Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 04-09-25_WEDNESDAY_7AM

Episode Date: April 10, 2025

04-09-25_WEDNESDAY_7AM

The Bill Meyer Show podcast is sponsored by Clouser Drilling. They've been leading the way in Southern Oregon well drilling for over 50 years. Find out more about them at ClouserDrilling.com. Here's Bill Meyer. 17 after 7. It was interesting hearing Eric talk about the differences in the law. I'm speaking of Eric Peters, the difference in Virginia and Virginia. If you've ever been to Virginia, rural Virginia,

beautiful place. I don't think I've ever seen so many horse ranches in my life and beautiful rolling hills when I was back there for a Hold Their Feet to the Fire broadcast series a number of years ago. Coming back from North Carolina where I was visiting my brother Mike at that time, we ended up going through rural Virginia and just beautiful, beautiful. It's like the the best of Oregon without, well, it doesn't have the mountains, it's rolling hills type of thing. It's just beautiful and green because it rains like crazy even in the summertime, you

know. That's why they call it the swamp, right, over by DC. But it is interesting when he was talking about the way they approach rural property there in which it's no big deal just to have someone park their motor home on someone's land and you just live there. It's not considered that big of a deal and they do it routinely. And I think in the common sense world, we would tend to look at that as perfectly reasonable, too. But that's not the way it works in Oregon, is it? The way it's been explained to me, I haven't looked too deeply into this, and maybe you can help me understand it if I don't understand it correctly.

I'm under the impression that according to land use planning and maybe even local codes, I think Jackson County, what, you can live in an RV on a piece of land for what, two weeks at a time, I think is what it is. And I don't know if that's state or if that's county. And I would imagine Josephine County probably has something similar. Couple of weeks and maybe this is something about Senate Bill 100 with state use land use planning. I don't claim to know everything about it but I've often thought about we talk about the

homelessness crisis and the real estate crisis, the home crisis and there's you know you can't build enough stick-built homes to get everybody taken care of. And would RVs be a good alternative? Well, then you have the RV parks, and yeah, there are some of those that are pretty nice. And there was one out on Highway 99 near Grants Pass, which I remember reading that Jackson County was going to be evicting these people from. A bunch of folks in their RVs had been at RV park, been there a number of years, because it didn't match with land use planning. Do you think that's right? Should we lighten up on that? And what do you think might be a

reasonable restriction on living in an RV if we were to lift the boot off of an RV to be able to park on some rural property and perhaps just live there, you know, even semi-permanently or for a few months, whatever the case might be. If the state of Oregon truly cares about its people, and they really want a house over their head, it is actually affordable, wouldn't an RV be a reasonable way of looking at it? I mean, you may laugh. One of the reasons I still have that 40-year-old, actually it's a 43-year-old Volkswagen, no, 44, it actually was made in late 81.

You know, 44-year Volkswagen is that. I figured, hey, everything else could be lost in the world. I still have a roof over my head. It has four wheels on it, but it's still the roof and it's small. It would be awfully tight for me and Linda and the two cats, but yeah, in a pinch it could be done. And it has a cookstove in it and everything else. But I was told by my sister-in-law, who lives out in the Applegate area, said, yep, it's only a couple weeks and after a couple weeks a county can come after you. Some of this may be just trying to protect

property values, you know, and I understand that. I understand that. I appreciate that. There's another part of it though that something which is on wheels like that and not plugged into the property tax system, there's not that much money going to the government. It's just another person there. So maybe I'm just spitballing on something I don't really understand, but it just seems to me that if housing was really the concern in the state of Oregon, that we would take a lighter touch on recreational vehicles for semi-permanent or even permanent. I mean, you have a certain rule of it, you know, it can't be a junker with parts hanging off of it and blue tarps everywhere.

