[Vision2020] Moscow, growth, and MHS (was School Levy)

Mon Apr 4 17:12:59 PDT 2005

Good point, Mr. Moffett.

Try approaching the intersection of Highway 8 and I-95 at 5:00 PM on Friday.
Talk about gridlock.  Sheesh!

Tom Hansen

We could learn a lot from crayons: some are sharp, some are pretty, some are
dull, some have weird names, and all are different colors....but they all
exist very nicely in the same box. 

  _____  

From: vision2020-bounces at moscow.com [mailto:vision2020-bounces at moscow.com]
On Behalf Of tbertruss at aol.com
Sent: Monday, April 04, 2005 3:49 PM
To: auntiestablishment at hotmail.com; vision2020 at moscow.com
Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Moscow, growth, and MHS (was School Levy)

Joan et. al.

Joan wrote:

 >>Traffic congestion?  That's when you're the fourth car in line at the
stoplight on Third and Jackson.  

Joan, sometimes with your style of humor it is hard to tell if you are
joking or not. But perhaps you have not been driving in Moscow at rush hour
lately.  Moscow has developed traffic jams far more than just being the
fourth car in line at Third and Jackson.  You are joking, it must be.
Because at various tight flow points for traffic in Moscow you can be backed
up ten to twenty cars and sit through several cycles of red green red green
light changes.  Of course this is small time compared to a complete stop on
a 6 lane freeway in Los Angeles.  But I would rather stop the development of
traffic jams getting any worse here than just going along with such
developments because it is not as bad as LA.  I don't even want to use major
urban areas as a reference point.  The way major urban areas of the USA h!
ave developed should never have happened in the first place.

Ted Moffett

-----Original Message-----
From: Joan Opyr <auntiestablishment at hotmail.com>
To: Vision2020 Moscow <vision2020 at moscow.com>
Sent: Sun, 3 Apr 2005 01:04:13 -0800
Subject: [Vision2020] Moscow, growth, and MHS (was School Levy)

My friend Ted writes:

"The Palouse is beautiful and peaceful.  Crime is limited, the air is clean
(well, now in Moscow there is more and more of a "choke" factor with all the
vehicle exhaust), there are numerous appealing outdoor recreation
opportunities within a days drive, and property can be bought in Latah
County for prices that are attractive.  There are two major universities
adding a cultural and entertainment mix to a rural agricultural/forest
resources economy that is a draw to people who want the country life and
still have some big city culture.  Spokane is close enough, and the roads
good enough, to make a one day shopping trip complete with dinner and a
film. I'm n! ot saying we are about to become another Denver, but it seems
apparent that there are enough positive variables to attract enough people
to the Moscow area that growth could seriously negatively impact the small
town rural life that Moscow represents, or did represent"

Now, Ted, you know that I haven't been body-snatched.  What self-respecting
alien would pick me when it could have Jennifer Lopez?  I'll bet she's been
body-snatched at least half a dozen times.  That would explain her string of
3-month marriages.  No human being could possibly be that fickle.

About Moscow becoming a bedroom community of Spokane -- could I just say
politely and respectfully that I very much doubt it?  I drive the road to
Spokane often enough to know that it's 1) no great shakes in the winter
time, and 2) that I average at least three near-death experiences per trip.
Highway drivers between Pullman and Spokane love to pass on blind curves, up
hills, and across the double yellow lines.  Between the 18-wheelers, the
suicidal maniacs, the Shameless Speed Trap that masquerades as the City of
Colfax, and farmers transporting heavy equipment, I don't see how anyone
could consider the 160 miles from Moscow to Spokane and back a reasonable
daily commute.  

[And don't tell me that drivers can go the back way through Palouse; the
state of Washington dismantled that road sometime last spring and it seems
to have no intention whatsoever of rebuilding it.  Highway 12 is nothing but
rocks and mud from the Idaho border to the Ringo Road.  Perhaps Palouse has
been taken over by your Jennifer Lopez body-snatching aliens, and Washington
is conducting an experiment to see how long they can live on only creek
water and wheat tailings?]  

As for reasonably priced property in Latah County, where are you finding
this magical acreage, Ted?  Because I want some.  I happen to have on my
desk both the Latah County "Parade of Homes" and a Real Estate guide for
Wilmington, NC, a popular seaside city with a strong economy and a
population several times larger than Moscow's.  Care to guess where it's
cheaper to live?  Or who has better weather?  And really great seafood?  

