City of Gresham, Oregon Goes Hog Wild with Green Extortion

City of Gresham, Oregon Goes Hog Wild with Green Extortion Lex Loeb Contributor Network . It might not even be legal after the Dolan case. That won't stop the City of Gresham from going hog wild with special tax assessments disguised as permit fees for supposedly green purposes. The city damn well knows it is using the permit process to extort funds for what are supposedly benefit the general public. A property owner maintains an existing commercial parking lot by having a fresh coat of asphalt applied and gets a notice from the city that in return for the city allowing the maintenance a $1800 permit fee must be paid so that the owner will be forced to also pay for a covered bike parking rack. Is this green communism or green Nazism? A property owner cannot just maintain an existing parking lot without having to pay for a special permit for something unrelated to their business and then also be forced to pay for additional equipment once having paid the permit fee! Of course the city of Gresham needs bicycle riders to ride on their stupid dangerous painted in the road bed bike paths before anyone is going to park any bike anyplace other than in front of city hall where the biker mob hangs out. How is it that one private property owner should be forced to pay a special tax for any purpose just to maintain an existing parking lot with a new coat of asphalt? The city will say it is not a special tax. No it is a permit fee. Looking at the permit fee, it has nothing to do with maintaining an existing parking lot . It is an entirely separate project having to do with a covered bicycle rack for bike parking. The Dolan case went to the US supreme court in due to a different Oregon city that decided that a business wanting to expand into a neighboring lot they purchased would be forced to donate land, by extortion, to the city to make a bike path with no compensation. The City lost the Dolan case in the US supreme court. Gresham thinks it found away around the same thing with a permit process to do virtually the same thing! It is even more absurd in Gresham as almost no one rides a bike in Gresham. The bike paths are in the streets that are characterized by heavy suburban high speed traffic. Most of Gresham is one strip mall after another with so many commercial driveways that the bike paths have to cross thousands of these dangerous intersections. A small vocal bike lobby that thinks its saving the world by riding bikes somehow became a major special interest at city hall and to get their way they want to stick individuals with the bill for bike facilities outside of the city's general funding. That is hardly fair to property owners who get hit with the assessments disguised as permit fees. Gresham Planners mean to undo the mess they made in the past by making the suburban strip mall city center into something it can never be with bike paths. What is next? Maybe they will close off the streets to automobile traffic and require bike riding to the strip malls? Oh but the business owners and private property owners will have to pay permit fees for the privilege of putting boulders in the middle of the streets so cars have no access. Gresham should start flying a green swastika flag with the silhouette of a bicycle on it. The city can claim that the swastika is a Tibetan symbol for earth biking harmony and charge a permit fee and require people in the city to purchase and hang a flag where they live or work or suffer the consequences. Gresham concentration bike camp for the ungreen? Next they will be issuing permits for people with cars to replace them with a new or used car. Former car owners will have to buy a bicycle so someone will ride on their stupid useless bike paths. How stupid are the voters of Gresham? Stupid enough that they definitely would think that green concentration camps, green swastika flag permits and forcing people to trade in cars for bikes are great ideas in strip mall land. What is next for Gresham? City armed SS officers in green outfits on bikes to enforce toll booths on roads though the city so cars are discouraged from driving to a strip mall? People are getting so excited by all the green things happening in strip mall land Gresham that they are moving from Mexico just to live next to one of the city's giant yuppie bike riding Mexican flea markets. Property owners are complete fools to repave their driveways and parking lots. What is going on in Gresham with their green Nazi extortion program is so absurd it has become a joke. Gresham it is the city that really cares about being green. In the future , people will start using the word "green" instead of "stupid." Green is the new stupid. .