By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews
YACHATS – State Sen. Dick Anderson got quizzed on infrastructure and tourists, herbicides and logging, education and elections Tuesday during a 75-minute town hall in Yachats.
Anderson, R-Lincoln City, is running for a second four-year term in Senate District 5 in the November general election. He said Tuesday’s session wasn’t a campaign stop, but a chance to let people know his areas of focus and to hear concerns or take questions from citizens.
Anderson was a Lincoln City council member for 12 years, including six years as mayor. He ran unsuccessfully for the Senate seat in 2016 but won it in 2020. He’s the first Republican officeholder in the district – which stretches from Otis in the north to Coos Bay in the south — in decades and is being challenged in November by Florence city councilor Jo Beaudreau.
Anderson said his focus in the Legislature has not always been on larger issues, but on five areas he thinks are critical for the coast – economic development, housing, child care, education and more recently transportation. Concepts for bills in the 2025 Legislature are due in October, he told 14 people attending the town hall, so “what I’m trying to do is fine-tune what I’m thinking about and hear what you’re thinking about.”
“The coast lacks resources,” he said in opening. “The urban/rural divide doesn’t appear to include the coast. People in the Willamette Valley look east when someone mentions a rural issue … and so we get forgotten.”
The coast relies heavily on the tourist trade so diversifying the business economy is critical to overall growth and attracting then keeping working families, Anderson said. “Two pillars of making the economy work are housing and childcare,” he said. “I know there’s someone sitting at home wanting to work but lacks child care to do that. For the coast, until we have more child care and housing we’ll keep falling behind.”
Anderson, who is on the Senate Education Committee, said too many children, especially in Lincoln County, are coming to school with issues that require teachers to “perform a lot of functions that haven’t traditionally been done.”
Oregon also ranks too low nationally in attainment, its standards need raising, and children need more school days, he said, which would require more money. But the state’s education budget – its largest single expenditure — is one of the last to be considered during legislative sessions, Anderson said. The education budget should be funded first, he suggested, “and then the rest work off the scraps.”
Some tourist-dependent cities plan to approach the 2025 Legislature to adjust how communities can spend the millions in lodging taxes many collect each year. State law currently requires that 70 percent of lodging taxes be spent on promotion or tourism-related programs or facilities. Many cities want to be able to tap into that money to help fund police, fire, roads and water infrastructure – which they currently cannot do.
Anderson said he is open to changing how the money is used – either by changing the formula or re-defining what the money can be spent on. But expect major pushback from the tourism industry, he said, including the powerful Oregon Restaurant and Lodging Association.
The most questions and comments Tuesday from the audience came over concerns about clearcut logging on private forestlands and the resulting use of herbicides afterwards – especially as it impacts local water systems or private wells. State law and standards in the Oregon Forest Practices Act determine how private forests are managed – not county or local ordinances – so one audience member asked Anderson if he was open to changing the law or regulations.
Anderson said it depends on what’s being proposed. “I would have to see the details of the bill.”
In response to a question about logging, spraying and protecting water sources from Laura Gill of Seal Rock, a member of Protect Oregon Watersheds, Anderson said communities and water districts should determine if or how they can manage or own their watersheds.
“We’re always looking at solutions,” he said. “But I’m not sure that banning something will work.”
Anderson said he was not defending clearcutting, but understood the practice and that timber companies and some landowners use it because it is more economical.
Yachats Mayor Craig Berdie said one option could be to change the tax benefits of owning forest land, which are taxed as a much lower rate than most properties. “We should disincentivize the cutting (of trees) by changing the tax law,” Berdie suggested. “We need to re-think the whole thing … clearcuts, spraying, landslides, taxes.”
One of the last questions came from an audience member who asked, because Anderson is a Republican, if he was “an election denier.”
“No,” he replied promptly.
“I was the first Republican Senate member from the coast in 30 years,” Anderson said. “I’m not interested in the political game … I’m for results in my district.”
- Quinton Smith is the editor of YachatsNews.com and can be reached at YachatsNews@gmail.com
Anderson is disingenuous. When the rest of the Senate Republicans walked off their jobs in 2023, Anderson stayed at his desk, but he was quoted in the media as supporting the walkout. So don’t let him pretend he is not a political animal. He deserves to be voted out of office for his support of that subversion of democracy.
The senator was here to talk about the issues confronting our coast and has made it clear that these issues are his priorities. However, just because he has an “R” after his name someone who has zero critical thinking skills asked him if he is an “election denier”.
FORESTLAND TAX DEFERRAL
I realize that most of the folks who live in the Yachats area are not foresters, nor understand the responsibilities of managing forestland.
As a 35-year resident and forester in Lincoln County, who lives in the forest, not in some remote location, please allow me to educate you about the purpose of the property tax deferral program for forestland.
First, it is a “deferred” tax, which means you are not taxed for growing trees, you are taxed when they are harvested, a tax which takes into account what you would have paid in taxes for all the years that this was not paid.
If you increase or remove the deferral option, there is no incentive to grow a healthy forest. It’s that simple.
If you raise the taxes on private forestland, only the larger corporate forest companies will have the funds to invest in managing forestland, not smaller, environmentally oriented folks like myself.
For example, when I purchased this land in 1991, it had just been clearcut by the previous owner. If the taxes on the property were not reduced due to the deferral tax option, no one would have purchased the land, but perhaps a logging company with long-term (50+ years) forest investment plans.
From my education and experience, the real issue is the commercially-oriented short term profit management style of our natural world…can’t even use the word “resources.” If you can’t see the whole forest and only focus on the trees, which is the current commercial model, you destroy the ecosystem, or do serious damage for many years. This is shortsighted, and basically narcissistic…me, me, me…mentality. Does that remind you of anything else in our government or capitalistic economy?
To be truly healthy, we need a systemic view and approach to managing and sustaining our environment. This includes removing the use of chemicals along our county roads, especially near streams and farmland. You can expand this to include the problems with water treatment in cities on the coast and what is being dumped into the ocean.
So, please don’t point a finger at the private forest owners unless you look at the whole picture, over time. If you don’t like the idea of a clearcut in view of the City of Yachats, where were you and your protests in all the years that there have been Siuslaw Forest and private clearcuts in Lincoln County, out of your viewscape?
If you care about the healthy management of our local forestland, please contact the “Coast Range Association” (CRA – https://coastrange.org/), or better, come to Chuck Willer’s talk on Sunday, July 28 at 2 pm in the Yachats Lion’s Club on W. 4th St.
For reference – Here is the Oregon Forestland Program page:
https://www.oregon.gov/dor/programs/property/pages/forestland-program.aspx
Thank you for taking the time to read this information,
Katrina, a neighbor
I’m voting for Jo Beaudreau. I saw her speak at the LWV candidate Forum in May and I found her motivated and refreshing. I think Salem would appreciate her too!