Maybe you have those kind of restrictions. But I don't know if I would see the problem. Now I know what I've seen in my own neighborhood from time to time. Now remember I live in a subdivision in East Medford, not too far from Foothill, off of Delta Water Speedway in Leonard, and there's Viewpoint, and there I am. And they just punched it through, and they have pretty nice houses, much nicer houses around us that are being built now, and newer. I have seen sometimes that the city of Medford will jump on people because they'll park their

RV out in front of the house, and we have very narrow streets. Our streets are very narrow and very difficult to negotiate when someone when someone ends up parking their cougar motor home, you know right out there or the or the fifth wheel out there on the street and then the funny thing is is that there have been other times I've seen those out in front of homes and then you know people are living inside that. I don't think that necessarily works well, you know, living on the street. I can see that that doesn't work well. It does cause some problems and I could see why the city gets in on that. But you know, if the city allows you to already have an additional dwelling unit, you know,

you can get that now, you can get ADUs now, why couldn't you have RV parking on the side of the home, let's say, fenced, and then you could have someone living in a nice RV next to you instead of having to build a stick-built part as the ADU? I'm just throwing a few thoughts out there if we really are concerned about people not being able to afford homes. I just thought I'd just throw it out to the Southern Oregon jury. It's worth, maybe we can explore that if you wish. The number here is 770-563-3770-OKMED.

Let me go back to the phones here. Hi, good morning. This is Bill. Who's this? Bill, this is Francine. Yeah, Francine. Yeah. You've got to take another bite on this one, huh? Yeah, well, the other one wasn't really a bite. I was begging for help.

This whole thing with the RV situation and stuff, first of all, the codes and regulations on what you can do on your property are outrageous here in this state. Yet, they allow people...it's okay for people to sleep in doorways and in parks, and they'll give them tents and stuff like that. And the courts will say you can't do anything to move them along, but if you were to park an RV on your land, that's... That's not okay.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's just absolutely insane. We stupid. It's, you know, they're, they're, um, what's the word for it? Uh, you know, they're saying one thing in one way and then saying another thing and contradicting, they're contradicting their own, their own, uh, points of view and their, you know, their own actions. And but what they're doing is they're saying, okay, the bums, the fentanyl

and crankster bums will protect them, but elderly people that have been living in RVs, well, we don't think that's really up to par. It's not proper code, get out on the street, right? Yeah, but it's much better to be sleeping in a tent, right? Much better to be sleeping on a tent. And shooting up drugs in your tent and leaving your needles in the park. Yeah. That's okay. So you're thinking that there is need then for a change on this? And I could see... Oh, absolutely. Well, I could see this though. Now, this is probably why they wouldn't want to do this, and I'm wondering if this is part of it because remember the whole governing feature of Oregon is sustainable development which means you don't live in rural lands which of course would be a perfect place someone has 20 acres you know put two three RVs

in there with some utilities and off we go and people are living affordably right and they want them living in the stack and pack, climate-friendly, equitable community of downtown Medford or Grants Pass or anybody else. That's what they want. Oh, I know this. I mean, I think the only way that we can maybe get heard on this is for, you know, like when they're going to keep these people out of this park. I don't know all the details on this, but maybe we need to have a demonstration down there. I don't know if a demonstration solves that, but I think they may be already gone. It was supposedly April 1st that they were going to be

evicted by Jackson County. Oh, really? Oh, gosh. So I haven't driven past it. I said those poor people, where did they all go? You know, they're elderly people. They don't have much money. I mean, I know I'm an elderly people too, and I don't have a lot of money. Oh, come on. The state is telling you you have a duty to die, Francine. Oh, I'm sorry, Bill. I always forget my place. Yeah, you know I'm having fun with you. Please. All right. I do. Of course I do. If we can't have any fun with possible government-induced genocide, what good am I? Okay? Oh, Bill, I get in trouble for that a lot of times.

All right. Good for you. Thank you for the you for the call Fred see that 7705633 good morning this is Bill who's this welcome hello am I on yes you are good morning hey Bill it's Cliff hey Cliff what's on your mind what What are you thinking? I have a tendency to disagree. Have you driven on 99 going into Ashland here recently from Talent? Not recently. A couple of months ago, I think two, three months ago was the last time I drove down there. But what are you thinking? Okay, just south of where Talent Avenue connects into 99, there's a lot on the right-hand side and there's about a dozen derelict RVs sitting in there now and they've been there for quite a while and it's looking like the RVs parked along the roads up in Portland. So you know if you're going to advocate something like that there need

to be some rules and regulations as to what can be parked, I would say haphazardly, on a rural lot. Well, I would agree with you on that. But what is the level of goodness, so to speak? Like I had even mentioned this, when you the at the news coverage of the homelessness camps and it's a sea of blue type blue tarps and disorder, right, you know, that's that's not good, right, that sort of thing. And nor would you want to see blue tarps and disorder with something like this. But I think that there is that there's room in our housing inventory for something like

this because I gotta tell you if I was a senior citizen on a $900 to $1,000 a month Social Security, Cliff what could you read around here? You can't read hardly anything. I know. But I agree with you on that that lot down there and put it out of Rogue River. Yeah. Yeah. You know, that's a nice place, you know, from what I've seen on the news. And they had kept everything up there. There was nothing really disorderly about that. And it's okay to mandate rules, I think, for some order and cleanliness and some aesthetics.

