Seven Days; Smith Rock State Park and Rimrock Resort Bill; User Fees in State Parks and National Forests

[Electronic beep] (silence)

[Long period of silence followed by intro music] [music] [Musical intro]Hi, I'm Stephanie Fowler and this is Seven Days. Our topics this week a proposed change in state land use laws that would clear the way for a new resort near Smith Rocks State Park and the increasing cost of enjoying publicly owned parks and recreation areas. Let's meet this week's panel. Brad Kane is an associated press correspondent in Salem. Frank [inaudible] is the city editor of the Bend Bulletin

"Hassell Herring" is the editor of the Albany Democrat Herald and Lance Roberson is the environmental reporter for the Eugene Register Guard. On Wednesday the Oregon Senate approved a change in state land use laws specifically designed to allow one particular company to build a five hundred million dollar destination resort at Smith Rocks State Park in central Oregon This isn't the first time the proposed Rim Rock Resort as it's called has benefited from special interest legislation. Last session the developers got a bill all the way through the legislature only to have it vetoed by Governor Kitzhaber. This session Kitzhaber spent ten thousand dollars of public money on a private mediation process to see if the opposing sides could work out a compromise. Frank, did the mediation produce a resolution that was acceptable to both sides? Not really, at least from the opponents' point of view. And the talks were kinda doomed from the start. Some opponents were not invited and so therefore they went to the meeting and said, "Hey we weren't invited." "We're big players in this issue." And so it looked bad for the whole issue in general. And then they were invited. But the reason they weren't invited is because they are not

interested in mediation or coming to a compromise. They just don't want to see the resort period. And, uh, I think That's why they weren't invited. So once they were invited, they went through the process and then they actually were not happy with the result And that wasn't that surprising really when the result of that mediation came out. There was something seriously wrong and that whole process, as anybody who observed it must have concluded. You really can't have parties in a public controversy like that being invited to meetings that are secret, well secret to the, in the point, in the sense that no outsiders allowed in. [CROSSTALK] And they wouldn't let people talk to the... only one spokesman, you know, ought to that talked about it. Individuals couldn't even talk about the mediation process. And that's really not the way you can resolve any kind of conflict in state government. You're right about that. But in a sense that's how Kitzhaber hatched the Oregon Health Plan. They brought these various players to the table are for a lot of informal meetings and produced this is nationally acclaimed health rationing scheme, so I'm not saying...It wasn't a bill that

was already the subject of pretty intense public controversy. But it was the idea of sort of informally trying to bring all the players to the table to hash it out. The aspect of this thing that makes it different from that, from what you mentioned Brad, and also the worker's, from a few years ago in the Goldschmidt administration, the workers' compensation program was overhauled in a process similar to this. But there was a difference in this, and that is that this is clearly to anyone who looks at it, single interest legislation to benefit one particular outfit and to have closed meetings of the sort that just leave an awfully bad taste...And is that an appropriate use of public money, to try to work out...? I don't know if they spent that kind of money on either the Oregon Health Plan or the workers' compensation thing that Hasso's mentioning. So this one is a little different. [CROSSTALK] Ten thousand...we don't know if they actually spent that whole amount on the mediation, but still still to use public funds for something that is so specifically a special piece of special interest legislation, and which the governor himself vetoed

a form of this last session, because it was special interest and because it would weaken farmland protection...Why in the world would he try to mediate a compromise on this? And why use public money. What gives...? Especially to produce a product of the Senate that the governor's already said he will veto? Mediation isn't bad. As Brad pointed out, it's been used before, but as Frank... statewide interest. But as Frank pointed out, this this is an issue that had two sides: people who want to build it and people who don't want to build it, And there really isn't anything to mediate. It's basically a battle between two sides at this point. So 10,000 probably wasted and in that sense. Well the bill that came out I want to mention briefly and that has some specifics. The stumbling block to this Rimrock Resort is that in '87, land use regulations were adopted that limit destination

resorts to places that are more than three miles away from prime agricultural areas. There's Rimrock Resort, outside of Smith Rock, or near Smith Rock, would violate that because over in the resort itself is in Deschutes County and over and across the Crooked River in Jefferson County there is some prime farmland. About one mile away. A mile or two away. It's really funny that this whole issue of prime farmland is being played out in an area, according to the state they have six different districts for farm totals, and this is the last and least productive district in the entire state. And here's where there's going to be like some sort of battleground for saving farmland. It depends on who you talk to. Some of the farmers there grow, they report in the press anyway, that they grow what they consider to be valuable crops. And they grow enough of it to make a living. It's very important to Jefferson County, the agriculture, there's no doubt about it, but it's across the gorge there and the land where Smith Rock is, is really scrubland. I don't think there's a single acre of

