Author: North Coast BBQ

By Taxpayers Association of Oregon
OregonWatchdog.com
There was a property tax bill hearing this week on Senate Bill 712.  This Senate Bill 712 pushes more property owners to pay the maximum 3% tax increase every year based on maximum assessed value.   This will cost some property owners thousands.
The laws limiting how much value of your property can be taxed (Measure 50) was secured into the State Constitution by voters and require voters to make changes.   Promoters of this Senate Bill 712 property tax increase say that this tax increase is an adjustment on what is taxed, and therefore, in their explanation, does not need to involve voter approval.  Under this, the bill would not require a super-majority 60% vote in the House and Senate (another Constitutional rule for all tax increases).   This bill would then be easier for lawmakers to pass with a simple 51% vote threshold.
Even though this bill is claimed not to be a legal tax increase, it will indeed bring in tens of millions in higher property taxes.
AND HIGHER RENTS AND MORE DISPLACED RENTERS
Otherwise known as HOMELESS PERSONS and we have plenty of those already
CALL YOUR GOVERNOR LEAVE A PLEASANT MESSAGE:
office of the 
Governor
900 Court Street, Suite 254 
Salem, OR 97301-4047
Telephone: 503-378-4582

Voters were given nine options to choose from. Those options started with no indirect costs charged to the Water Operating Fund all the way to affirming support of the Council’s current policy which this Budget year charges approximately $200,000 annually for these administrative services.

I offered no opinion on what I believed the best option was, committed to providing whatever results that I obtained to the Council for their review and clearly stated “this survey is your opportunity to express your preference as to how much of your water fees should be used by the City for indirect cost support services related to the Water Operating Fund.”

126 responses were received with the following breakdown as to the preferred amount of indirect charges respondents wished to see transferred from the Water Operating Fund to the General Fund:
No indirect costs – 57%.
Not more than $25,000 – 20%.
Not more than $50,000 – 9%.
Not more than$75,000 – 2%.
Not more than $100,000 – 2%.
City continues with its present overhead allocation policy – 7%.
No preference noted – 3%.

The City recently announced the results of their Comprehensive Housing Plan survey. This survey was not restricted to registered voters but open to anyone who wanted to respond. The survey results: “We garnered 76 responses which is huge for a city of our size!” Citizens might reasonably expect a similar level of gratitude from the City for those 126 registered voters who took the time to complete this survey and give their feedback on this ongoing controversy but I expect more time will be devoted by some who will find fault with the survey. These individuals will conclude that the respondents were misled or do not understand the issue therefore the results were not a valid expression of community preference. The City is free to conduct their own survey of registered voters on this matter but I sense that they have no interest in giving you that opportunity.

The use of these Water Operating Fund transfers for General Fund expenses unrelated to the operation of the water utility has been taking place for years according to Councilor Campbell. Expect that use of water revenues to be continued in next year’s Budget to include helping pay the annual loan debt on our new City Hall for the next 20 years.

I will ask the Mayor and City Manager to include this letter along with a copy of the survey explanation to the City Budget Committee for their April 29th meeting. Perhaps the citizen Budget Committee members can get better explanations on the use of indirect costs for expenses unrelated to the water utility or encourage the Council to recognize that a substantial number of citizens do not support their present policy and recommend a reduction in these transfers to be more in line with the voter’s input from this survey.

In 2020, Manzanita Councilor Spegman offered his observations about how our City receives citizen input and the fate of those who raise these issues and ask unwelcome questions.

“What they’ve been doing when Randy raises legitimate and detailed concerns about any issue is insidious. They shoot the messenger and call him a malcontent, trying to quiet others who may feel the same but be a little more gun shy than Randy. So we’ve got a small insular group of elites who don’t want any input about how they wield their power, and if you offer it they villainize you so others won’t join in.” The City Manager is equally clear on how to respond to those individuals who point out inconsistent and contradictory public statements by advising the Council that “we must discourage or even ignore them if necessary.”

The use of our water revenues is a Council policy that should be able to answer one question. What is in the public’s best interests with respect to the use of the revenues that are collected to operate our water system?

1. Keep more revenue in the Water Operating Fund for utility operations and maintenance as well as construction of needed infrastructure improvements.

2. Transfer Water Operating Fund revenues to the General Fund under the guise of staff reimbursements for administrative support of water operations.

Thank you to those that took the time to respond to this survey.
Randy Kugler

Below is my anti-war film dealing with Iran. My ‘dodgy sources’ include Noam Chomsky, David Barsamian, Vandana Shiva, Trita Parsi, and Stephen Kinzer.

(Israel is pushing HARD for war with Iran. FYI, our bombing of Yemen is ultimately about starting a war with Iran on behalf of Israel. Please spread the link far and wide.)

rumble.com/v650oqa-targeting-iran.html

And here is my multi-award-winning environmental film dealing with the Columbia River, clean water, salmon, salmon tribes, Hanford, etc.

