Perhaps I should be less critical of specific town residents given their filthy mouths? Hmm.

Bill Brown and Jeff Stone took control of a failing recreation program, it’s that simple. ICRC refused and refuses to purchase liability insurance while transporting children, and refused to provide liability and property insurance when repeatedly told to do so. Talk about a breach of public trust among many other continuing problems.

Where are the insurance documents for the dog park, skateboard park, playground, par course, concert series, and Speaker’s Series? Stone seems to think they don’t or didn’t exist.

It’s a sad day when as county administration delivered this bad news, our citizens’ conduct threatened the safety and security of Stone, his administration and the public, causing them to bring in law enforcement. Stone said it best, “You’re just 3,000 votes. Vote me out at the ballot box.”

Perhaps we should make Jeff Stone and Bill Brown the Parade Grand Marshals next year, seriously. They’ve done us a favor. They showed these thugs for what they are.

As for the new “committee” to build a “private convention hall,” I’m impressed with their titles but that’s it. Building on a HAZMAT site is stupid. Why does the land owner continue to insist? Why do we allow them to misrepresent it as a “public community center”?

The state, county, and contracted engineering firm responsible for the cleanup say “remedial intervention and cleanup are necessary” on the community center site. They also say that the origin of the spill(s) “are not adequately determined” and that the spill is migrating in the general direction toward the center property, toward Strawberry Creek.

None of this has been adequately reported in the paper, sorry J.P. but it’s fact as reported within the engineering cleanup record at geotracker.waterboards.ca.gov/profile_report.asp?global_id=T0606500511.

Just so that you know why it matters, Maximum Contamination Levels (MCL) are set when contamination exposures cause specific death rates within children, the elderly, and those with weakened immune systems as determined by state health regulators. We are talking about thousands of pounds of volatile, cancer-causing hydrocarbons. These spills have pushed MCLs and exposures beyond belief.

Have you seen what the spill cleanup guys wear to clean up this mess and sample the monitoring wells on the center property? Perhaps our children should wear the same protective clothing as they descend the “wave slide?” Maybe we can break new ground in the country by converting a current hazardous site into a playground and community center.

As for ICRC, and the “public playground committee,” as long as it’s not [composed of] CSA 36 members, the county, or a nonprofit, voting membership corporation then there is no accountability. This town will continue to find itself in abhorrent messes manipulated by questionable businessmen or women who have a selfish and destructive profit motive with no real way out.

This project should be terminated and the funds returned to the donors who have no knowledge of the spill, and the county, having stripped the recreation mandate from ICRC.

Jeff Smith
Pine Cove