Danny Santos, legal adviser to Gov. John Kitzhaber, said Wednesday that under federal laws dealing with Indian gaming, a recent decision by the U.S. Department of the Interior approving the Florence area site for a casino in effect obligates the state to negotiate a gaming compact, just as it has with eight other Oregon tribes. He said federal law "basically doesn't allow the state to say, `No.' "

The only thing that might upset the process is if the state decides to take issue with the Department of Interior ruling that found the tract qualifies as restored tribal land even though it was taken into trust by the department, for the tribe, after Oct. 17, 1988, the effective date of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act. The Interior Department generally doesn't allow gaming on tribal lands that are taken into trust after that date.

But its Dec. 5 finding says a unique set of circumstances applies in the Florence case, in that the tribes' organization has strong historical ties to the land. They include the fact that the land contains the site of a historic tribal village, is adjacent to a tribal cemetery and remained in ownership of generations of tribal members for years. Santos said he notified the tribe that the state intends to take some time to review the federal finding and to consider the possible precedent it might set for other tribes - particularly whether it might open the floodgates for efforts to establish casinos on other tribal lands acquired after Oct. 17, 1988.

Interior Department officials have said that's not the case, but state officials have to satisfy themselves that the federal officials are right, Santos said. If the state decides to take issue with the federal ruling, Santos said, it would probably appeal it in federal court. The ruling came after a lawsuit filed by the tribe required department officials to revisit the issue and reversed a previous ruling that the land didn't qualify as a casino site.

A state appeal of the Interior Department decision would delay the compact process, Santos said. But he emphasized that there are no plans to appeal and the state review of the federal decision probably can be done in the next couple of weeks, before negotiations on the compact begin. He said those negotiations probably will occur in late January or early February. The state has 180 days to respond to the tribes' request to begin negotiations.

The proposed site is a rectangular piece of land on the west side of the North Fork Siuslaw River Road, a county road running north from Highway 126. Tribal officials said access to the casino would probably be from the county road. The tribe has sought for six years to establish a casino in Lane County - first in Springfield and later in Florence - but backed off each time in the face of strong public opposition. Tribal Chairman Ron Brainard said the proposed North Fork casino is still in the planning stage but would cost $15 million to $20 million and provide 500 to 750 full-time jobs.

Santos said local concerns about a development of that size are among the issues that will be addressed in the gaming compact negotiations. "The tribes recognize they have to live in the communities they  have these facilities in," he said. "It's to their benefit to have as good a working relationship as possible with government officials, the businesses and the community members themselves."

Other issues that would be addressed in the compact include traffic congestion, the scope of gaming, security and how the land will be used. Some North Fork Siuslaw River Road residents said traffic would be a major concern. They contend that construction of a casino on the tribal site would require improving the road's intersection with Highway 126, widening the road between the casino and the highway, and possibly installing a traffic light at the intersection. "It's been a rural road for an awful long time, and we're used to that," said Hod Johnson, who lives on North Fork Road.

Anna Morrison, who represents western Lane County on the board of commissioners, said she's still reviewing the Department of Interior ruling, but she would like to see a variety of issues covered in the compact negotiations. Among them, she said, should be salaries and benefits paid to casino workers, potential traffic problems, impact on wetlands, possible contributions by the tribes to local schools and dealing with gambling addiction problems. "I want to talk about the overall well-being of the community as a whole," Morrison said. "Everybody is kind of in a learning curve right now to understand what we can and cannot do in these negotiations."

The governor is expected to be in Eugene on Jan. 3 to discuss state budget issues, she said, and she hopes she will have an opportunity to talk with him then about plans for the compact negotiations.  Source:  12/27/01 - The Register-Guard, by Larry Bacon.

Stepping in where several malls have died, Californians are pioneering an old-fashioned return to downtown and Main Street, blending offices and restaurants with homes above stores. Unlike the origin of shopping malls, which wooed stores out of downtown cores in the 1960s and 1970s, their renovations a generation later are considered urban infill projects. "It's ironic. When we built them they were on the edges, and now they're in the center of our towns,'' says Joe Scanga, principal at Calthorpe Associates, a Berkeley-based architecture firm.