It's okay. You know, that's a good thing. One of my problems I've had is that there's not enough mandated beauty in Oregon for as beautiful a state as we could be in some cases. The ability of a lot of rural landowners down here, and I'm not picking on anybody in particular here, Cliff, but you would never see the kind of trash and junk that people will put in their rural lands here that you do in rural Ohio. It was a totally different culture when I was growing up in there in rural Ohio in which people had a, no, okay, yeah, we have a junk car, but we keep it up back. It's behind a fence and we keep this covered up and we're not here to embarrass ourselves

around that. We don't see that creed here in Oregon. Would you agree with me on that for the most part? Well, welcome to the Appalachia West, Oregon. You know, maybe that's what it is. That is. That is a bit of that. Yeah, I never saw that in Fargo either. But you see it here. Well, I can see maybe whoever owns that lot working with Jackson County, getting a conditional use permit and allowing a lot that's up-cap, looks nice, but not what's going on down there just south of Talend and north of Ashland off of Highway 99.

Where it's looking like the junkiest RVs in the world are sitting there just deteriorating as in the Sun as you watch. Yep, I get it. Go down and take a look. All right, I'll do that. I'll do that sometime the next few days. I've got some busy things to do this weekend but I will get down there. Okay, thanks, Cliff. 7705633. Hi, this is Bill. Morning. Hi, Bill. Hey, just to follow up on the first, just that last gentleman's call in there, he was talking about, you or him mentioned, you know, what, there's somebody on a $900 a month social security check, you know, how they do. I think

the question would be if we're trying to target that group, I'm not sure what kind of RV a person with that type of income could afford anyway. So I don't know how that would work. Well, maybe not. Well, maybe even something that you own. Well, even the vehicle I have right now is probably one of the $8,000 vehicle. You could live in it. I could live in it if I had to. The $8,000, well, of course, even then it might be tough. Then when you get it, yeah, a lot of the ones that might be affordable are the ones that usually end up getting set on fire on Granite Hill Road in Josephine County. You know what I mean?

It's like that's where it... Oh boy. You know what I mean? On $900 a month, it'd be pretty tough to go out and make a down payment or buy something off the get-go. But it's a worthy topic that you're discussing. I'll give you that. Maybe, and maybe this is where the private sector could come in. Maybe you don't own the RV. Maybe in essence, we have some series of older RVs that may not necessarily be road worthy, but are still living worthy, so to speak. And they're tight, they don't leak, et cetera, et cetera.

And they get lined up on certain owners' properties. And I would say it has to be rural land. It does have to be rural land. I don't think people would tolerate this within the city. I get that. I understand that. But given that we already allow rural lands to be junk pits for stuff that doesn't work, how about putting some of it to work for something that could be helpful? I'm just saying that. Okay? Yep. Alright. Appreciate the call.

Thanks for it. This is the Bill Meyers Show. Ready to upgrade your roof to a durable, sleek metal option? Look no further than Stephen Westfall Roofing, Inc. with RobinCash.com. Hi, I'm Randy with Diner 62 and I'm on KMED 738. Glad you are here this morning. State Senator Noah Robinson with me. And by the way, if you're on phones trying to call in, I'll get back to calls here in just a little bit, okay? But I wanted to catch up with State Senator Noah Robinson before I go back to

the calls, who is over in the marble nuthouse, just like Dwayne Younger and all the rest of them, everyone hanging out there. Welcome back, Senator. Good to have you on. It's great to be on. Thank you. All right. Now, the news is guardedly optimistic, I guess, about the wildfire hazard map, which of course has had everybody in the rural lands in a hissy fit for a number of years here now. It passed out of committee, but that doesn't mean it's over yet. I wanted to make sure that people understand that. I mentioned that last night. So it takes a little bit of time, right? That's correct. It passed out of committee yesterday and it now has to go to the Senate floor. After that, assuming it passes the Senate floor, it has to go over to the House,

