.
My interest was on Jill’s activism in Pendleton, first on the urban renewal issues there, and then on a quest for transparency in government records.
After conflict in Pendleton regarding use of urban renewal funds, Jill launched into a huge search of public records, “spending 50 hours combing through 10,000 public documents”.
Her search “revealed that the minutes of Pendleton city Council and Development Commission meetings sometimes didn’t square with audiotapes”.
The conflict in Pendleton is ongoing. It was wonderful to read that citizens all around the state are looking city government square in the face and calling attention to the horrible lapses – or worse – that are rampant in government.
When I attended the LCDC Citizen’s Advisory meeting in Salem to outline the atrocities in “process” and citizen involvement in Molalla’s abusive plannin’ hearings and to hand deliver 6 local citizen’s accounts of their outrage over the lack of respect for citizen involvement in Molalla, I learned That LCDC is hard at work to improve citizen involvement. Molalla certainly has provided the perfect model of WHAT NOT TO DO.
In the months of trying to obtain information from Molalla regarding grants, comp plan files, and other public information, and after reading what is supposed to pass as written minutes after attending meetings in person, I believe the problems Ms Thorne is addressing in her city are the same as the ones we face with Molalla city government. If push comes to shove on important issues, it will be fascinating to compare the autio tapes to what the plannin’ dept has tried to pass off as written minutes. Ditto for most Council meetings.
Censorship is an anathema to honest, transparent public process. Inaccurate minutes, coupled with Molalla’s inability to account for years of SDC funds (where, oh, where are all the monies that SHOULD have been collected and accounted for each year?) point to a highly flawed government that seeks to morph the records to make them more “palatable”. Minutes disappear from websites in Molalla, and minutes to date never get corrected, even when citizens complain.
Let’s hope that this “inaccuracy” doesn’t come back to bite the city in the future. I guess the “inaccuracy” relates directly to the fact that the Council, Mayor, and City Manager much prefer to meet in closed door sessions. What do YOU know about Molalla City government – not much likely, since silence and doctored minutes are the way of the City.