Small Towns

About a week into my winter break from school, I got tired of looking at the snow in Pullman and hopped on a plane to Seattle. My parents picked me up at the airport and we drove to their house in Oakville, Washington. Normally, I would drive, but there is just too much snow on the ground between Pullman and Oakville. Now I am looking at the snow in Oakville, but at least here it is melting. Unfortunately, I am using a dial-up connection and my patience is already getting short. I was staring at the Dashboard in Blogger for nearly five minutes waiting for the New Post page to load. I guess I am truly spoiled by high-speed internet connections. The editing also seems to be a little screwy. I can't seem to insert spaces between paragraphs. I guess this is the new "roughing it".

Oakville is a pretty small town. If you want to get an idea what sort of town Oakville is, try to picture a one-stoplight town. Got it? Now, take away the stoplight. That's Oakville. There are about 700 people living here.

Oakville experienced a boom a few decades ago when a nuclear power plant was being built near the neighboring town of Satsop. In the late seventies, construction was begun on several nuclear power plants in Washington state. Eventually, because of cost overruns and corruption, the projects were halted and Washington state defaulted on a few billion dollars worth of municipal bonds. The project was named the Washington Public Power Supply System. The project name had the unfortunate acronym WPPSS, or "whoops" as it became known in the media. After the project shut down, the boom was over for Oakville.

Oakville has a few claims to fame, but that is about it. It is home to the last bank in Washington state that was robbed by men on horseback. There was also an incident in which gel fell out of the sky for a period of a few weeks several years ago. Some of the local people think that this was because of some sort of nefarious government experiment being run on the local population. It was even featured on Unsolved Mysteries.

From Wikipedia:

In 1994, over a two-week period in August, a gelatinous substance reportedly
fell from the sky six times. The mysterious goo allegedly contained white blood
cells and several acids from the human stomach, and was reported to infect
anyone it touched with symptoms of exhaustion, breathing problems, heavy
perspiration, fainting, and other flu-like symptoms. Several animals in the area
are reported to have perished because of this.

My parents tell me that it is true that the gelatinous substance did indeed fall from the sky. As for the reports of people getting sick and animals dying, they may not be factual.

Not to be outdone by the fine Governor of Illinois, the Mayor of Oakville has found himself embroiled in a political scandal. The fine mayor had purchased some land just outside of the city limits a few years ago. He bought it with the intention of building four single family houses which he could then sell for a handsome profit. The collapse of the housing bubble has changed his plans.

He still thinks that the land can be used to build housing and turn a profit. However, instead of building single-family houses, he wants to build "fourplexes", which I gather is like a duplex with four units instead of two. Unfortunately, the county has zoned this area for single-family units and the fourplexes cannot be built there. Now, the mayor is leading the charge for the city to expand its limits and annex the land on which he wants to build the fourplexes so that it can be rezoned. If this happens, he will likely realize a tidy profit.

Obviously, some people view the mayor using his office to promote this project as a conflict of interest and abuse of power. The mayor has tried to appease his critics. Whenever the topic of this annexation comes up in city meetings, the mayor takes off his "Mayor of Oakville" hat and puts on his "member of the community" hat. The senior guy on the city council then takes over as the mayor for that portion of the meeting. After they discuss the issue of the property, the mayor once again becomes the mayor.

I guess that it is kind of like in the cop action movies where the cop takes off his badge and says "I'm not a cop tonight." I don't think that is how it really works.

The city council recently held a no-confidence vote against the mayor. The newspaper explained it. Apparently, the vote is to tell the mayor that they don't think he is doing a good job. That's it. There are no repercussions and no binding action has been taken.

Anyway, pretty interesting stuff for a town of 700 people. Politicians act like politicians no matter where you are. I guess that even boring little towns aren't really so boring after all.