by Eric Zubriski

UCC The Mainstream

This year’s commissioner’s forum for seats one and three began normally. Position one candidates Marilyn Kittelman, Susan Morgan and Patrick Starnes seated themselves to podium left while position three candidates John Ayer, Mike Folino, Rich Raynor and Doug Robertson moved to the right. And then things went a little sideways.

As soon as Ayer spoke, the slew of thank you’s, qualifications and compressed accounts of local political issues quickly faded from readers’ memories.

"I will tell you some more things the government has in store for you," Ayer began. "First of all, there is going to be a draft, [for ages] 18 to 42. That is going to take a lot of you out of the audience. You will be in the draft, you will go to school, or you will do community service."

Ayer had seized the audience’s attention, and he kept their attention with his next comment. "There are a lot of people who would rather stay home, draw unemployment, or maybe go to school, get some money from the government and still not work."

Ayer then shared his despairing employment predictions for those who are willing to work: "There is not going to be that many jobs unfortunately. Jobs are going to be very, very scarce because you got illegal aliens coming into the country, and they will work for nothing or for pickings of what you people work for."

Ayer did not pander to his student audience either; "The bigger colleges where you can’t pay, they are really dumbing down people."

He did, however, speak well of some of the audience: "You people, older people, have a better education than the young people of today. You have to admit that you know more, you have a better outlook on life, but the young people today have their hands outs. They want county services, they want state services, they want federal services," said Ayer.

Felino followed closely behind Ayer. He also discarded rhetorical nicety.

"Okay the big problem is all the red tape. You cut the red tape; we put people back to work. You put people back to work; they feel better and quit beating their kids, their wives and their old people. That is the answer. Cut the red tape and put people back to work," Felino announced in about

30 seconds of the minute and a half he was allotted.

The forum eventually gravitated toward Douglas County’s issues of the safety net and the economy.

Raynor explained, "We need to quit backing up when it comes to our timber harvest. You are going to keeping hearing about compromise, keeping people at the table, that sort of thing. The bottom line is we have been backing up for years. When you compromise and meet in the middle, you lose fifty percent of what you had, and by the time you’ve done it three times, you have lost ninety percent, and that is where we are.

"It’s time to stand up, and the county commissioners need to take the lead and restore our timber harvest. It will be the foundation of our county and our economy. We don’t have the flat ground for all the massive industrial development. It just isn’t going to be possible. There are a lot of high -tech jobs in the timber industry; it’s not just logging trees," said Raynor.

The issue of the county attractiveness as a place to live and work was also raised by Starnes who drew upon some unusual aquatic imagery: "Our number one export is our brightest and best minds; they leave every year in droves to the big ocean of universities in Seattle, Portland, Eugene and whatever. The best thing we can do is protect the habitat and hope they come back to spawn."

The ASUCC then probed the candidates about UTRANS, the public transit system that now services the college and surrounding cities.

County Commissioner Marilyn Kittelman replied, "Understanding that we are not going to be able to continue to fund transportation like we have been in the past, what we have agreed on unanimously is to put out an RFP, a request for proposal, to any non-profit that is interested. We are seeing one very interested, qualified candidate, and we are pretty confident that they will be able to take it over and that we can provide a good bussing system,"

Raynor then addressed global warming. "There is this thing in the sky called the sun, and, if you haven’t noticed, the higher it is above you the warmer it is, and there used to be something called an ice age. I am from Alaska; it all used to be covered with glaciers, and now they make a big deal about a glacier receding."

He transitioned to the topic of timber. "It all goes right back to timber. We have a natural resource here that will never, ever, end, if you do it properly. We ought to be able to take advantage of it," said Raynor.

Ballots were mailed May 2 and need to be postmarked by May 20.•