prime, of high value cropland, at all. But the argument isn't about the land on which the actual resort's being built, it's the land it abuts. I understand that, but meanwhile here In Clackamas County and in Washington County, Marion County, prime farmland is being plundered for negative developments everywhere. I think the problem with this one though is that it goes beyond just the farmland issue and the idea that somehow, you know, there are farmers out there who would love to subdivide their land and sell it off for lots of money. They can't do it under land use laws. And yet here what we have is a situation where, let's carve out an exception for one entity here that has deep pockets. People I've talked to, neighbors and such, say that it sure looks like that they, we're just going to, somehow make exceptions for a moneyed interest and everybody else has to abide by these laws. Well, what the bill does is that it makes an exception when there is a natural barrier between farmland and the proposed destination resort. In this case there is the Crooked River canyon, but some of the effects of farming transcend those kinds of barriers and so it really doesn't make a whole lot of sense to an observer to say,

you know, well, to pose some kind of a natural barrier there and hope that it will keep the farming and the resort people completely separate. [CROSSTALK] There's burning of crops, for example, or there's pesticide that may drift across the river, although it's not supposed to, I mean the applicators know that they're not supposed to apply pesticides so it drifts but there may be nighttime operations. Combines may use the fields at night and disturb the people in these expensive homes within a mile or so away. And at night as we know the sound travels pretty far. The whole point of this regulation was to protect farmland everywhere in Oregon, not just in Deschutes County, and the funny thing is, this regulation was in effect when the proposed developers of this resort bought the land. I mean, it's hard for the outsider to understand what they were thinking, except to assume that they were thinking, "Well you know we'll just get the land and then we'll get the law changed." And that's what so far they've, in the legislature, they've managed to do just that. And we should mention the help that they've enlisted here. Senator Neal

Bryant from Bend, who now finds himself a target of ethics complaints, saying that his involvement there is...Yeah there was a (unintelligible) that represented one of the developers as he was purchasing the property to, you know, for the design of Rimrock, and so that's what got Neal Bryant in some hot water there. Is that a sideshow, really? Well, I don't know. I think it's part of it, you know, because it seems like, well, Neal maybe be correct that, hey, he's not violating any law here and everything is fine in the court of, you know, the legal court. But in the court of public opinion I think he's been damaged somewhat by this, that he's [Indiscernible] Stephanie, I'm not sure I would call it a side show in a sense, it sort of adds to this whole image around this thing that it is a pure special interest deal for a big moneyed interest and I agree with you, yeah, I don't think Senator Bryant probably did anything untoward, but he certainly gave every appearance of doing something, probably

I don't want to say illegal, but where he should have declared a...And the law allows conflict of interest as long as it's disclosed. He never declared it. Right, and he had a long disclosure, I understand, at the hearing on Wednesday. Right, but that was after there's been numerous stories pointing out all these things out. He declared it, but what he says is he has a potential conflict of interest. He says, he insists, that he really doesn't have a real conflict of interest. Well, be that as it may, as Frank pointed out, his partner helped one of the developers buy the land and Senator Bryant says, well you know the firm having represented one of the partners is much different from him or anybody representing the Rimrock Development Corporation itself. He points out that there is a difference in Oregon law between people - individuals - and corporations and there sure is. But to the average citizen out there and voter, I mean there is not much of a difference. Well it's not something that profits my law firm, would profit me. If I'm a partner. Am I missing a point there? I'm gonna throw this out there then: I think the focus on Senator Bryant and the

focus on the farmland really kind of serving, nor is what I think is why a lot of Oregonians just don't like this thing, which is here's a major development, three square miles almost, right next to one of Oregon's crown jewels. I mean here is Smith Rocks, it's on the cover of all kinds of tourism brochures and everything [crosstalk] it's a climbing Mecca, and here we have a major resort going right next to that. To many Oregonians it's like hanging condos off the cliffs at Multnomah Falls or something. Except I think they were already there to begin with. Sure. The area has been developed. There are ranches along the rim there, just across the Crooked River from Smith Rocks State Park, and then there's single wide mobile homes elsewhere. The place has been developed. It's not like it's just pristine. But this would be a quantum leap, though. It would be a leap, there's no question about it [crosstalk] This is a A 400 unit subdivision, 150 (unintelligible) golfcourse. When you look at the other