goes to committee there, goes to the House, and then signed by the governor. So no, it's not over. I'm very optimistic because everyone seems to think that it's a done deal up here among the legislatures. It doesn't mean it's a done deal, but it's good that I don't actually hear any opposition. So we're optimistic, but keep worrying about it because it isn't done yet. Yeah. And of course, Jeff Goldin wrote the bill, now even Jeff Goldin admitting that,

yeah, this part about it's not working. Is it that he thinks it's not working in your opinion or that he just got too much pushback? What do you think? Well, what he has said publicly is that he obviously can tell it's not working. Pushback always helps. It's very difficult on one individual. I think for a lot of legislators,

because I know I've talked to a few of them, the pushback definitely helped. The fact that they were flooded with complaints from upset people who were watching their property values decline, didn't know what would happen. This is a huge issue and we can't take back the damage too because for several years now a lot of property owners have had to worry about what's going to happen. I don't think insurance rates are going to immediately fall either because of the controversy. The insurance companies are going to say, oh, the government of Oregon is now going to be perfectly rational. And then of course we also have a problem.

Well, asking for the state of Oregon to be perfectly rational, as you well know, is a tall order and very seldom. Right, but there's two issues. One, wildfires are a problem because of mismanagement of the forest, and then the other problem is that when you do something this weird to address it, that causes a lot of uncertainty. Because remember what would happen if this continues, is that the insurance companies have to consider the cost of rebuilding their pricing policy. And if the state is going to put so many requirements on rebuilding, if you can even rebuild, they have to factor that into their rates.

So that the fact that Oregon has done something this screwy, I think will make them nervous. What we need to do to bring these rates down is start to address some of the rational force policy. If we can do that, then we will become a better place for fires. Well, but unlike putting out a fire map that never worked, but just got everybody all hot and bothered, actually working with the federal land managers, that's hard though. That actually takes some real work in coordinating,

doesn't it? Yes, it does. And we need to start opening up roads. About a few decades ago, they started, they actually bulldozed roads and make them impassable. So you can't fight the fires as well. In some cases, they just take them off the map and make them impassable. You can't fight the fires as well. In some cases, they just take them off the map and let them get overgrown. So we need a rational federal policy and a rational state policy toward forest management.

You can start harvesting timber again. That helps a lot when you've got a profitable enterprise. They clean things up and just have fewer fires. This rise in fires in the last decade is the direct cause of very poor government decisions. Have you kept apprised of President Trump's executive order because he issued a memo April 3rd and this was declaring a state of emergency in timber supply and national forest health across the United States and the West and it directs the United States Forest Service to streamline environmental reviews to increase logging that could have a big impact on

our forests. Do you think that it will, Noah? What do you think? This might be kind of almost like a lifeline coming from the Trump administration here? I don't know. Well I was very happy to see that he did that and if that order is followed, if they actually do streamline the process and make it possible to log again in our state, Oregon, especially where we live, southern Oregon, the timber capital of the United States, we have timber everywhere. It's especially good timber. It's great for building houses. We've got lots of it. There's no shortage. We need to be using that resource. In our, in Josephine County,

particularly in Cave Junction, where the Cave Junction area where I live, the timber industry used to be the biggest thing going. It was that the mills were the driver of the jobs in the area. But does it make sense to open that up now because where could you process logs? It does make sense to open it up now because where could you process logs? It does make sense to open it up because yes, there's no place to process logs, but if you open it up, it won't change instantly, but maybe we'll get a small mill and then maybe another one. You can't, when they destroy the industry, it is hard to get it back.

It's true. The people that lived in the woods, that worked in the woods, it's a special skill. Those people are, many of them are gone now, but what makes sense is to make it possible for them to again harvest timber and we will start to get some of that back. It will take time. If I recall correctly, wasn't rough and ready, broken up and sold to China? Isn't that where it went? It was broken up and that was the last mill in our area. They held out as long as they

could and then they couldn't take basically the taxes to just sit there without any timber to harvest. And yes, it was broken up, it was sold for scrap, it went overseas in places I know, but a lot of it was scrap. These lumber mills are very customized. So while other lumber mills can use pieces, you can't, it isn't as though you just transplant it. They're very custom-built machines. Some of the saws are not. They're companies that make the saws, but I do know that some of them went overseas,

but not exactly sure where. All right, well, we'll see how this goes in the Trump administration. I'm concerned that in the, as I, we were talking tariff wars earlier this morning, you know that, I'm sure you've been keeping up on that too. I'm just hoping that we don't get such a political snapback and backlash that not only do the Republicans lose the House in Washington DC, but then get just through outrage, through the hissy-fitting of the left, that we get a Democratic administration in 2028. Any thoughts on that?