My ‘dodgy sources’ for this piece of work include Yakama elder/scientist Russel Jim, spiritual leader of the Colville tribe Tom Louie, Colville tribal scientist Patty Bailey, Warm Springs chief Don Sampson, Columbia RIverkeeper Exec. Dir. Brent Foster, Oregon author Robin Cody and many, many more:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uTKNnPj7Tg

Finally, someone made a post urging folks to shoot the measles vaccine. I say stay the hell away from it. Convo at around 01:21:00:

rumble.com/v6qw2x8-the-268th-evolutionary-lens-with-bret-weinstein-and-heather-heying.html?e9s=src_v1_ucp

The ‘dodgy’ characters above are Brett Weinstein and his wife Heather. Bret was a biology prof at Evergreen, a Portland resident, until the woke mobs that pre-dated 2020 violently protested against him. Why? Because they hold ‘no whites on campus day’ at that school and Bret called it racist and refused to leave. Good for him protesting racism! He then testified in front of Congress that wokesters and antifa fascists are about to get real violent across America, and he was right; two years later, 2020, and the burning down of police stations, smashing of statues, throwing objects at cops trying to injure them, crashing meetings of Young Republican groups at campuses across the country, etc. (This behavior from the leftist fascists is a HUGE reason why Trump won in my view, as most Americans don’t want Antifa and BLM running our country.)

Andy,
Wheeler

BONUS! fascinating deep-dive on polio:

rumble.com/v4qh2kh-the-untold-story-of-polio-forrest-maready-on-darkhorse.html

Bernie Sanders on Fire – Torches Trump, Billionaires on Senate Floor this Week – Here is his “Fiery” Speech
Posted on March 27, 2025 by Editor

On the floor of the Senate on March 25, 2025, Bernie Sanders torched billionaires, scorched Trump, and burned every shred of political cowardice in his path.

Here is his fiery speech, word for word:

Mr. President,

In the last couple of weeks, I’ve had the opportunity to travel in many parts of our country. And I have been able to talk to folks in Nebraska, in Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada, Colorado, and Arizona. And what I am hearing from in all of these states and in fact all over the country is that our nation right now faces enormous crises, unprecedented crises in the modern history of our country.

And how right now at this moment we respond to these crises will not only impact our lives, it will impact the lives of our kids and future generations. And in terms of climate change, the well-being of the entire planet.

And Mr. President, what I have to tell you is that the American people are angry at what is happening here in Washington, DC and they are prepared to stand up and fight back. In my view and what I have heard from many, many people is that they will not accept an oligarchic form of society where a handful of billionaires control our government, where the wealthiest person on Earth, Mr. Musk, is running all over Washington, DC slashing the Social Security Administration so that our elderly people today are finding it extremely difficult to access the benefits that they paid into.

Where Mr. Musk and his friends are slashing the Veterans Administration so that people who put their lives on the line to defend us will not be able to get the health care that they are entitled to or get the benefits that they are owed in a timely manner. Slashing the Department of Education. Slashing USAID.

And why is all of this slashing taking place? It is taking place so that the wealthiest people in this country can receive over $1 trillion dollars in tax breaks.

Now, I don’t care if you are a Democrat, a Republican, or an Independent. There are very few people in this country who think that you slash programs that working families desperately need in order to give tax breaks to billionaires.

Mr. President, I am the former chair of the U.S. Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, and I have had the honor of meeting with veterans in my own state of Vermont—all over Vermont—but all over the country. These are the men and women who put the uniform of this country on and have been prepared to die to defend our nation and American democracy.

And these veterans and Americans all over our nation will not accept an authoritarian form of society with a president who undermines our Constitution every day. Every day there’s something else out there where he’s undermining our Constitution and threatening the very foundations of American democracy. That is not what people fought and died to allow to happen.

Mr. President, I am not a historian, but I do know that the founding fathers of this country were no dummies. They were really smart guys. And in the 1780s, they wrote a Constitution and established a form of government with a separation of powers.

A separation of powers—with an executive branch, the president; a legislative branch, the Congress; and a judicial branch.

These revolutionaries in the 1780s had just fought a war against the imperial rule of the King of England who was an absolute dictator, the most powerful person on Earth. And these revolutionaries here in America forming a new government wanted to make absolutely sure that no one person in this brand new country that they were forming would have unlimited powers.

And that is why we have a separation of powers. That is why we have a judiciary, a Congress, and an executive branch. In other words, way back in the 1780s, they wrote a Constitution to prevent exactly what Donald Trump is trying to do today.

So, let us be clear about what is going on. Donald Trump is attacking our First Amendment and is trying to intimidate the media and those who speak out against him in an absolutely unprecedented way.

Mr. President, he has sued ABC, CBS, Meta, the Des Moines Register. His FCC is now threatening to investigate NPR and PBS. He has called CNN and MSNBC “illegal.”

In other words, the leader—or the so-called leader—of the free world is afraid of freedom. He doesn’t like criticism. Well, guess what? None of us like criticism. But you don’t get elected to the Senate, you don’t get elected to the House, you don’t become a governor, you don’t become a president of the United States unless you are prepared to deal with that criticism.

WE’VE REACHED BBQ’S LIMIT OF WORDS. YOU CAN FIND THIS SPEECH ON 3/26 TILLAMOOK COUNTY PIONEER.