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Page A4
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Opinion Editorial Suck it up
Twisp Mayor Bill Boosman is correct when he says that the job of mayor is not adequately compensated. There is a heavy pile of responsibilities overseeing staff and implementing policies set by the town council. It is a daunting task. Back during his campaign for the position last year, Mr. Boosman made the observation that the town might benefit from looking at restructuring its model to include a paid professional town manager to administer policy and oversee staff. “Our structure is dependent on virtually untrained, and almost unpaid volunteers,” he wrote in July 2009 in response to an interview question before the primary election. He was, no doubt, referring to the five town council positions and that of the mayor, for which he was running – the rest of the town staff are paid professionals. So it is curious that Mr. Boosman, presumably knowing that the mayor’s job involved very little financial compensation, would be surprised that he was not getting paid adequately for his time. (Similarly, when Mr. Boosman served on the Methow Valley School Board, he attempted to institute higher compensation for board members, claiming the responsibility of attending meetings was too taxing on his personal budget. The proposal was rejected by the board.) His July 2010 mayor’s report to the council (available at www.townoftwisp.com) reveals that he has misunderstood the spirit behind the mayoral stipend of $400 a month. In the report, Mr. Boosman starts with an assumption that he would be paid $25 an hour – “a reasonable rate (based on the importance of the position and relative to the department head rates subordinate to the mayor’s)” – then goes on to list the estimated time of various tasks over the course of a month, coming up with 64 hours a month, times $25 an hour or $1,600 a month. Well, that’s all reasonable math, but the job does not pay $25 an hour; it pays $400 a month. He knew that when he ran for the position. And while the hours are not specified anywhere, Mr. Boosman’s now-dashed assumption, as quoted in last week’s MVNews, that he would only need to work five hours a week seems ludicrous. That’s a bit of information the voters should have had last fall. Most of the issues that the mayor is facing – with the exception of a somewhat extraordinary number of personnel transitions in the last couple of months – are not new. Many have indeed been put on the back burner over the years and certainly the town could benefit from a proactive mayor or city manager that could spend more time working on some of the challenges facing the municipality. But by giving the town council an ultimatum – “Give me a raise or I quit” – Mr. Boosman has essentially turned his back on the community service that he signed up for when he was elected. He knew what he was going to be paid (not much) and he should have known what the job was going to entail (a lot). If he didn’t, he didn’t do his homework. He should suck it up and see his $400-a-month term through the next 15 months, and in the meantime, help the council work to set up a better model of town government to leave to his successor. With everything that the town council has to deal with right now, it should not have to worry about replacing the mayor and filling yet another council seat. There is some logic to his argument that, since the council is considering hiring a part-time administrative assistant to help the mayor with his tasks, why not just give him the money and allow him to do those tasks and be duly compensated? But while it may be logical, it comes across as being disingenuous. The town council has not ruled it out, though four motions at a special meeting Sept. 10 to offer the mayor more money died for lack of a second. The council wants to hear from the townsfolk. They will meet Tuesday (Sept. 28) at 7 p.m. at Town Hall. – John Hanron Send letters to: Methow Valley News, P.O. Box 97, Twisp, WA 98856; or fax: 509-997-3277; or e-mail: editor@methowvalleynews.com; or drop by the office, 101 N. Glover St. in Twisp.
Methow Valley News PUBLISHED WEEKLY SINCE 1903 101 N. Glover St., P.O. Box 97, Twisp, WA 98856 Telephone: (509) 997-7011 FAX: (509) 997-3277 E-mail: editor@methowvalleynews.com Homepage: www.methowvalleynews.com Paul Butler, PUBLISHER John Hanron, EDITOR Sue Misao, ARTS EDITOR Carol Stull, REPORTER Marcy Stamper, REPORTER Ann McCreary, REPORTER MIke Maltais SPORTS
Marilyn Bardin, OFFICE MANAGER Robin Doggett, AD SALES MANAGER Callie Fink, AD SALES Janet Mehus, OFFICE ASSISTANT Dana Sphar, AD DESIGN/PRODUCTION Linda Day, AD DESIGN Jay Humling, DISTRIBUTION CONTRIBUTORS
Bill Biddle, Erik Brooks, Tania Gonzalez Ortega, Sally Gracie, Patrick Hannigan, Jim & Jane Hutson, Rosalie Hutson, Ashley Lodato, Patrick McGann, Sam Owen, Bob Spiwak, Amy Stork, Solveig Torvik, Dave Ward, E.A. Weymuller Display advertising deadline for this newspaper is on the Friday previous to publication at 5 p.m. Classified advertising deadline is Monday at noon. The deadline for news items is Monday at noon. Member of the Washington Newspaper Publishers Association. THE METHOW VALLEY NEWS (USPS Publication No. 343480) is published weekly by Methow Valley Publishing, LLC, 101 N. Glover St., Twisp, WA 98856. Subscription rates: $30 inside Okanogan County, $40 outside of Okanogan County and $50 outside of Washington State per year (in advance). Periodical class postage paid at Twisp, Washington, and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to THE METHOW VALLEY NEWS, P.O. Box 97, Twisp, WA 98856. THE METHOW VALLEY NEWS does not refund subscription payments except to the extent that the newspaper might fail to meet its obligation to publish each week of the individual subscription period, in which case the prorated cost of those issues missed would be refunded.
