[Grovenet] America's Trillion-Dollar Baby

Sat Feb 10 15:15:33 PST 2007

Not necessarily the "beat of the hammers that build houses..." Builders
don't create demand; they stay in business by satisfying it. The hammers go
to work only when there's a shortage of homes. 

If all the people who live here now and work elsewhere left tonight, every
residential block in Forest Grove would have empty houses. Property values
here would crash, but only for a while. Every day we have real estate
brokers in Portland calling us about seeing homes for sale in Forest Grove.
They have plenty of buyers looking for a home and who are quite willing to
join the crowd of commuters already making the trek by car, train or bus. 

What new industries have arrived in Forest Grove in the past ten years? How
many new jobs? How many jobs have left? 

Forest Grove is already a bedroom community to many thousands of residents.
That number of surely growing. I think it will continue to grow until there
are more jobs here than there are people who want to commute from here. I
don't expect to see that happen. 

Would a copper smelter "destroy the community"? Would an asphalt plant, such
as was proposed some time ago? I don't think so. I don't think it's accurate
to say it would destroy the community. It would change the community. The
financial position of the community might be greatly enhanced by such an
industry. Budgets might be quite easy to balance and civil services and
facilities might be better than ever before, thanks to influx of money from
workers and the company. 

However, it would *change* the community. It would end our bucolic, sleepy
transition through one year after another. Many of us might flee the noise,
smell, pollution dangers and disruption such a business might cause. Even
so, Forest Grove would survive. It survived noisy, smelly lumber mills
filled with rough people living rough lives when our quite neighborhoods
rattled to the screech of huge saws all night long, day in and day out. As
much as we might honor and find interesting those times, few of us would
care to live in the noise and confusion, and when out side stand shoulder to
shoulder to those often rough, coarse and, on a Saturday night, drunken men
who turned trees into lumber. 

Forest Grove seems to be putting its roughneck past behind and attempting to
adopt a more genteel community atmosphere; one more consistent with a
University town. Indeed, schools like Pac U often drive such evolutions and
that was part of what Cobi and I liked about Forest Grove when we first
explored this area.

In my experience such communities seldom provide employment for their
residents. 

Ron D'Eau Claire 

-----Original Message-----
Ron,

"Labor leakage" would be the percentage of local people who work  
elsewhere.  It doesn't address people who come here to work.  We are  
not disagreeing over the question of building our employment base.   
Unless it is something that would destroy the community, e.g. a  
traditional copper smelter.

Forest Grove's march into the status of "bedroom community" is set to  
the beat of the hammers that build houses.  A community cannot build  
its economy on the employment of home builders indefinitely.  There  
must be some other jobs to balance the system.  The push to build out  
Forest Grove to solve our city's budget problems is going to create a  
larger, more serious problem in the future as all of those new houses  
expect public services.  Short term planning for long term problems  
leaves the problems for the long term residents.  The short timers  
can just cut and run.

BTW, since you mentioned decent places to eat, did you try the  
Ukrainian food this week?  They serve Italian food most of the time.

On Feb 10, 2007, at 9:31 AM, Ron D'Eau Claire wrote:

> David wrote:
>
> "So, if a city wishes to be viable they
> will want to reduce labor leakage as one factor in reducing purchasing 
> leakage.  Otherwise they become a bedroom community and eventually 
> they must be swallowed by the city that has the economic base to 
> support public services."
>
> -------------------------
>
> It seems to me that Forest Grove is already a 'bedroom community' and 
> becoming more of one every day.
>
> I work and live in Forest Grove, yet I spend probably 2/3 of my
> purchasing
> dollars elsewhere because I can't get what I want here in town. Even
> groceries. As Safeway continues to be our only grocery store, steadily
> cutting back or raising prices on the staples I use daily, I find  
> myself in
> Hillsboro more and more often buying groceries I can't get here or  
> which are
> sufficiently cheaper there to justify the trip. I can't buy a shirt  
> or a
> pair of socks or paper for my printer here, or even find a decent  
> meal out
> in the evening unless I want Mexican food (my diet doesn't include
> hamburgers or pizza).
>
> Since I work and live in Forest Grove, I resist going elsewhere if
> I can
> avoid it. If I were commuting to Hillsboro or points east I  
> wouldn't bother
> to shop here at all. I'd go where I find the best prices, selection  
> and
> convenience. I suspect that's the majority of Forest Grove  
> residents today,
> and that majority is still growing.
>
> Bringing more people in town to work here would, it seems to me,
> only enrich
> the thriving business community in Cornelius that has grown rapidly  
> and
> steadily over the past several years filling many of the needs of  
> Forest
> Grove residents.
>
> Ron D'Eau Claire
>
>
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