major resorts in central Oregon, Black Butte and Sunriver, they're not right next to you know a big scenic sort wonder of Oregon. I mean, they're off in the distance. And that is really, Lance, as you say, the problem with the park itself is that it is also overrun already. Half a million people visited about every yea. It is supposed to be one of the premier climbing areas in the world and the climbers have told me that on routes that used to be pretty much deserted, now when they get there at five in the morning there are already two or three parties on the rock. That's one of the things in terms [crosstalk] The point is that this resort, everybody fears it would attract even more people to the park without really adding anything to increase the capacity of a park to handle more people. Well not only to the park but then it's like growth paying its own way, which really doesn't, in a lot of places particularly in our area, and we add 400 homes, we don't have new schools or you know improved water or sewer or fire and people are not necessarily going to vote for those. That's

an argument that's probably legitimate against the proposal is that is it gonna really help pay for the growth it's going to create on the roads and everything else? And that's a big question about the resort. What are the local advantages? Well local advantages is that central Oregon has had double digit unemployment for many months now. I think Deschutes County just came below ten percent. And probably Jefferson County did too, with the farm season beginning. And so there's definitely that aspect and there's the stirring up the economy. Anyway, we are a tourist based economy pretty much. How many jobs, I've never heard a number, how many jobs do they say this would create? I don't know how many, but certainly you've got construction costs and development costs which are family wage jobs. The jobs that the people will work at there are not necessarily family wage jobs and I think that's one of the key issues I think that people are emotional about this resort as well, along with being next to Smith Rock is that with all these negative developments coming into central Oregon they have golf courses, expensive homes...We have Broken Top which has, it's a gated community. I think

people are in a sense of feeling disenfranchised, that these developments are not designed for them but for outsiders. The lots in this particular one are reported to be costing about, they would sell for something like two hundred thousand dollars. To four hundred fifty thousand. Right, and that really is not what the average Oregonian thinks of as as something that has very much interest to him. We already have that, of course. Broken Top where some lots go for about four hundred thousand already, so we're there, and I think people feel like they don't want more of it. The other thing about that is, in Deschutes County itself, there's plenty of room if somebody really wanted to develop other destination resorts. [crosstalk] There's 70,000 acres are set aside for that sort of thing and there are several parcels, according to the opponents anyway, that would be large enough to accommodate this 1800 acre development. But they don't have the scenic attraction of Smith Rocks, right? [crosstalk] But what they don't have is the view. Eagle Crest just expanded at at Eagle Ridge and they built this interchange on Highway 126 to accomodate the traffic and that was all pretty much overnight in a sense, that was pretty quick, and that is, you know, in Redmond

and it's about five or six miles from where this development would be, but that certainly has a lot of views too though, is at Eagle Crest and Eagle Ridge. [inaudible] do you have a sense of the community about whether they favor or oppose this or are they divided? It's a divided situation. You know you have development interests and real estate and community leaders as well are here because of the economic development of it and I think more of the common folk are uneasy about it because of the fact like I said they feel like this is not for them, and this is, it's not not part of their lifestyle and it's becoming more like an Aspen or a Palm Springs or these golf courses now. We've got, and it's changed the whole scope of central Oregon pretty much, in the last, you know, ten, fifteen years. I'm not sure it's gonna come to pass. though. We talked to Bob Applegate today, from the governor's office, and he said that his boss would veto the Senate bill as it is, and I said, what can the House do to change that bill somewhat to make it acceptable to the governor and Bob Applegate said, I

can't see what they can do frankly to, where you could do the exception to the land use laws, site the thing. And even if this bill passed it still has to jump through quite a number of land use hearings. To my knowledge it isn't zoned for resorts. This is supposed to expedite the process in the courts. It really hasn't expedited the process! How long are they going to stick with it? Now this is the second session they've been fighting this. Will they just keep at it, or will they go find someplace on these other seventy thousand acres at some point, you know? Well the suspicion is, as Frank said, there's agricultural land under attack everywhere in Oregon, and the suspicion is that if somebody with enough time and enough money and enough interest really works at this thing for a long enough time, that sooner or later these protections are going to break down even even in this place. Now the only thing that might work against that is all the publicity that the thing has had, and really Oregon has paid attention to this Rimrock project now. But everywhere else in Oregon, you know, you think, well this place is pretty

protected. After all we've got the land use laws. And pretty soon there's a house right there. You can't figure out how it happened. It doesn't have to be Marion County(?) You go through Marion County, and Clackamas, and Washington Counties and you see lots of, lots of development and growth on former farmland. And I think it's amazing how someone can propose a development that isn't as high profile as this, a golf course here or a subdivision there and go in for a zone change and just sort of get it. Well they don't usually just sort of get it because there's usually a fight... Well, they do a lot. in the local community. In Linn County not too long ago sited a gold course in the middle of agricultural land or forest preserve or something of that kind, and the neighbors were upset and and there was an appeal and all that kind of thing. So the process works through these things, and often, well, in this case and in other cases the developers prevail, but but this particular case is just different because it has an aspect of really of taking away a particular protection from agricultural land for what most people just can't see as a very good reason.