Box 97: Letters to the editor
Methow Valley News
Tania Gonzalez Ortega
One mad local Editor, Having been born and raised in Winthrop, and being an avid hunter all my life, I’m mad as hell that local and non-local bowhunters have no respect for “Hunting by permission only” signs. I am referring to the fact that seven vehicles invaded our property on opening morning of bow season and hunted on our property without permission. Not one of you bothered to call or ask. Now, with the opening of doe season, one of you hunting on our property without permission managed to put two arrow holes in the back of my shop building. Because of your lack of respect, I am closing off the property and road. This is why the hunting areas are shrinking in the Methow Valley. I do not like “No Trespassing” signs and have avoided taking this action, but due to your disregard of private property and your inability to ask, you will see many more private properties closing and owners following this pattern. John Northcott Winthrop
Wilderness protected To the editor: Birch Berman’s “Violations of the Pasayten” column (My Turn, Sept. 15) criticizing outfitters who pack into wilderness areas is disingenuous. He refers to the “untrammeled” character of the wilderness called for by the Wilderness Act. I assume he means untouched. He was an outfitter using burros for 25 years. Does he think that they left no trace? Hooves are pretty much going to disturb soil, whether they belong to deer, moose, donkeys or horses. Oh, and donkeys eat, too. If he has repented for taking stock into the wilderness he didn’t mention it in the column. He refers to the condition of the camps as evidence that something is “terribly wrong” and cites the current Okanogan Forest Plan’s standard for no more than 400 square feet of bare ground per campsite. That is inadequate for even a couple of animals and a tent. This unrealistic limitation is being addressed by the Forest Service. For perspective, 400 square feet is less than 1/100 acre. Even if campsites are 10 times that size, with more than half a million acres in the Pasayten Wilderness, each camp would affect less than .00002 percent of the wilderness area. By contrast, trails that Mr. Berman apparently wants every user to walk in on
occupy more than 15,000 square feet per mile. With more than 600 miles of trails, that amounts to over 200 acres of bare ground. Talk about trammeling! The areas of the Pasayten most desirable to visit are 15 miles or more from the wilderness boundary. As a healthy middle-aged person, I value the opportunity to access those areas. Outfitters provide that opportunity to a larger group than the few super-fit. I am acquainted with three of the local outfitters. The idea that they would allow filthy campsites is ridiculous – it would destroy their businesses. They work unbelievably hard in a grueling and hazardous occupation. They are the people I would hope would be nearby if I needed help while in the wilderness. I support reasonable regulation of this activity, but believe that our wilderness areas are abundantly protected. Let’s worry about the rest of the planet…. Gina McCoy Winthrop
Accept Islam or die! Editor, The World Trade Center and scores of Muslim-generated genocides have inspired America’s future values. Specifically, these hostile, imported religions must be preferred and enshrined in American law: 1. Jihadist or genocidal religions 2. Family honor-killing religions 3. Female oppressive religions 4. Random-terror religions 5. Suicide-bombing religions 6. Flogging, mutilating and amputating religions
7. The stoning of rape-victims religions 8. Beheading of dissidents religions 9. Harsh Sharia-law religions 10. Mob-action religions. 11. Forcible female circumcision religions. 12. Dhimmi-infidel-status religions. All these “noble” and progressive religions should be equal or better. Only the ACLU-banned Christian religion should be branded fraudulent and debased for practicing fidelity, compassion, charity, patience, equity, forgiveness, responsibility, humility, decency, veracity, endurance and accountability – which are all clearly unacceptable to our 12 new master religions. Won’t you teach your children to be good Muslims in these 12 ways? It is soon to be our mandatory state-religion but is still in utero now. Don’t be a dhimmi infidel. Accept it or die! Do you see the light? Allah Akhbar! Living two years in a Muslim country taught me a lot. Islam is all-contagious and deadly. You risk both your life and sanity. Ward Hartzell Twisp
Notable quotable "It is more shameful to distrust our friends than to be deceived by them." ~ Confucius