Well, that depends upon how these tariff wars are handled. If, I mean, Trump has started with very high tariffs, and China has retaliated 100, and then Trump goes to 104 percent tariffs I think that this is a back-and-forth negotiation at this point and whether they settle on a policy that That is a benefit to everybody or not. We're going to see in the future Yeah, it's kind of a rabbit season duck season back and forth right now. I just like one up and ship That's right. Yeah, there's also a lot of concern about, you know, trying to clean up the agencies and get rid of all the waste and fraud. Those sorts of things, when you try to do them,

try to be effective in them, you're going to make mistakes because you can't start firing bureaucrats and not occasionally fire a bureaucrat or a productive person in the government that you actually need. But those things, if adults are in charge, and I think they are, those little problems will be ironed out and there will be a little turmoil along the way. So I'm not that concerned. The question is where we are later in the year after all the negotiations are over. State Senator Noah Robinson, Cave Junction. And it's good to have you here this morning.

I wanted to talk about the bad gun bills that ended up being passed out of committee too. So besides repealing the wildfire map part, that got passed out of committee, goes to the full vote. Is anything going to stop this? I mean, are the Republicans going to finally understand that there is no... I mean, I got an email here from Kevin Sterritt that he sent me yesterday in which there was someone from the Oregon hunting thing as well We need to call and and make the Democrats uncomfortable They're not uncomfortable about gun control though

And I don't know if if the Second Amendment people quite understand this is war and We're on the we're on that we're targeted This is just something which is going to shut us down in the state of Oregon. Do the caucuses understand this or not? It depends upon who you ask because there's a range of how conservative and how much any individual member worries about this. I would of course be happy to walk out over these gun bills. The ones in the House are terrible.

243 is terrible. So yes, I think that it's a good idea for citizens to let the Democrats know what you think of them. There is a view that, yeah, it is war. They're just going to do this to us. I can't deny that there's some of that but I also know that there's I know that they are susceptible to pressure at some point so I believe that we should tell our legislatures and both the House and the Senate you should tell everyone exactly what you think about those bills because pressure does help. I would say though if

Republicans actually had a spine here and walked out and denied quorum and say you get no budget until we kill the worst of it, I would think that would be an effective strategy. And then, oh by the way, if you want your budget you're going to excuse our absences too so that we will come back and then we will vote on your budget. I am all for that. I would be quite happy to participate in that. Because if there's no money, because especially this year, if there's ever been a time that the Democrats are worried about money, this is one of them, wouldn't you say, Senator? Yeah, you know, they're always worried about money. They always say the budgets are tight. No matter how much they have, they will always want

more. So yes, they do want money. No, I agree with you. This is an issue that I don't know what will happen there, but I'm certainly in favor of that. I know others are too. I just don't know. And I know when I have a Republican say, well, talk to the Democrats, you're not going to convince them of this because this is what they promise to do. And then we vote for Republicans to defend us. Democrats voting for gun control, that's in their mother's milk. That's what they're all about. Well, that's right. And if you vote for legislation, and of course it varies in how bad it is, but this legislation

is really bad. I don't see how a legislature can say, look, this legislation, if it passes, we get everything, the gun stores just can't operate and they're going to close. And if you do that, I don't see how a legislature can say, hey, my career is more important than all the gun stores around my state, or the Second Amendment rights of my constituents matter less. I don't care what they do to me in terms of whether you can come back or not. What matters to me is what is most effective in protecting us. All right. Final question I have for you this morning. $1.9 billion transportation package was talked about last week. Of course, ODOT, they say there's

not enough money. There's never enough money for ODOT. We know that. Every year. There's never enough money. But I understand how fuel taxes have not been keeping up with inflation. We know that. It's not indexed for inflation. So they want to fix that. But the big thing though is that they're not charging anything on electric cars, really. That's got to be fixed, wouldn't it? Wouldn't that be an easy low-hanging bit of fruit to do? Well, it's okay. I have a slightly My view on this a little bit next because the number of cars everyone knows that the number of electric cars in Oregon Now somewhere around on about right only 2% of the cars. That's true. So they're getting a free ride. Yes I don't know