Before we move on to the next topic, I detect an undercurrent, and Frank, tell me if I'm wrong, of this sort of, you know, east-west of the mountain divide here here again. I definitely think it's there because as I said earlier, the area we're talking about is not the most productive farm land in the state and yet the issue of farm land, high value farmland is being played out over there. It's just ironic, really, that it's occurring when in fact most of the development in the state is occurring, you know, in areas where there was nice farm land. And that's just the irony of it, I think. No magnificent state parks. Let's move on to our second topic which also has to do with parks. Federal agencies are beginning a three year experiment this summer. They'll be charging fees to those who want to hike, camp and boat in national parks and federal forests. The state of Oregon is also exploring ways to handle the cost of operating and maintaining its increasingly popular parks. Lance, how widespread are user fees going to be this summer and what will they be used for? Well Stephanie, just about any place you go this summer in the outdoors you're gonna have to "pay to play". Is it that widespread?

Fairly widespread. User fees have been common for decades. You've had to pay to camp for example, but this year it's essentially an explosion in user fees. You're gonna have to pay eight dollars to go see Mount Saint Helens crater. That's per person, by way. You're gonna have to pay three dollars to hike on the beach. If you go with four people it's gonna cost you thirty two bucks. Right. You'll have to pay to hike in the woods if you're on national forest land. You'll have to pay to just go out to the Oregon Dunes, go through the access gate and you'll pay three dollars. Or you can pay an annual fee which I think I added up if you used all of them would be something around a hundred and twenty dollars a year per car or per person. That's pretty stiff. It that might be worth mentioning that I think there's gonna be a wholesale effort to avoid these kinds of fees. Right. You can park your car at the trailhead and take all the risks that that involves, or you can have somebody drop you off, avoid the three dollar fee or twenty five dollar annual pass and hike anyway. Right. If you're within a quarter mile of a trailhead.

If you park within a quarter mile you pay. That's right. The reason is is that budgets have been cut and in particular we've heard all about the state parks budget. That's a problem that...What a lot of people don't realize is that federal budgets have been cut too, particularly for recreation. The Willamette National Forest out of Eugene, for example, has seen its budget cut by a third just in the last four years. That's a pretty big hit, and so a lot of these agencies are going to fee programs to try to recover some of that money. Congress has authorized, in fact, actually sounds more like ordered some of the federal agencies, including the Forest Service, to mount three year demonstration fee projects. They left it up to the agencies to figure out exactly how those things were gonna work. Some of the forests have started admission prices at some of the scenic attractions, Cape Perpetua for example, or in Benton County Mary's Peak. You have to pay three dollars to go there. And you have to pay three dollars to

walk into the visitor center at Cape Perpetua. There are fees for the more active recreation areas, Sand Lake for example, where there's a lot of ATV racing and the Oregon Dunes also have ATV traffic. Now chances are people are not gonna mind paying those fees when they have something really active to do, and some real attraction, but the difference is when you just wanna go hike in nature in what you think is a public forest. In fact, all the publicity about the logging controversies in the last several years have always made the point, you know, these are your forests. These belong to the whole country. Some guy from Ohio comes to Oregon and wants to walk on his own trail and somebody says, well three bucks first. I mean this is not gonna sit very well, that's the whole point. I mean why shouldn't people who derive the most benefit, or more benefit from those who don't use them, pay a little more to maintain them and to make sure that they're safe and they're not dangerous? I think it's going to be a [indiscernible] too. We keep hearing about how crowded all the popular recreation areas are. Well if there's a fee there perhaps that's gonna reduce the traffic in a lot of these places and I think we'll probably see that this summer.