Liberal myopia fails to see threat in Islam American liberalism tends to run in trends and vogues. Sometimes these are useful advances like the abolition of slavery, the evolution of the American woman and the de-persecution of homosexuality. Less enlightened or progressive have been liberalism’s leading roles in communism, socialism, defeatism, eugenics, the breakdown of the American family, black economic enslavement, Indian economic enslavement, anti-Christian secular bigotry, the moral and human atrocity of abortion, the drug “culture,” the collapse of Ameri- William Slusher can educational superiority, the corruption of our legal system, the overpricing of American labor, and state budgetary crises derived of union blackmail and runaway socialistic entitlement programs there was never the money to pay for. American liberalism seems to reserve its contempt for the one country that protects and nurtures it most. Perhaps this is because America is the only country where treason has been relativised into meaninglessness, or maybe it’s just a useful theme to justify avoiding national service in harm’s way. One has to wonder why, as Thomas Ricks of The Washington Post writes, conservatives outnumber liberals in the all-voluntary American military 23 to 1. One of American liberalism’s recent and least enlightened or progressive vogues has become the notion that America has no enemy but Republicans. The Ground Zero mosque proposal has again brought forth the usual pious
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liberal scolds proclaiming how only an American rightist bigot could not wish to see the modern world’s most bigoted religion build a monument to itself in close proximity to its most obscene expression of that bigotry. The tired old psychobabble about anti-Muslim “hate” just won’t fly here. It is the mark of a weak intellect to assign pejorative motives like “hate” and “fear” to arguments one cannot refute on merit. Moreover, all religion is simply the largest and most damaging mental illness afflicting mankind. How else to explain the perfect fit of theology with the clinical definition of psychosis? How else to explain the mass brainwashing by all the world’s religions of millions of children from infancy such that by the time those kids are mature enough to think independently of religion most no longer have the capacity? Still, I profoundly believe and have often written: Respect they who love their god, just beware they who insist you must love it too. Not from hate or fear of any religion do I maintain that modern radical Islam is the single biggest threat, not only to America, but to any form of freedom that does not fit the fundamentalist dictates in the Quran. Christianity had its day in the murderous mode, but the threat now is the worldwide spread of fundamentalist Islam, backed by the righteous faith of far too many believers that killing “infidels” is the mandate of Allah. Only the consciously or congenitally myopic can fail to see the cancer metastasizing: hit contracts on authors for writing opinions deemed insufficiently worshipful of Muhammad, global Muslim mayhem and murder for the free-press publishing of cartoons not compatible with Islamic
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correctness, damnation of the pope and his threat-forced “apology” for merely quoting what some scholar once wrote about Islam, the disgraceful cowardice of the world media which should have masspublished the censored cartoons on the front page of every paper in the world to cry the independence of free speech without which no other freedoms endure. Then there is Yale University (and so many others) shamefully cowed too, redacting the cartoons from one of their scholar’s books on the subject for the confessed fear of “offending” Islam. Similarly there was the rush of the liberal media and the Obama administration to the defense of an avowed Muslim mass killer (Hasan of Ft. Hood, lest he be confused with so many others) and his proclaimed religion, rather than to the obviously Muslim religious contribution to the tragedy and how to analyze that factor in prevention of another such attack. These examples but scratch the surface of the prevailing political correctness lunacy. As with a drunk, one cannot appease or reason with a fundamentalist disciple of any god. Regrettably, it is that fanatic contingent of Muslims that is attempting the world over to cow into submission not only “infidels” but the moderate and tolerant fringe of Islam. If freedom and constitutional rights really mean what so many voices on the left and right proclaim, then we are all bound to recognize that basic, inalienable rights around the globe do have an avowed, deadly enemy today, and whatever America’s flaws real or perceived, it is not us. William Slusher is a writer from Okanogan. His latest book is Cascade Chaos or How Not To Put Your Grizzly In The Statehouse (www.cascadechaos.com).