Letter: Core tenets of conservative values are community, respect and accountability

Published 6:45 am Tuesday, May 16, 2023

In response to Steven Berley’s recent piece, I first want to state that I’m a resident of Union, not La Grande, so I have no dog in his fight.

Steven, you raise an interesting point: A persistent annual 6% tax increase seems steep, though I don’t have the specifics in front of me, nor have I attended a La Grande City Council meeting. That said, my family’s property taxes went up far more than 39% over the course of 2016-2023, and they live in a red state with top-down Republican control. Perhaps you are right that the Republican Party has given up on their “lower taxes, smaller government” platform.

But why was this short-term rental ban put in place? Though I can’t speak to La Grande in particular, I know that many residents of small towns in beautiful places like Union County are, in the face of investors buying homes to use as short-term rentals, unable to find homes to buy or rent themselves. Locals — people born and raised in this valley, unlike me (and perhaps you, given that you mentioned moving to La Grande in 2016) — find themselves priced out.

But again, you have another point: That’s just unregulated capitalism at work.

In the small town where I was raised, I was taught to believe the core tenets of conservative values were community, respect and accountability to your neighbors. I would ask you, Steven, to consider another point of view: Perhaps the Republican city council members enacted this ban to give their neighbors a fighting chance at finding housing. It was, perhaps, a compassionate move.

Steven, I respect your desire for autonomy and smaller government. But in my four years in Union, I’ve discovered the most rewarding aspect of life here has been my neighbors. If any of them were unable to afford their homes, priced out by people buying homes to use as income? I would be heartbroken, not just for them, but for myself. That’s a hard lesson I’m still learning: Though I like to think of myself as a rugged individualist, we are only as strong as our community.

Rather than being upset that you or perhaps one (or several) of your clients aren’t able to make money from short-term rentals, consider how lucky you are to have a city council that might just care about the integrity of your community. What could be more Republican than that?

Christopher Rosevear

Union

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