Electric cars are still impractical from any price standpoint. So I don't know. The only way that this will change significantly is if the battery technology develops to the point where they're actually practical. So I don't know where it's going beyond 2%. The proposals for taxing them, I don't like the idea of taxing mileage on a car, no matter how anonymous they say it is, to tap into a car system and say, we're going to tax you for the number of miles you drove this month.

But what a great way to discourage people from having electric cars, Senator. Well, you can argue that. I just come back from a market perspective. I don't like increasing the taxes. And I understand the best way to pay for the roads has always been the fuel taxes. I don't want to raise those either because I think we first need to look at the waste in ODOT. The solution to we're out of money is always well we'll figure out a way to get you some more. And when I look at the cost... But we never fire any ODOT employees, right? Yeah, well, and when they talk about firing, they're always threatening to fire the people they think are doing the most work, you know, the lower level workers. And I just look at the cost of the

project and it just, the cost overruns the actual cost of them, the money that goes into environmental reviews before they even start the project. I think we should look at what we can do to lower the cost of what they are doing before we should raise taxes. And then yes, it's not indexed for inflation if it's determined that we have a very efficient streamlined process and we need to raise fuel taxes because it has... I mean that can be a discussion later but I don't like the idea that every time an agency, everything gets expensive. They say, well, everything's expensive now, give us some more,

Martin. That's always the request. Fair enough. State Senator Noah Robinson, I appreciate your call. Thanks for having you on. We'll have you back. And best of luck in the Marble Nuthouse. Is there any carnage that we're expected to vote on today? Is there any carnage that we're expected to vote on today? Well, we have the... I'm on the Education Committee. Oh, no. The Governor's education plan is up for a vote. I can tell you about that sometime when you have time.

I am frustrated. I am just frustrated about a lot of things up here. This place is not normal. Yeah. You know, I was reading a story the other day that Oregon Department of Education is all hissy fitting and bent out of shape over some three, three and a half million dollars of federal grants that weren't going to be coming. It was from the COVID era sort of stuff about reading and teacher training and this and

that, the other. And I'm thinking they're upset about three and a half million dollars. Three and a half million dollars is barely a drop in that budget. Am I wrong about that? I mean, it's not like a rounding error over at ODE. That's right. I mean that's exactly right. What's wrong is the way the department is managed, the way the schools are managed. The bureaucracy is taking a very simple thing. Educating children is very simple. It's not hard. And they have managed to complicate that to the point where no one even knows

How much has been spent on lawyers to comply with the system? It's madness absolute madness and and it is It's crazy. You know, you could turn into an old Looney Tune cartoon character with this one. It's madness madness. I tell you Well, it is I've been sitting on the committee. The Education Committee does not talk about education. They talk about shuffling the bureaucracy around. Really? Oh, yes. That's disappointing. Essentially. I mean, there's references to if we do this, it will help the children.

But my concern is what's actually going on in classrooms? Why is the system not working? And instead, the solution is always, well, her accountability package, which is a big deal right now up here the department of education is finally going to fix it all for us and i've looked at it and looked at it and i have no confidence in it all right noah keep us in the loop on that thank you very much thank you okay state senator state senator noah robinson

it's madness madness i tell you that he's having to oversee there in Salem. 755 KMED, 993 KBXG. Oregon Truck and Auto Authority is your time pass. You are here in the Bill Meyers show on 1063 KMED. Streamed on KMED.com, KMED and KMED HD1 Eagle Point Medford KBXG Grands Pass is where you are. I appreciate you listening. Now then, before I get back to the phones here, Bonnie writes, I'm going to give Bonnie Hadley

