May 9, 2008

WASCO COUNTY COMMISSIONER RACE

Murray: asking questions at court

By Kathy Gray
of The Dalles Chronicle

     Georgia Murray wants to bring a different perspective to the Wasco County Court.
     The longtime Wasco County Republican is seeking to oust Sherry Holliday in the upcoming primary election.
     “I am running because we have an appointed person, who was reconfirmed by election,” Murray said, “but we have three people who seem to be in concert on the court. We need someone like me who has not been appointed — someone like me to say ‘Rethink this on this basis.’”
     People need to have tough questions asked, Murray said.
     Murray is a longtime community activist, particularly in the area of property rights. She is currently active on the Home Rule Committee, which is examining a charter for Wasco County. Murray is a real estate broker, with an associate’s degree in transportation and distribution management.
     “I don’t intend to be disruptive, but I intend to ask questions,” she said.
That’s not happening now, Murray suggests. As an example, she referred to the effort to remove Judy Davis as Wasco County’s representative on the gorge commission. Discussing the issue with Holliday, Murray said the commissioner told her she thought the court had made a mistake.
     “OK, I think I’ve got some room for understanding,” Murray noted.
     But when the issue came before the court for discussion, “she didn’t say a word.”
     She was also critical of Holliday’s comments on the nondiscrimination ordinance, and the county’s not allowing the matter to come before voters.
Overall, Murray says she wants government to be more simple. A 300-square-foot home addition, for example, should not require a 46-page report to make a decision.
     “We have some discretion,” she said. “One of the biggest things I’ll look at is discretionary things.”
     Wasco County has a 160-acre minimum for agricultural lands, Murray noted as an example.
     “It only has to be 80 acres,” she said. “I’ll make things as simple as they can be. Let’s not make it so lengthy and costly to do things.”
     Murray was also critical of what she described as uneven codes enforcement.
“I put in a couple of complaints in the past five years and got no response from the planning department,” she said.
     One complaint involved construction of two dwellings on one parcel of land.
“They never did a thing about it. It’s got to be even across the board for everybody.”
     She also wants to limit party status on land use applications to residents within 500 feet of the proposed use, “not Friends of the Gorge, not Fish and Wildlife.”
     She also questioned the county’s past decisions relating to land.
     “They’ve given away land to the park system; they’ve sold land for practically nothing to Habitat for Humanity. The county has 158 pieces of real property assets. Why aren’t we maximizing them?”
     She was also critical of the county’s decision to cut funding to Home at Last, saying she would suggest a cut in pay, including her own, to fund the program, if elected.
     As another means of generating funds, Murray says she would look at the potential to generate wind energy on some of the county’s 158 land parcels.
     Speaking specifically to the county’s 10th Street property, which is being examined as the possible site of a youth center. She suggested examining it for business development, instead.
     “I know kids don’t have anything to do, but we also need more jobs — and what kind of money would that bring in?” she said, reiterating the need to use county assets wisely.
     “We need to look at other ways of funding besides this [taxes],” Murray said. “We’re up to, what? $21 and change [per $1,000 of assessed property value] on our taxes, it could be $23 and change, if we’re in the city. How much more can we do?”
     She cautioned the county about climbing closer to the $45 per thousand county taxpayers were paying prior to tax revolts in the early 1990s.
     “We’re climbing again and people are going to lose their houses if we keep this up,” she said. “How much can they bear?”
     Murray also questioned whether the county is benefiting by administering its own scenic area ordinances, noting that the county does get some economic development funds. However, she questioned the benefits derived from the funding, as compared to the costs of administration.
     “Another thing we need to examine: How much economic development have we really had and toward what?”
     Murray says the gorge commission currently has its most reasonable executive director to-date in Jill Arens.
     “And I think things are changing in the gorge commission,” she said. “I don’t think they are as in tune with the Friends of the Gorge as they once were.”
     Regarding wind farms in the county, Murray says she is not opposed to them, but sees them as an industrial use, inappropriate for residential areas.
“Residents don’t want to see huge towers,” she said.
     She also questioned giving variances and tax breaks to such businesses, and not giving them to existing businesses that want to grow and be successful.
     Murray also touched on the home rule process, noting that she supports a charter similar to Umatilla County’s with no county manager, but six major departments and three full-time commissioners.
     “The department heads come to them,” Murray said.
     Through this process, Murray also takes partial credit for the county’s effort to establish a finance department.
     County Clerk Karen LeBreton is the budget officer. In a home rule meeting, Murray says she asked the finance officer if she could take on that responsibility and she said “yes.”
     “As a result, the county judge said he had been looking at developing a finance department and getting the responsibility over to Lynn [Rasmussen, finance officer]. You need to reorganize as best you can for more efficiency,” Murray said.