ISLAND CITY â A new contract with the Union County Sheriff s Office for law enforcement services in Island City is set to take effect July 1.
The Union County Board of Commissioners Wednesday, April 7, ratified the pact that Island City s city council approved Feb. 15.
The contract is similar to the one now in place.
The contract calls for Island City to continue receiving 80 hours a month of law enforcement service from the Union County Sheriff s Office. The contract, like the present one, will automatically increase 1.5% each year on July 1 to allow for cost-of-living pay increases and will remain in place indefinitely unless one party pulls out or negotiates for a change.
LA GRANDE â James Smejkal of Banks has withdrawn his application for a rock quarry off Robbs Hill Road.
The Union County Board of Commissioners had scheduled a public hearing Wednesday morning, April 7, to consider the application for the rock quarry about a mile from Perry. The quarry would have been at least 250 acres.
The Union County Planning Commission on March 22 voted to recommend the county commissioners reject Smejkalâs application, citing the staff report that found numerous deficiencies in the 400-plus pages of the document.
Bill Kloos, legal counsel representing Smejkal, formally withdrew the application, according to information from Union County.
Iâve spent several weeks reviewing the James Smejkal application for the proposed âPonderosa Basalt Quarry.â
As an attorney, it isnât unusual to encounter difficult and complex writing. But the Smejkal application is different. It is incomplete, filled with internal contradictions and lacks supporting evidence. It fails to provide documentation regarding key issues and misrepresents documents. It frequently fails to address the issue under discussion, or to acknowledge issues, which are legally required to be addressed. With no table of contents or index, the application is exceedingly difficult to reference.
The application fractures regulations into unreadable sections, making it impossible just to identify the regulation without external references. It appears to have been deliberately written to confuse, as if doing so might allow Smejkal to get approval for an application that is so flatly deficient it could never be approved on its actual merits. This is n
Many local residents are aware of the proposed basalt quarry that would be on Robbs Hill Road just east of Perry. The large quarry would be constructed alongside the Robbs Hill Creek drainage, leading into the Grande Ronde River. The proposal is to remove more than 200 million tons of rock over the next 89 years (or 100, or 137 years, depending on which page of the application you read). Over time, the quarry would obliterate a mountainside by shipping basalt by rail to asphalt markets in California and the Midwest. As many as 46 additional trains would traverse our valleys daily to remove the rock.
Many local residents are aware of the proposed basalt quarry that would be located on Robbs Hill Road, just east of Perry. The large quarry would be constructed alongside the Robb Hill Creek drainage, leading into the Grande Ronde River. The proposal is to remove more than 200 million tons of rock over the next 89 years (or 100, or 137 years, depending on which page of the application you read). Over time, the quarry would obliterate a mountainside by shipping basalt by rail to asphalt markets in California and the Midwest. As many as 46 additional trains would traverse our valleys daily to remove the rock.