Speech: On The Occasion of A 75th Anniversary

Speech to the Congregation of The Community Church
of Prineville, Oregon On The Occasion of Its 75th anniversary
Delivered by Crook County Judge Scott R. Cooper, May 19, 2002

Nineteen Twenty Seven.

The population of Crook County is around 3,300. The population of Oregon hasn’t quite reached 1 million.

Most of the residents of the county are farmers and ranchers scattered up and down Ochoco Creek, Mill Creek and McKay Creek. Out O’Neal way, on a ranch along the Crooked River, a farm-boy named Tom McCall, is turning 14 this year. Most people pay him no mind, never guessing his future as one of Oregon’s most well known governors.

Prineville boasts two paved streets. Mostly, the towns runs north and south along Main Street, but the bridge across the river connecting Second Street to Crooked River highway, is causing the town to branch out in a more east-west direction. Fashionable residents live mostly along First Street, while some of the braver souls are building along the less desirable (and more flood prone) Third Street, near the magnificent new courthouse and the high school next door.

Automobiles and farm wagons mingle together on the busy streets. Privately, many dismiss the automobile as a passing fad. It’s skinny, bald tire have a bad habit of getting stuck in the mud, and it seems unrealistic that it will ever completely replace the more reliable horses and stagecoaches, which make Prineville a critical transportation hub for all of eastern Oregon.

The pride and joy of Prineville is the City of Prineville Railroad, built just 10 short years ago. The rail provides a critical link to the mainline in Redmond and keeps all-important shipments of wool and cattle going out as well as a little bit of timber, which a few people are hoping will someday provide a small supplement to their farm incomes.

The biggest social problem of the day is the running battle between the local sheriff and the Crook County’s bootleggers. This is the era of Prohibition, and while it wasn’t exactly a concept Crook County’s rough-and-tumble crowd embraced, it is the law of the land. More than once the sheriff has swept through the countyside, locking up every known moonshiner in the county in the courthouse basement. If you’re walking to church, school or the park nearby, the prisoners will call to you through the open, barred windows.

Maybe the liquor industry holds so much attraction because it provides one of the few entertainments in the community. Just under half the households in the county own radios. Talking pictures haven’t come to town yet. Television hasn’t been invented, and only the wealthier homes and businesses have electricity and telephones.

But the community does have churches, and if dance halls and saloons aren’t your thing, these are the next best bet for education, entertainment and polite company.
As early as 1879, itinerant Oregon missionaries had organized a congregation of the Christian Church in Prineville. By 1882, the Rev. Troy Shelley boasted a congregation of 20 souls. When he was unavailable, for he traveled frequently throughout eastern Oregon, his wife, Annie, was said to preach a fine sermon in his absence

A report filed by the Reverend Vanderpool in 1885 makes much of the baptism of 11 members in a single year. But more important than those 11, said the Reverend, was his single greatest accomplishment of the year: the successful reclamation of a single soul from the Methodists.

But much to the frustration of the Shelleys, the Vanderpools and others, the Prineville Christian church never really grew beyond a handful of members. For most of its existence, numbers hovered around 20 members, not that much different than the numbers reported by the Methodists and the Presbyterians. The last we read of the Christian Church in early Prineville is the 1928 report of Clarence Swander, General Secretary of the Oregon Christian Missionary Convention, who states simply: “Their building burned in 1927 which completely caused the assembling to cease. The church lives in name only.”

Now this is an interesting report. It isn’t so much what the Reverend said, as what he ignored. Let’s face it. Rev. Swander certainly knew why the Christian Church in Prineville no longer existed as a stand-alone congregation. He just didn’t want to admit it.

Like most other Christians of his day, the Rev. Swander couldn’t conceive of an ecumenical church. Like Rev. Vanderpool, he viewed Methodists and Presbyterians as people to be saved from the eternal flame through conversion to his own way of thinking. To Rev. Swander, the idea of three churches joining forces and cooperating was a threat to the nature of religion itself. Because the concept was so far beyond his paradigm, he simply chose to ignore it.

But Rev. Swander’s myopia aside, the fact is that something very powerful happened in Prineville in 1927. For practical reasons that had more to do with costs and space than with great philosophical and theological revelations, a small group of Prineville citizens embraced an idea unprecedented in their world and one which wouldn’t catch on in the rest of the world until social revolution swept the country in the aftermath of the 1960s.

In 1927, this congregation took a bold theological step in deciding that it really doesn’t matter whether we serve crackers or bread at communion. It really doesn’t matter whether the minister wears a suit and tie or a clerical collar. It really doesn’t matter whether the cover of the hymn book is green, red or blue. This congregation made the discovery and affirmed the principle that there is more in our Christian faith to unite us than there is to divide us.

What a wonderful theme. It’s a discovery that you all should be proud of. And the fact that you discovered it should be an example and a source of pride to the rest of the Prineville faith community.

Prineville doesn’t have a reputation around the state as a tolerant, open-minded kind of place. We don’t get credit for being big thinkers who started the state’s first ecumenical movement . Who cares? People don’t know lots of things about what makes Prineville special.