an email of the day, emails of the day sponsored by Dr. Steve Nelson and Central Point Family Dentistry. It's on Freeman Way in Central Point right next to the Mazatlan Mexican restaurant, centralpointfamilydentistry.com. And Bonnie was talking about outside of city limits, I was mentioning, could there be a room for recreational vehicles, RVs, motorhomes, then being part of the housing inventory? And right now you're really not allowed to do that. You can't. It's okay to set up camp and camp next to the police department, but you know, you can't, you can do that. You can do that fine and have blue tarps everywhere and be ugly, but you know, you put something on some rural land, you can't, you can't do that right now. And Bonnie says, Bill, I would be okay outside city limits. Yes, lighten up. I've always heard how wonderful Oregon is

about land use planning. No, it's actually dictatorial. It is masked as maintaining the natural beauty here, but it's really BS. Left wants to control every aspect of our lives. Inside a city in a residential area, codes are mostly appropriate. In rural areas, we need to encourage and trust people to be good neighbors and stewards of the land. Appreciate that, Bill. Thank you, Bonnie. Appreciate the writing, too. The email bill at BillMyersShow.com. Steve's here, too, Steve. Thank you, Bonnie. Appreciate the writing to the email bill at Bill Meyers show.com Steve's here to Steve imagine you one of the way in on the Trump administration's talk and Noah's comment on Opening up some of the forestry to emergency logging. What do you think? Well, I'd like to tie that in with the previous conversation you were having about a public-private partnership to build a baseball

stadium. Yeah, and of course I have problems usually with public-private partnerships because the way they're designed, especially in sports socialism, which is what they're always trying to do, sports socialism, is to you have private profits and socialized costs. The taxpayers have to pay for the hard costs. Understood. But let's say we were going to do that and the county people who make decisions decided they wanted to have a wood products industry again. So in a public-private partnership, the county could donate 100 acres of land. We could have some public private funding to build a sawmill, a hundred million dollars or so. Well, yeah, but the result would be, uh, you'd have 70 or 80 people,

but to work building this thing. And it might take a couple of years to get any production going, but that sawmill would produce five houses of lumber a day. And it would pay maybe 90 people a living wage. And so it could pay back the public-private partnership. Yeah, would you do that through like a royalty on the timber process? How do you think that would be worked up?

I don't have an idea. I just put those two ideas together to say, I don't know how you could get a bank to loan you money to build a sawmill because there's no predictable resource out there. It's going to take reinventing the whole process. And since we don't have a competitive bid for logs now, we don't have sawmills, there's no way to price what logs are valued at. It would take multiple mills in a region to make the value of the logs set by the value of the lumber that they could produce. It's going to take some kind of a jump start. And your comment about the baseball field making nothing of use except for filling motels,

well, if you had a sawmill, you'd be making a lot of stuff. That's true. That's true. And by the way, I have no acts of grind against baseball and sports and people wanting to enjoy something. My point is though that entertainment is not what we should be hanging on the around the necks of taxpayers around here and especially the fact that most of these ball player or these ball club owners are very wealthy people and they're getting very wealthy at encouraging communities to grift on their behalf.

That's it. Well, I agree and my idea is kind of stupid, but you know, you look at the needs and you look at the resources and somebody's got to come up with an idea how that's all going to work. But you see, that's not... See, your idea though of a public-private partnership in this thing is a productive capacity kind of thing to take a natural resource that we have that produces something of need.

And that's good. That's a good thing. And direct employment connected to it. Directly. Okay? There you go. There you go. I vote for it.

Okay. If you want to, I'd run the thing. You know how to do it. You did it before, right? Yes, sir. Come out of retirement. This is the Bill Meyers show. Let me go to the next line. Hi, good morning. Who's this? Welcome. Good morning. This is David, calling from Phoenix. Hi, David. What's on your mind? Well, I just wanted to tag you in this meeting tonight with the Medford City Council. I'd like to know what time that's going to be because I'd like the people to show up and hear about this. I think it's six o'clock when they do their session.

Fantastic. Well, people will know. I'd have to look it up though. I'm spitballing off the top of my head. I wasn't expecting a call like that. Let me just see if I could find this. Of course, you could go to the Medford City website and discern that pretty quickly. I'm not on a computer. I barely have one wire for electricity. That's the only power to my house.

Oh, okay. So you truly are isolated then. Okay. I get it. I get it. I'm ignorant and blissful. Oh, good for you. Good for you. Those are perfect. All right, David. I live in Oregon. Why not be a mushroom? You might live a happier life. Thank you, David. Four after eight.

We'll catch up on town hall news here in just a moment, too.