In Mountain View, Scanga's firm designed an 18-acre residential neighborhood known as The Crossings on the site of a Silicon Valley favorite: the Old Mill Mall. In the 1970s shoppers strolled among indoor trees, creeks and waterfalls. Now Jim Li shops the site with real estate agent Lucy Wu - for a home among 397 townhouses, apartments and houses built on foundations of the crushed mall.  ``It's incredible what they did with a little land here,'' Crossings resident Carolyn Herrick says.  Herrick, a three-year resident of the neighborhood, with its front porch steps, narrow streets and designs that harken back to small towns before World War II, calls the atmosphere ``Mary Poppins-like.''

Likewise, in downtown Pasadena, developers are building nearly 400 rentals above stores at the just-opened Paseo Colorado, a glitzy three-block successor to a failed downtown mall.  ``These studios in Pasadena are going for $1,500 to $2,000 a month,'' says Steven Bodzin, communications director for the San Francisco-based Congress for the New Urbanism. ``They're getting lines out the door for people who want this.''

In San Jose, the dead Town and Country Mall is being razed and  resurrected as an upscale downtown-style vision called Santana Row. Builders are promising 1,300 apartments and a hotel among its lushly landscaped plazas, stores and restaurants.  It opens next August.

In their time, enclosed malls were ``slick engines for consumption, and people were blissed out with this kind of thing,'' says Los Angeles architect Jon Jerde. Jerde, who designed San Diego's downtown Horton Plaza and Universal City Walk in Los Angeles, says malls kept out the rain and bugs, and were ``the place where one man could own it all.''

Near the nation's first mall, the 1956-era Southdale Mall in Edina, Minn., Jerde designed the cathedral of mall culture, the Mall of America. Now, he says, more people want something old that's new again: Main Street environments and downtown-like experiences.  In his hometown of Long Beach, Jerde designed CityPlace, an urban mix of houses and stores now under construction to replace dying indoor Long Beach Plaza.

Although California has the most examples of these mall conversions, dead malls are being reborn across the nation. In Colorado, New York, Tennessee and Florida, local governments are kicking in hundreds of millions of dollars to help developers make a renaissance of their dying retail environments.

Dead malls, surrounded by acres of parking designed for the weeks just before Christmas, make ideal redevelopment sites, authorities say. ``It's a huge national opportunity,'' says Bodzin.  In 1999, Bodzin's Congress for the New Urbanism commissioned a study by Price, WaterhouseCoopers that estimated that 7 percent of America's 2,800 malls are dead or languishing. It said  12 percent more are headed that way. ``People don't shop at small stores anymore, and that's what malls are comprised of. Everybody's moving to a larger format,'' says Peter Blackbird, 21, an amateur student of malls from Queensbury, N.Y.

Blackbird has visited dying suburban malls throughout the northeastern United States. ``Some of my fondest memories were in the hometown mall,'' he says. Now he maintains a Web site of mall pictures and anecdotes called Deadmalls.com.  ``We built too many of them too fast,'' Calthorpe Associates' Scanga says. ``In the 1980s there was a boom to have them. We should have had two when two were popular and we had 20.''  Source:  The Register-Guard, December 25, 2001, by Jim Wasserman, The Associated Press.

Schulenberg Joint Venture, whose members are Eugene residents Virgil and Nola Schulenberg and their son, Mark Schulenberg, cited $980,500 in debts and $1.7 million in assets in their filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Eugene earlier this month.  The venture's sole asset is 20 vacant acres of commercial zoned land at highways 99 and 34 in Tangent, two miles west of Interstate 5, and about eight miles south of Albany.  While the filing values the property at $1.7 million, an attorney for one of the creditors said the land is probably worth less than $700,000.

The land was long owned by Eugene lumberman Ehrman Giustina, who gave it to the University of Oregon Foundation in 1995.  The foundation sold the land - at that time 26 acres - to the Schulenbergs for $774,000 that same year.

