CJ mayor to rebut Courier ‘attack’
From our weekly issue dated August 27, 2008
A rebuttal to a three-part newspaper series, Living on the Edge, CJ’s Fight With Crime, will be submitted to the Grants Pass Daily Courier by Cave Junction Mayor Tony Paulson.
Paulson agreed to write a response to the series during the city council meeting Monday night, Aug. 25 in city hall. He was urged to do so by Councilman Don Moore, who also is president of the Illinois Valley Chamber of Commerce.
The series, which ran Thursday through Saturday, Aug. 21 through 23 “lambasted and treated us unfairly,” Moore said Monday night. He referred to the series as “an attack.”
The mayor, who was quoted in one of the articles that included a color photo of him, told the council that he had not read the series.
“I feel you were misquoted,” Moore told the mayor, “because you would not have said those things.”
Click here to learn more about how you can tell us what you think
Moore added, “This is serious” because “no one would want to move here” after reading the articles.
“Come on, Don,” responded the mayor, “who gives a rip what they think?” Paulson said that some people have asked him if he had seen “how they ripped us,” but that no one is going to move because of the articles.
Moore contends that the series makes it appear that Cave Junction “is the bastion of all the troubles in Josephine County. It was bad.
“It was terrible, and the chamber manager is going to write a letter to the Courier,” he stated.
In another matter during the meeting, which lasted approximately 30 minutes with an audience of two persons, the council voted 5-0 to conditionally approve a three-lot land partition for Jerry Sommers.
The property at 130 S. Sawyer Ave. contains 31,363 square feet of space. The three parcels will comprise square footage of 11,758, 11,985 and 10,071. Sommers said that he plans to build “affordable housing sometime down the road.”
Advertisement:
The 11 conditions include that all utilities will be underground, a well on one parcel will be disconnected, and all lots “shall be graded and drained to prohibit storm runoff impact to adjacent lots.”
The council also heard from City Recorder Jim Polk that questions remain related to a reservoir in connection with a Kerby Water District project. A workshop was held recently, but apparently the questions remain of whether a reservoir is needed, and if so where it should be located.
The council also received information from Michael Bollweg, the city’s lead treatment operator, regarding “volatile content” from a septic service. Bollweg wrote the service that two such loads have been accepted, but that no others will be taken.
The material apparently came from a location on E. River Street. Bollweg wrote that, “The volatile content of the load was excessive. Large amounts of grease.
“The microscopic examination showed waste that was literally void of microlife and full of unstabilized material.” He wrote that further loads from the location could be accepted under certain conditions, which he specified for the septic service.
