OUR VIEW LOGO (NEW)

On the one hand, the decision by Josephine County’s Board of Commissioners to pause its annual funding of a regional business support organization looks like a case of petty political payback.

On the other hand … the view is the same.

The county appropriation of about $35,000 will certainly be felt as Medford-based Southern Oregon Regional Economic Development Inc. goes about its business of helping companies expand and create jobs — but it won’t stop the group’s mission of assisting with that growth, even for Josephine County efforts.

“(Our) staff will continue to passionately serve the regional business community,” SOREDI Executive Director Colleen Padilla said in a written statement released after the decision, “and our presence in Josephine County will not change.”

That presence has consistently been felt by our neighbors to the west, as $8.4 million in loans to new, expanding and start-up companies were made to 108 businesses in Josephine County since 1994.

Despite that assistance — and the decision by the city of Grants Pass to continue its association with SOREDI — commissioners said it wasn’t past efforts that concerned them but the future.

“I don’t see any bang for the buck there, I guess, in the next 365 days,” Commissioner Dan DeYoung said when the decision was made to suspend SOREDI funding in August.

Commissioner John West, meanwhile, who also cited a perceived lack of value in the near future when voting against the funding, was blunt when assessing the situation later in an interview with the Times.

“They could do better in service,” he said. “I don’t think they’ve done a very good job in helping small business.”

And if this was all that the commissioners’ decision was about, you could make the case that it might be prudent for Josephine County to take a step back to evaluate the relationship — particularly in a time when, as DeYoung said, “in light of our financial situation, we’ve got to watch everything.”

Ah, but that’s where what we see in both our hands comes into play.

Josephine County is sitting on a multi-million-dollar white elephant known as The Flying Lark — a proposed gambling and entertainment center that ran afoul of state regulations last year and never opened.

DeYoung said county officials were disappointed that SOREDI did not back the project.

“I didn’t see their presence when we were fighting to get The Flying Lark here,” DeYoung said. “I would have thought that SOREDI could have at least chimed in and sent a letter of support.”

Pull Quote

Once The Flying Lark was deemed by the state to be a “casino,” SOREDI, as a nonprofit, was prohibited by law from giving assistance to the project.

The problem with that argument, as Padilla previously explained to the board, is that once The Flying Lark was deemed by the state to be a “casino,” SOREDI, as a nonprofit, was prohibited by law from giving assistance to the project.

For its part, SOREDI is soldiering on, including work on current projects that involve Josephine County companies.

“We’re not going away,” Padilla said.

That The Flying Lark still sits unoccupied, despite county efforts to find a buyer or tenants for the property, has to be a continuing source of frustration for Josephine County officials and others who backed the enterprise, and resentment toward those perceived to have kept it grounded — but to use that a reason to prevent other county businesses from receiving financial support stretches the boundaries of common sense.

But these days, common sense and politics are horses of different colors.