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The Mid-county Memo is your newspaper, and we want to hear from you. Discuss an important issue or address a concern you want to call the community’s attention to. Please include a name, address, and phone number. We prefer e-mailed letters to the editor sent to Dawn Widler, Department Editor at editor@midcountymemo.com. Please put “letter to the ed” in the subject line. You may also mail complete information to 4052 N.E. 22nd Ave., Portland, OR, 97212-1503.
Dear Editor:
The election was barely over when officials started whining about their pet tax measure that didn’t pass and about the so-called “double majority” turnout requirement. Portland’s Mayor Katz is even threatening legal action. And on the surface it appears unfair to have the results of an election result overturned because a certain number of people DIDN’T vote.
But what prompted me to write was the letter that appeared in this column in your April issue, about the promised amenities at Parkrose High School that failed to materialize. (The woman wrote about the Senior Center that was in the bill of goods we were sold.) I have no children in Parkrose schools so all I know about PHS is what I read in forums like the Mid-county Memo. Things like the top story that wasn’t built, the alleged shoddy construction, the lack of lockers. (No lockers! Sheesh!)
Perhaps many have forgotten how it came to pass that we are paying over $200 a year for a generation to pay off that new building. They put a measure before us for $16 million (if I remember right) to build a new high school, although I still can’t figure out what was wrong with the old one that proper upkeep wouldn’t have fixed. We told them No. Then that woman we had to pay to leave for California took charge and promptly put a grandiose measure on the ballot for $26 MILLION!! We told them NO again.
But then, not more than a few months later, the EXACT SAME measure appeared on the ballot in what you could only term an “off-off-year” election (I think there were two other items on the ballot.) and they managed to squeak the measure through. So this measure was decided by the MINORITY! The majority of voters, at two major elections - when turnout was high - told them NO. Both times! Is THIS fair?
No - no one in the Parkrose School District should be opposed to the 50% turnout requirement, because we are the clear victims of the type of “underhanded” techniques this voter-approved amendment was intended to eliminate. Let them wait a few months until the general elections, when there is no turnout requirement, for a fair hearing by the electorate on their tax measures.
George DuBois
Maywood Park resident
gfdubois@juno.com
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