Launch recovery centers
Alcohol and drug recovery centers are proposed in Idaho. Money has been asked for from the tobacco settlement known as the Millennium funds to give these four centers a start up.
Early in the session, the Legislature will need to make a decision on where these funds will be dispersed. The first center is to be built in Moscow. Lewiston will be on a future list.
Please don't confuse these with the crisis centers that are being proposed. This is strictly to assist people suffering from addiction.
This will provide phone banks where people who have committed to working a program of recovery will get a friendly call to see how they are doing. It will provide a place to assist with jobs and other services that may be available such as computers to help build resumes, places to meet, get sponsorship or hook up with a recovery coach, a friendly place of supportive individuals trying to do the right thing.
Once these are up and running, they run from volunteers. Peer-to-peer relationships develop with encouragement for staying sober and staying on track.
Connecticut Community for Addiction Recovery has a wonderful model for these centers. They work fabulously.
It is really just getting them off the ground that this money will do. Please contact state senators and representatives from Latah, Nez Perce and Lewis counties.
Let them know of the importance of using the Millennial funds for these start-up centers.
Mike Kingsley
Region 2 Behavioral Health Board member
Lewiston
Bought and paid for
Upon completion of Steven Peterson's port report, the Port of Lewiston altered its home page to tout Peterson's numbers showing 800 percent return on taxpayer dollars due to "multiplier effects" of port activities. Port commissioners and manager now cite the report to hail "direct jobs" and dramatic numbers tied to port activities. ...
Peterson's report was bought and paid for. Price: $13,500. It looks like a slick promo piece, and ... that's exactly how it's being used. True research avoids opinion like Peterson's: The port "is a respected leader," and an "essential player." And it avoids relating regional economics - "Quad Counties have ... manufacturing growth" - to one entity, the port.
Idaho's Department of Labor explains multiplier effects should "only be applied to projects that are a genuine source of net new economic activity ... that does not take business away from existing firms" and "only if they capture spending that formerly left the area. ..."
The port is a real estate developer, taking business from existing private developers.
Labor says, "... multiplier effects tend to ignore or mask negative effects," like removal of properties from tax rolls, including all properties bought by government agencies - like the port. Properties permanently removed from tax rolls create long-term negative effects, like properties the port sells to Lewiston and Nez Perce County.
Labor says, "It is not uncommon to see very high multipliers that grossly exaggerate the economic impacts of projects." Perhaps Labor had in mind the port promo piece, aka the Peterson report.
Janice Inghram
Grangeville
What about us?
I can't help but notice my friend Sandy Fromdahl and I were missing from your picture of the Polar Bear Plunge on New Year's Day in Clarkston.
We have been removed from the picture, presumably because we were wearing "Marijuana Is Safer Than Alcohol" shirts.
I was shocked, as your newspaper has printed more controversial photos without alterations, and I also thought that your newspaper was more progressive.
The fact that we were there, cheerfully jumping into a cold river, while most revelers from the night before were home nursing hangovers, is the proof in our pudding.
I wonder what the several other supportive jumpers surrounding us must think.
Were they a mirage? Were they ever really there? Yes, we were. But the Tribune pretended that we weren't. Shame on you, Tribune.
I stand corrected. I am in the main picture, and the additional picture. But Sandy is clearly missing. So she was the mirage. However, I know she was there.
Michelle Cone
Clarkston
Editor's note: Photographs of the Polar Bear Plunge were not altered.
