Posted: Friday, June 20, 2008 10:00 pm
Let's pave that bike path
Now that gas prices are soaring through the roof, and it looks like our love affair with our cars is at a tearful end, now is the time to pave a dedicated bike path between Albany and Corvallis.
I am one of many people who bike-commute between the two towns. Having a safe, dedicated bike path removed from Highway 20 would encourage more bike commuters and allow safe usage even in the winter months with properly lit bikes.
Ask any cyclist: Attempting to ride the shoulder on Highway 20, even in bright sunshine, is hazardous thanks to the multi-tasking that drivers find themselves doing nowadays (dealing with children, talking on the phone, etc.).
It's time to park the cars, folks. For real. Let's also encourage our municipal leaders to extend bus service hours and routes, such as the Linn-Benton Loop for those who work at Good Samaritan Regional Medical Center, The Corvallis Clinic and the surrounding facilities.
Renewal of rail service would allow people to go to Portland, Eugene and other points do do their business, shopping, etc. without dealing with Interstate 5 and local traffic. Do these things, and the community will certainly be appreciative of the cleaner air, less traffic, less noise, healthier citizens ... the list of benefits goes on.
We're running on fumes, folks. Let's do the right thing, and develop alternative transportation that's useful to everyone.
Don Saleski, Albany
What manufacturing needs
Linn-Benton Community College recently performed an extensive study of the manufacturing workforce training and education needs in Linn and Benton counties. I would like to thank the participating companies within our initial focus area of paper/wood products, food processing and metals industries. Next year's focus will be healthcare and the biosciences.
I want to share the five key findings within the manufacturing sector:
1. There is a desperate need to bring more people into all of the skilled trades, particularly electricians.
2. There is an emerging new skill set required for maintenance - electro-mechanical. Due to changes to more technology-driven, automated production, maintenance work is no longer strictly mechanical, but often digital in nature.
3. There is an urgent need to draw youth into the manufacturing sector. The need to shift the image of the sector that youth and their parents have. It is also imperative to work with high schools and even grade schools to ensure that the manufacturing sector is recognized as a viable career option.
4. Industries are challenged by a set of non-technical skills, mostly among their production workforce. These non-technical skills are: problem-solving, critical thinking, motivation to be a part of the solution and adapt, and interpersonal skills like team-building and how to work with others.
5. There are growing issues of working with the newer generation of workers (the 21st century youth worker), but this is not yet pervasive.
Issues of integrating a new generation of workers are definitely on the immediate horizon for companies - helping this new generation understand what it means to be an employee, dependability, professional behavior and workplace ethic.
LBCC will make these findings a priority as we work with our workforce and economic development partners to address Linn and Benton county needs.
If you have any additional questions about what we learned, please feel free to call Gary Price, LBCC Director of Business & Employer Services, at 917-4948.
Again, thank you to the business and industry representatives for helping us with this important work. Their expertise and insight enables us to truly partner for the success of our community.
Rita Cavin, President, Linn-Benton Community College
Real money from real jobs
Listening to all the liberal hype as we head toward the presidential election in November has become stomach-churning. Obama is going to give us back our log revenues, Clinton wanted to invent green jobs and our commander of liberalism, Kulongoski, signs every environmental initiative that comes across his desk.
This might be fine for a few urban counties where evidently they have figured out how to exist with nothing. Most of us are just trying to get by and earn a modest living. We probably won't be driving a $75,000, two-seated, biofueled, battery-charged, hydrogen-celled hybrid car any time soon. We are turning into a bunch of Al Gores waiting for the sky to fall.
Where do you think the money comes from to subsidize all these lofty notions? Our taxes. How about actually log our timber, drill for our oil, pipe the natural gas, generate nuclear power and revive our manufacturing sector?
This would produce revenue and create jobs that would pump real money into our economy. Instead we are happy to have Third World countries with little or no regulation provide it for us so we can sit around and gripe about the high cost of everything and wonder where all of our jobs went. Wake up, people, we don't need more government. We need to find some sort of balance with the far left.
Oh, how silly of me. If we actually practiced free enterprise, these Democratic politicians wouldn't have a job.
Joe Pedersen, Sweet Home