Let's see...we have the son of a rich man who has a vision for a GHOST TOWN and the people there still object to the effect it will have on them? Hmm, this vision thing can get tricky.

Let me make a short list of other projects that very wealthy sons of rich men have dreamed up to establish their own importance in the shadow of a prominent father...

Incidentally, my theory is that the sons of important men usually aren't as naturally great as their Dads or they'd BE their Dads. So their visions are usually things that other great men did before in different times.

Perhaps you would start a newspaper at the end of the age of newspapers.

Perhaps you would start a war in Iraq so you can be Commander Jumpsuit - the tough guy on a war footing.

Or perhaps you'll show Daddy by being a sports owner. Hmm, what are we learning here about the offspring visions of the rich?

The Shaniko imbroglio seems to be much like the erstwhile Ross Island "donation." Mr. Pamplin makes an initial offer of a gesture that sounds quite reasonable, even magnanimous, but then shifts the ground-rules so that a seemingly philanthropic gesture morphs into an exploitative development that includes a gross shift of costs and other burdens onto the locality.

The old adage about not looking gift horses in the mouth comes to mind. With the Shaniko and Ross Island precedents, however, it seems much better to look into that gift horse mouth to see what fangs are hiding in the shadows...

Shaniko is pretty neat, it really feels like an old west town. I love the whole area: Digging for fossils in fossil, camping and bass fishing in the John Day river, and the whole fossil beds area: clarno unit, the painted hills and my favorite, the blue basin. So beautifully unpopulated.

I don't mind the town turning down his development plans at all. If they want to remain small, so be it. But, trying to hijack the well he drilled for the towns uses was just plain wrong.

Ironic that a tiny town like Shaniko can shut a rich player and his schemes down but Portland can't.

Pamplin is very, very, VERY fickel. He starts projects (KPAM, The Tribune) and then gets bored with them and all but pulls the plug. If you every have an occasion where Mr Pamplin offers to go into business with you or "help" you, be afraid...be VERY afraid...and run for the hills!!!

Pamplin also produces a television show about a ridiculous superhero called Bible Man. (The link goes to the International Catalog of Superheroes, which I never knew existed.)

A "minister", eh? Not much selflessness and brotherly love exhibited in this tale. What would Jesus "vision"?

Pamplin also knows how to buy is way around Portland.

Big checks writen to Portland Audubon Scoiety and others got his Ross Island reclamation agreement/requirement cost reduced from $2.1 Billion to next to nothing.

Portland's "greens keeper" and former Audubon head Mike Houck approved the deal.
After decades of aggregate extraction Pamlin passes back the Island to the city and gets a pat on the back.

Now news reports have "volunteers" working the island to bring it back.

All that money, Pamlin's and city money spent on everything imaginable and volunteers are left to clean up the Island.

Keep Portland Weird
Amazing how there's no money from eithe rPamlin or the city

Neat comments, lot more to our Shaniko story and our "relationship" with Mr. Pamplin and his managing company over the years. We did NOT try to hijack the well, but was offered water from the well at two city council meetings. This incorporated city cannot deliver water to customers that it does not own. We already have two well sights chosen for a well that we have filed and have recieved water rights on. We were lead to believe we were working together for water for our whole town. We will get water and it will be shared with everyone. We had to look out for the 60 plus land owners here and the futures they may want, not just one rich guys wish to separate his properties from the rest of our small town. To let him take his current meters off our system we also loose our opportunity to apply for the community block grant we need to develop our city-wide system. Someone needs to print the facts about us. Such as why Pamplin has not sold to several(5 or 6) some "above what he is asking" offers and has now gone back to shaft the man he bought it from, wanting his money back and give back the properties. We wish the previous owner could but he had to pay back the main financial backer he had in the mid-eighties when he saved and truely restored the hotel. Maybe Shaniko needs its own website dedicated to the facts, so these news people will not be able to write their version of our story. Then readers can just read the facts and make up their own minds. Shaniko is an awesome and dream come true place to live. Visit anytime! I do history and keeping track of our recent history is a pleasure and a pain. I also did not "lead an opposition", just stated facts and go by the book (as recorder-our historic district ordinances and policies). In what city can you drill a well and hook up to your own water, only one that someone apparently thought he could buy??? We truly did not see the "other" ship till it was alsmost too late, and there is room for only one boat in Shaniko.
Bye bye, oh, and as far as remining a ghost town, isn't that what people come to Shaniko to see??? That is a story too!!! now I'll really say bye.

Sorry for the type-0's, it is late.