And in some part (?) if that's a desirable occurance to reduce the amount of traffic. [crosstalk] Do you think that's the intent of some of this? No, it's to raise the money is the main [indiscernible]. But the problem is on the state level, Oregon's fees in the state parks are some of the highest in the West now, and there are people in the legislature and elsewhere who are wondering, are we pricing people out of this? Well, what to do is, you price Oregon people out of it mostly, and I think in California and other places, well, you know, if you're a tourist who goes around the country, I understand Florida for example, it's something like a fifty dollar camping fee on a state park. Now Oregon it's more like sixteen or twenty dollars at the most. You talk to people from out of state who visit here, and they say, this is a deal. It's a bargain. You talk to people from Oregon who might drive from Coos Bay to Florence or to Honeyman State Park and they don't like it because they're used to not paying these fees and other people are. Well is there a public policy though, that should be pursued, the idea of keeping this stuff pretty much affordable for

families who aren't making a lot of money? Well there's a public access issue as well. And some sections of the Oregon coast now are public beach, we're supposed to have public beaches in this state. I mean Tom McCall walked out with a stick and said from here on out it's a public beach. Well in some areas of the Oregon coast you can't get to that public beach unless you pay three dollars. And so I think there's a real public access issue here. I think there'll be a backlash. I do think as people encounter it this summer they're gonna be, it's gonna be general disgruntlement, you'll see more letters to the editors everywhere, and complaints around this. In past sessions there were discussions about differential rates for in state residents and out of state. Well you know they tried that in the early 1980s. Might that come up again? I don't think so. I talked to the parks folks today and they said, you know, when we did that, I think it was in like, I forget what year, the early eighties, they said it created such ill will between us and Idaho and these other surrounding states. Our folks would go there and they'd say, well you're from Oregon, we're gonna charge you

some exorbitant amount. It really was, they said, not worth it. You know Stephanie, you raised that point, excuse me, about the user fees and the justification for it. Shouldn't the people who actually use those places and enjoy 'em, shouldn't they be the ones who pay? That is of course the rationale behind all user fees, but there's more to it than that, and that is that in a country like ours everybody has a right to go to those places and just the availability of them and the right to be able to go is worth something as well, and then, and so we are all paying for those places, or we ought to be anyway , through the general revenue. Governor Kitzhaber did this, he's very eloquent, he says you know we created these things eighty years ago. The people had the vision to set aside some of the most beautiful areas and it it should be there for everybody, not just those who are in a position to afford it. We have developed these areas too, where we have amenities at these various places so we've added things. We wanted more out of these areas so now we're having to pay for it. That's another aspect. You know, we want these trails maintained, you know, at a certain level...But the thing that gripes people was that really the government has so many ways in which we perceive it to be wasting money

and not just in, you know, in expensive toilet seats for the military and so on but in programs that's pretty much routine and in the forest service, I understand studies have been done that millions of dollars are being spent on environmental assessments and repeated reports on this sort of thing. Paperwork costs a lot of money and really does not help anybody and certainly doesn't help a hiker, doesn't restore a single trail, doesn't do anything. You would think that an agency and a Congress that was interested in that sort of thing would demand that that kind of expense be spent on something that people could actually use, and if you did that you wouldn't have to pay three bucks to use a trail. There would be plenty of money for that kind of thing. And what particularly really rankles some people is that they see for example grazing fees being set at below market rates or logging contracts being set at below market rates or at a subsidy, and yet they're having now to pay three dollars to hike on a trail and they just, it upsets people when they

see these subsidies and yet nothing being done about them, but then they're being forced essentially to try to balance out the Forest Service budget. So what's the alternative? Well one alternative, and this is something that might take us down a little bit different road, is that I see these visas just treading water, I mean all we're doing is just kind of staying afloat a little bit for some of these agencies, the state parks department in particular, the forest service in particular, but what we're not addressing is Oregon's incredible population growth and the incredible growth in out-of-state visitors. And yet we have not added, essentially, a state park in this state for twenty years. [crosstalk] The hope has to be that these things come and sort of swing like a pendulum. In the early days of century into the sixties Oregon was just going great guns, building parks everywhere and just having a wonderful park system, hardly used, wonderful roads to get there and so on. When the need gets great enough you hope that the electorate in Oregon and the responsible public officials will once again regain some of that fervor that people like

like Tom McCall and his predecessors had, and Bob Straub, the one who came after him. That's one of the great unresolved issues right now in the legislature is, so what are you going to do about parks? Governor Kitzhaber keeps complaining, saying that You have not presented me with anything, any kind of dedicated source, to keep parks going in the future. We're just gonna lurch along two years at a time, and it's bare bones budgeting. And the problem gets bad enough, it's gonna take somebody with some real leadership to bring it up and solve the thing. Okay, and we'll talk about that on another show. We're out of time. Lance Robertson, Brad Kane, Frank Beether and Hassan Herring (sp?), thanks for joining us this week on Seven Days, and thank you for watching today. Good night. (outro music) (outro music continues)