City of Portland Misses the Obvious on Emergency Plan

May 25, 2010

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We talked about it on the show yesterday, but, for the record, every time the Portland Rainbow City Council talks about spending money on an emergency staging center or the like I wonder why they’re missing the obvious. Is it because the anti military and down-with-America attitude pervades this town so much that city “leaders” have missed the ‘no duh’ opportunity in front of their faces? Is it willful ignorance? Willful idiocy?


Here’s the issue as seen in the Zero the other day,

Commissioner Randy Leonard, who oversees the Water Bureau, complained that the proposed water increase isn’t enough to enable the city to buy an 11-acre patch of land owned by the Oregonian Publishing Co. in Northwest Portland for use as an emergency staging area. The city wants to buy property — paid for from water fees — to use for equipment and services in the event that an earthquake or other catastrophe cuts the city’s west side off from the Bull Run water supply.

We have to buy new real estate —from the newspaper of record (which is sucking wind, btw) to buy a new staging area? No, we don’t. The USS Ranger Foundation (here) has –for free– offered the City a place to use in the case of emergencies. The Ranger is currently sitting in mothballs in Bremerton, Washington awaiting it’s new assignment as a reef at the bottom of the big drink or as a museum, venue, hospital, cafeteria, tourist attraction on the Willamette River in Portland, Oregon.
I choose the latter.
The Ranger has room to act as a venue for concerts, attractions, weddings etc on its huge deck and has room to house, feed and treat hundreds of people in its facility in case of an emergency. It has the ability to generate power and purify water. In its heydey, the Ranger housed 5,000 people. 
The City would allow the Ranger space near Terminal 2 on the Willamette and the Ranger Foundation and the foundation would pay all the expenses.
Why do we have to buy the Oregonian’s property again?

Tell ’em where you saw it. Http://www.victoriataft.com