I am not dismissing the attractions of Latah County; far from it.  There's a
reason I live here and not in Wilmington, but our booming economy is not one
of them.  And I'm still waiting for that massive influx of billionaire
Californians that native Muscovites have been warning me about since I moved
here in 1993.  Where the devil are they?  And why aren't they spending their
money here in town?  Do they get all of their clothes from a catalog and
have their food shipped in from Fortnum and Mason?  The inconsiderate (and
invisible) bastards.  

Unless global warming continues to give us winters like the one we just had,
I don't see Latah County suffering the kind of population growth that has
plagued little backwater towns in Georgia, Florida, Texas, and Arkansas.
Eric Estrada is not on his way here to film one of those commercials touting
the joys of our sunny golf courses and cheap tract housing.  And a good
thing, too, because we none of us want that -- that sort of growth would be
horrible.  But unless our winters become perpetually mild and our
community's economic engine starts running on more than two cylinders, Eric
Estrada will confine his tan and his teeth to those small Southern he!
ll-holes that are so popular with retiring snowbirds.  Latah County has the
university, and it has agriculture.  That's not enough to make us the next
Denver, Colorado.  That's not enough make us the next Lizard Lick, North
Carolina.    

Traffic congestion?  That's when you're the fourth car in line at the
stoplight on Third and Jackson.  Urban sprawl?  How about rural sprawl?  We
haven't yet gotten to urban.  I hate to see us conjuring up difficulties for
ourselves.  We have real problems with water.  We have real problems with a
state legislature that chronically under-funds our university.  We need a
more diverse and a more resilient economy.  You mentioned Moscow prospering
just fine in 1965 with a population of only 13,000, Ted.  In 1965, Moscow
was the hub of higher education for the entire state of Idaho.  Forty years
ago, who went to BSU or ISU if they could get into the University of Idaho,
the state's flagship institution?  

Once upon a time, Moscow High School produced the best graduates in the
state.  Melynda tells me that in 1981, a quarter of her graduating class
went on to universities like Yale, Princeton, Stanford and several of the
larger land grant universities.  Many more went on to the University of
Idaho, which justifiably prided itself on the number of Rhodes scholars it
produced.  The primary reason I intend to support the facilities levy is
because I think one of the strongest values Moscow holds as a community is
the near-universal belief in the efficacy of a good public education.  I
underst! and that you can be both pro-public education and still oppose the
upcoming levy, but we've gotten seventy good years out of the current high
school building, and, in a changing world, what was good enough in 1965
isn't cutting the mustard today.  I want my kids to have decent science
labs, a real music room, and a safe and adequate gymnasium.  I want them to
have the same or better opportunities as students at MHS that Melynda had,
or that you had, or that their grandmother, the former Rosemary Amos, Class
of 1963, had.  

If I thought they could get that in the current MHS building, I'd say damn
the levy.  I'd say new high school my Aunt Fanny.  But MHS is not the
facility in 2005 that it was in 1965.  Forty years have passed, and you
can't expect an IBM Selectric to do the work of an IBM Thinkpad.  Change is
upon us, whether we like it or not, and we can either stand up and greet it,
or we can turn our backs and let it beat us about the head and shoulders.  

The facilities question is open for discussion until April 26th.  After
that, we'll either be screwed or renewed.  I'm not ashamed to hope for the
latter.

Joan Opyr/Auntie Establishment

PS: Donovan mentioned in an earlier post that the high school was perfectly
adequate when he attended 13 years ago.  One of my favorite pictures of
Melynda is of her marching downtown to protest the inadequate facilities at
MHS . . . in 1981.  One of the things we need to acknowledge in our
discussion (argument?) over the future of MHS is the role played by the
emotional attachment of its graduates to the physical space that the high
school now occupies.  Melynda was marching to protest the facilities in
1981, but it makes her sick to think of the school moving out of downtown
and "way out" onto the Trail property.&n! bsp; 

Who says liberals march in lock-step?  We can't achieve agreement in this
house much less in this town about what needs to be done regarding MHS.  The
only thing that we agree upon is that current facility cannot offer our kids
what they need, but it may well be the case that when we go to the polls on
April 26th, Melynda and I will cancel out one another's vote.  In our 13
years together, that will be a first.          

  _____  

Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com

_____________________________________________________

 List services made available by First Step Internet, 

 serving the communities of the Palouse since 1994.   

               http://www.fsr.net                       

           <mailto:Vision2020%40moscow.com> mailto:Vision2020 at moscow.com

¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.fsr.com/pipermail/vision2020/attachments/20050404/560c448d/attachment-0001.htm