Whiterwater park opponents in for big surprise

 

By Brad Smith

GOLD HILL, Ore.  – Those opposing a proposed whitewater park near Gold Hill are in for a surprise: It’s been a part of the city’s parks master plan since 2015.

May 18, 2015, to be exact. That’s when the city council passed and adopted the parks and open space master plan: Councilors Doug Reischman, Gus Wolf, Margaret Dials, Karen Baker and Donna Silva voted their support for the plan and Chris Stanley was against it. Then mayor Jan Fish and city manager Rick Hohnbaum signed off on it.

Over the last several months, Councilor Danielle Hinkley said she’s been in touch with citizens who say they have concerns about the whitewater park project, which has been spearheaded by Stephen Kiesling. Hinkley said some locals felt their “concerns” about a whitewater park were ignored and felt the city shouldn’t be involved or backing it.

However, it is in the parks and open spaces master plan – and there was plenty of public input.

Hohnbaum said the process putting together the master plan was very thorough.

“We had a series of whitewater park meetings with at least two large intergovernmental ones with tribes and four small group ones with county and local so I would say six (meetings),” he said. “In addition, Molly Bradley, our AmeriCorps intern,  had organized some park trail meetings. There was a lot of input and support from (Gold Hill) residents.”

Richard Hart, a Gold Hill resident who’s been active in previous park projects, was involved in the process leading up to the master plan’s finalization.

“Meetings? There were a lot of meetings and the public was right there,” Hart said. “We reached out to many in the community, even kids – kids are our future and we wanted to hear what they had to say, what they wanted. As for the actual meetings, they were well attended.”

Hart said it’s frustrating because over the last five years, some residents have developed “selective amnesia.”

“Some have said Gold Hill residents were left out of the whitewater park discussions,” he said. “Some have said it was never talked about publicly. That’s not true. There were meetings and the public was there. Those are on record. Some have claimed the tribes were shut out and environmental issues were ignored. That’s nonsense: (Kiesling) included the tribes in the process and many environmental agencies were brought in. Were the i’s dotted and t’s crossed? Yes, they were.”

Hart feels that a number of local “negative elements” are playing on people’s fears and stirring up rumors and misinformation.

“They know about the whitewater park’s inclusion in the master plan,” he said. “They know – but it’s my view that they’re misleading others in order to stir up trouble. These people don’t want Gold Hill to prosper. They want it to be a dead-end bedroom community that has nothing to offer. No growth. No jobs. Nothing.”

One source said that social media has been a problem with some people pushing fake narratives and those narratives have found their way into city council meetings.

“When (Hinkley) brought up the Ventura story, well, that was embarrassing,” the source said.

In a social media post, an individual claiming to be from Ventura, Calif., said they didn’t want Gold Hill to be like their hometown. “Ventura used to be a sleepy little town until tourism ruined it,” they said. Hinkley would use that very phrase during a city council meeting.

“They don’t want that to happen to Gold Hill and I don’t want to see that happen either,” she said.

The problem was that Ventura was never a “sleepy little town.”

By the 1930s, Ventura had a population of more than 11,000 people and over 14,000 within a decade. Along with an oil boom and lucrative fruit produce businesses in the area, Ventura was always known for its tourism trade. Hart grew up in the area and laughed at the social media post. “Ventura has always been a booming place,” he said. “It was never a small town like Gold Hill. However, someone made a comment on social media and people believed it, not bothering to check it out.”

Which circles back to the whitewater park, he said.

“You have people making some wild claims about the whitewater park and how people weren’t aware of this or that,” Hart said. “We know that’s not true. There was a very thorough, well documented process involved and it was never underhanded. It’s all there in the master plan.”

The anonymous source said they were “perplexed” by Hinkley bringing up misleading social media posts during council meetings.

“You would think a councilor would take the time to fact check social media posts before saying something on the record,” they said. “I’ve talked to her a number of times. She’s smart but she should have checked things herself. I have to wonder if someone is feeding her misinformation and she blindly accepts it. Now, I have to wonder: ‘Is this the sort of person I want representing my best interests?’ No.”