In 1996, Tangent changed its planning rules to permit large commercial buildings on such land, opening the door for the Schulenbergs' factory outlet concept.  At the time, Mark Schulenberg told The Register-Guard that he envisioned a 230,000-square-foot center that would employ up to 300 people.
The plan sparked debate in Tangent.  Some said it would be a boon.  Others worried it would bring traffic that would clog roads and cause accidents. As it turned out, opponents had little to fear.

In 1997, the Schulenbergs sold six acres, for $650,000 to an adjacent business for an expansion, according to the bankruptcy filings.  But the factory outlet plan fizzled.  In filings, the Schulenbergs said they failed to keep up with payments on high-interest loans they had taken out that were secured by the 20 acres.  They also said they had trouble lining up tenants and were unable to get a construction loan.

The two biggest debts tied to the land are about $250,000 in principal and interest owed to a Eugene investment group, Regents Capital LLC, and about $550,000 in principal and interest owed to Lynx Communications, a Salem company.  Both firms have been trying to foreclose on the land for several years, but have been thwarted by the Schulenberg group's bankruptcy filings.  The Schulenberg group in May 2000 filed for Chapter 11 reorganization, and in December 2000 a judge approved the family's plan to sell the land and pay off the debts.  But no sale materialized, prompting Regents and Lynx to resume foreclosure efforts.  Then, with foreclosure imminent, the Schulenberg group filed the liquidation petition earlier this month.

The court filings don't explain what happened to the proceeds from the sale of the six acres, and to the loan money from Lynx and Regents.  Eugene attorney Dean Kaufman, who represents Regents, said the land is valuable because it has good exposure to a busy route - Highway 34 - between I-5 and Corvallis.  A few months ago, Regents figured the land was worth $600,000 TO $700,000.  "but who knows what it is worth today at the trough of the market," he said.  The Schulenbergs and their attorney did not return calls from The Register-Guard.  Source:  The Register-Guard.

Board members last month justified the salary increase by noting that their jobs involve considerable time and travel, that they administer the largest PUD in the state, and that they haven't had a raise since 1986.  Members also argued that a higher salary would make it easier to attract candidates who have full time jobs.

But Kay Butler of Florence didn't see it that way.  "I believe you have abrogated our faith in you in this unconscionable, greedy, self-enriching plan," Butler told the board before its vote Monday to rescind the raise.  Other PUD customers, most of them from Florence, questioned the wisdom of such an increase when the economy is slumping and the board will soon be negotiating a new contract with district employees.  "That $1,000 number will stick out like a sore thumb, guys," said Blair Sneddon of Reedsport, a former employee of the district.  "It's not a good time."

The motion to rescind the raise passed 301, with Tom Tymchuck of Reedsport, Ron Benfield of Newport and William Fleenor of Florence voting for it and Randall Kowalke of Waldport opposed.  Board President Larkin Kaliher of Toledo abstained.  Previously, he had joined Fleenor and Kowalke in voting for the increase.

Tymchuck, who missed the board's November meeting in Newport because of medical problems, made the motion to cancel the increase.  He said he would have voted against the raise, and has talked to numerous people distressed about the board's previous action.  "It's hard to justify," he said.

Kowalke, alone in voting to keep the raise, had little to say during the board discussion.  I think this is political, and I'm pretty thoroughly disgusted with it," he said.

Fleenor, who cast the swing vote, said he was swayed by customers' testimony to change his mind and believes the board should receive no compensation until it can agree on criteria for determining pay.  State law allows compensation, he said, but establishes no standards for deciding how much.  "It's really difficult for us to get a handle on this," he said.  "Either we're going to compensate ourselves based on criteria or (there should be) no compensation at all."  Some Oregon public utilities pay their boards.  Others, such as the Eugene Water & Electric Board and the Springfield Utility Board, do not.

After the vote to rescind the raise, Fleenor made a motion to do away with all compensation.  It failed; he and Kowalke cast the only affirmative votes.  Board members said they expect their pay to remain the same for the foreseeable future, but Fleenor said he wants the issue raised early next year at a workshop session that will look at board responsibilities and employee management.  If there is any change in pay, Fleenor said he expects it to go down rather than up.

