[Vision2020] Letters to the Editor re: Dan Mack

[Joan Opyr]

11/01/2003
Moscow-Pullman Daily News
Landlord has lost credibility.
 
Dan Mack (Daily News, Oct. 16) came to a Palouse Water Conservation 
Network meeting, of which I am a board member, this summer asking us 
local concerned citizens to cut him some slack for a new water 
development at Renaissance Trailer Park. He just wanted to do what was 
best for his tenants. Considering the welfare of the tenants of the 
trailer park, as well as the public good and our belief in the right of 
everyone to clean water, we agreed to drop our protest.

Now Mack has had a change of heart and wants to evict every single 
tenant that he cared deeply for a few months ago. He wants to more than 
double the capacity of the trailer park from 15 to 35. Originally, he 
told us that he had no intentions for park and water use expansion, 
just the same amount of “good” water for his tenants. Now, he wants to 
squeeze in so many new trailers he won’t have room to comply with local 
green space laws. He’s asking to lease land from the county for a 
dollar in order to comply. I’d like to see the contract for the $60,000 
he’ll supposedly spend on that park.

Mack didn’t mention affordable housing to the reporter. How could he, 
after spending all that to make it upper-crust? How many of his former 
tenants could afford to rent one of his new trailers to live there? 
Instead he rambles on about wanting to be proud of his investment. If 
this is his vision of progressive development, then shame on the county 
if they approve it. Dan Mack is interested in one thing — a greasy buck 
— and has lost all credibility.
 
Kelley Racicot
 
 
10/29/2003
Moscow-Pullman Daily News
Residents need good water.
 
When a local group protested a new water right for the Renaissance 
Trailer Park in June 2003 based solely on the quantity and wanting 
assurances that the additional water would be put to good use, Dan Mack 
assured the group that he was a landlord looking out for the little 
guy, wanting to expand low-income housing availability in the area, and 
urgently wanting to get good water to current park residents. With 
these assurances, the protest was immediately withdrawn. Time elapsed 
between filing and withdrawing the protest was less than two weeks.

In the Daily News (Oct. 16), he gives a decidedly different point of 
view. Now residents who needed access to good drinking water in June 
are a blight on his development plan and, when he evicts them, had 
better take all of their trash with them when they go. Never mind that 
the residents are good, hard-working, family people with little money 
and now are likely to face homelessness in the middle of winter. Never 
mind that some of the mobile homes do not meet current codes and cannot 
be moved even though they are paid for. Never mind that some tenants 
have rented the same space for more than 15 years (most landlords would 
love to have long-term renters). These families cannot afford higher 
rent and don’t like the idea of renting when they have been owning 
their own, albeit humble, homes.

After being blasted for following the correct legal procedure to ensure 
a new water right application was necessary and told my group was 
standing between residents and good water when, in fact, current 
Renaissance Park residents don’t matter a fig to Mack, I am compelled 
to cry foul. Meanwhile, these residents still don’t have decent water 
to drink.
 
Dianne French
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