But we know. And one of those things that we know is that we have the kind of people who had the vision and who still carry that vision today to build and grow a church that says “Everyone is welcome here.” A church that says “We don’t care what your background is. We don’t care whether you’re high-church, low-church or no church. Come worship with us. Let us share with you the Good News that Jesus loves you and that he died for you--Methodists, Presbyterians and Disciples of Christ alike.”

What a message. What a treasure for any community. What blessing to Prineville.

Members of the Prineville Community Church, on behalf of your community, congratulations on your 75th anniversary. We couldn’t be more proud of you.

Destination Resort Matters To Powell Butte

By Scott R. Cooper, Crook County Judge
Published in the Powell Butte View, May 2002

Much of the discussion regarding Powell Butte these days has centered around whether the county should adopt legislation authorizing destination resorts within its borders. Across the border in Deschutes County, destinations resorts have been significant contributors to the tax base of the county and are significant employers. By promoting tourism, they also bring business interest to the community. In the 1970s, Sunriver was the engine that led to the development of southern Deschutes County while prior to the arrival of Black Butte, Sisters was just another sleepy stop in the road. Some of Redmond’s development as a commercial and industrial center can be attributed to the presence of Eagle Crest, which provided necessary executive-level housing and provided a necessary level of business support. Destination resorts, in short, have helped economic development and often provide the necessary catalyst to move a community into a new phase of economic progress.

But under Oregon’s restrictive land-use laws, a destination resort cannot site just anywhere. Before a county can even consider an application for siting of such a facility, the county must go through a rigorous process of determining lands eligible for such a resort and adopting an ordinance governing how applications will be evaluated. Only six of Oregon’s 36 counties—Deschutes, Douglas, Jackson, Josephine, Klamath and Tillamook--have adopted destination resort ordinances at this time. Thus, a destination resort looking to locate or expand in Oregon has few options. Given the limited competition, the position of the County Court is that it makes sense for an economically distressed community such as Crook County to be one them.

To this point, however, the sheer expense of mapping eligible lands has precluded the county from moving forward. Early this year, however, Eagle Crest, with an eye on an expansion project, stepped forward with an offer to pay the costs of the mapping process. With resources in hand, Crook County began a six-month undertaking at no cost to taxpayers which has resulted in the maps currently under consideration.

The mapping methodology is defined by state law. The law requires certain properties be excluded from eligibility for destination resort siting, including critical wildlife habitat and prime and unique soils But Crook County has gone far beyond the state minimums in preparing its maps and ordinance. Crook County has also excluded all big game habitat, all public lands, all irrigated farms. (A farm is defined as 160 acres or more under Crook County’s ordinances.) The result is a set of mapping criteria which are the most environmentally protective in the state so far.

The eventual map yielded by this process identified about 34,000 acres of eligible lands in Crook County, representing approximately 1.5 percent of the county. By contrast, in Deschutes County about 6-7 percent of the lands are eligible. All of the eligible lands turned out to be in the area southwest of Powell Butte.

But the map is just the beginning of the process. Adopting the map and accompanying ordinance only creates a framework through which a destination resort can make an application to the county to site a destination resort. At the time a destination resort applies, additional studies of transportation impact, economic impact, impact on groundwater, impact on neighborhoods and nuisance issues such as noise, light, etc. would have to be conducted. All that information and more would have to be shared at public hearings scheduled in conjunction with conditional use permit hearings before the first shovel of dirt could be turned.

So far, the County Court and Planning Commission have held two hearings on the issues of how and whether to develop a framework for considering destination resort applications. Two more are scheduled, May 8 and May 22 at 10 a.m. Limited public comment has been received. Some of the comments received have raised good issues. Some lands have been deleted from the map as a result of the public comment process. Some changes have been and will be made to the proposed destination resort ordinance as a result of the comments. Some of the comment is site-specific, and the county has no plans to follow through with expensive studies to address these issues until it actually has an application in hand.

Two “camps” have emerged in the course of discussion about destination resort siting. One camp believes that the potential economic benefits of a destination resort can’t be overlooked. Such resorts can employ several hundred people. Destination resorts add significantly to the tax base of the county. (In Deschutes County, the taxable value of the destination resorts exceeds the taxable value of the rest of the commercial/industrial sector combined.) Resorts bring tourism dollars to the county which recirculate through gas stations, grocery stores and the retail sector. Finally, a destination resort often serves as a doorway through which individuals owning and operating businesses may pass, creating new opportunities for economic development and recruitment.

The point of view of the other camp boils down to this: residents of Powell Butte moved to the community to enjoy the quiet of the countryside and enjoy a more rural lifestyle. A destination resort will bring lots of outsiders and traffic. Views of cattle grazing among the sagebrush and juniper stands may be obliterated by golf courses and houses. Water for farming and domestic use might be diverted to irrigation use by the resort. Crook County doesn’t need a destination resort because residents like things just the way they are.

Regrettably, the two views force the Court to make a stark choice: to allow destination resort or to not allow them. Little of the testimony received to date has been useful in determining how destination resorts can be allowed as potential engines of economic growth while best mitigating the impact. It’s an either-or scenario. Your either for us or against us. It’s the kind of debate which every elected official dreads.

Sometimes politics is about seeking consensus. That’s when its fun. Sometimes its about making hard choices between competing positions so that the community is not paralyzed by indecision. This is the latter kind of choice.

The Court will make it between now and May 22, and in the meantime, we welcome your views.