Zane Ziemer, one of the Florence residents who spoke at the meeting and an unsuccessful board candidate in the last election, said he was pleased by the board's action.  The timing was really bad for increasing the salary, he said, but he sees no need for doing away with all compensation.  "I have no problem with what they are being paid now," Ziemer said.  "I think they need to be paid."  Source:  12/13/01, The Register-Guard, by Larry Bacon.

Each of the board's five elected members now receives $510 per month in pay and $75 per diem.  Voting in favor of the pay increase were board President Larkin Kaliher and members Randall Kowalke and Bill Fleenor. Ron Benfield cast the dissenting vote. Board member Tom Tymchuk was absent because of a medical problem.

 The board previously voted to raise electricity rates by 6 percent.

Kaliher, from Newport, said board members haven't had an increase since 1986. He said the higher pay will make it easier to attract good candidates for the elected positions - particularly people who have to work for a living and must take time away from their jobs to attend meetings, which are held during the day.  The board has two meetings a month, and board members often attend meetings of other groups involved in public power issues.

"Sometimes I'm gone six to eight days a month for PUD meetings," Kaliher said. "Sometimes it's only two."  He acknowledged that the Central Lincoln PUD Board is better-paid than other Oregon PUD boards. But he noted that the Newport-based district is larger and has more customers than the others. "If you take it per utility customer or per acre, we're probably lower," he said.

A 1999 survey by the Northwest Public Power Association showed that monthly pay for Oregon public utility board members ranged from nothing to the $510 paid to Central Lincoln board members. Some public utility board members are  paid on a per-meeting basis - up to $350 per meeting.  Eugene Water & Electric Board and Springfield Utility Board members receive no pay. Members of the Emerald People's Utility District Board in Lane County receive $112 per meeting.

A national study published by the Northwest Public Power Association in July found that 83 percent of public utility governing bodies were paid, with the annual average payment $1,350. However, for members of public utility boards serving 20,000 to 50,000 customers, the average of the 11 utilities that responded to the survey was $18,000.

Central Lincoln, which Kaliher said is twice the size of any other Oregon PUD, has 34,000 customers. It includes all of Lincoln County and stretches south along the coast to a point just north of North Bend. Kaliher said the length of the district means most board members have to travel to attend board meetings - increasing their time away from their jobs.

Benfield, the Waldport board member who cast the dissenting vote, said he attends an average of about four meetings per month and believes that he is adequately compensated. A pay  increase just feels wrong, he said. "There are city councils, school boards and a whole bunch of other people who put in a lot more time than we do and generally get no compensation," he said.  It wasn't a good idea for the board to give itself a raise after raising rates, he added.  Tymchuk, from Reedsport, agreed and said he would have voted against the raise had he been at the November meeting.

The board's next meeting is Dec. 10 in Reedsport and Tymchuk said he will seek to have the board reconsider its action. The Reedsport meeting will be at the Central Lincoln Office at 11:30 a.m. It will be preceded by an 11 a.m. work session and a 10 a.m. nonpublic executive session. Source:  December 3, 2001, The Register-Guard, by Larry Bacon.

Director's Compensation
Motion: Mr. Kowalke moved, Mr. Benfield seconded that the directors' per diem be increased from $75.00 per day to $100.00 per day, effective January 1, 2002.  Aye: Kowalke, Benfield, Fleenor, Kaliher.
Motion: Mr. Kowalke moved, Dr. Fleenor seconded that Board compensation be increased to $1,000.00 per month effective January 1, 2002.  Aye: Kowalke, Fleenor, Kaliher.  Nay: Benfield.
Motion: Mr. Kowalke moved, Dr. Fleenor seconded that the Directors' compensation be tied percentage wise to non-union employee wage increases, if any, effective January 1, 2003.  Aye: Kowalke, Fleenor.  Nay: Benfield, Kaliher.
Members Present:  Ron Benfield, Bill Fleenor, Larkin Kaliher, Randall Kowalke.  Member absent: Tom Tymchuk.