|
The
McCall Gallery
Videos
of Tom McCall
Audio
Recordings of Tom McCall
From our
audio tape "The Battle to Keep Oregon Lovable and Livable: The Story
of Tom McCall, Senate Bill 100 and How Oregon Planned its Growth"
McCall's
address to the Oregon Legislature on January 8, 1973, began with a typically
emotional review of what had been accomplished so far and why even more
action was needed:
Oregon
is an inspiration. Whether you come to it, or are born to it, you become
entranced by our state's beauty, the opportunity she affords, and the
independent spirit of her citizens.
Oregon
is an inspiration even to those who do not choose to come here to live.
The story of the Willamette River, our ecological Easter, has evoked
cries of hurrah all across the nation and in distant parts of the world.
And we have heard, along with the applause for Oregon, lamentations
for other states where progress has fallen prey to expediency.
Oregon's
story is an inspiration to all Americans who believe they should be
able to influence their government and their law making process. The
most intensive special interest pressure ever brought to bear on this
Legislature was by the lobbyists who came from afar to declare that
the bottle will not pass. But it did pass, because you and your constituents
were inspired by a love for the tradition and the beauty of our home.
You
and I shouldn't claim we love Oregon more than anyone else, but that
we love Oregon as much as anyone. Our thoughts today, and our deliberations
to come, must spring from our determination to keep Oregon lovable and
to make it even more livable.
After touching
on an amazing variety of other subjects, including the need to pass the
Equal Rights Amendment and to fund more affordable housing, McCall threw
down the gauntlet on the subject of land use planning:
But
there is a shameless threat in our environment and to the whole quality
of our life and that is the unfettered despoiling of our land. Coastal
condomania, sagebrush subdivisions and the ravenous rampage of suburbia,
here in the Willamette Valley, all threaten to mock Oregon's status
as the environmental model of this nation.
We're
dismayed that we have not stopped misuse of the land, which is our most
valuable finite natural resource. Umbrage at blatant disrespect for
sound planning is not taken just here in Salem, because less than a
month ago for example, Jefferson's County Commissioners appealed to
me for a moratorium on subdivisions in that county, because the speculators,
the speculators, have outrun local capacity for rational control.
We're
in dire need of state land use policy, dire need of newsubdivision law
and new standards for planning and zoning by the counties and cities
of our state.
The
interests of Oregon for today and in the future must be protected from
the grasping wastrels of the land. We must respect another truism –
that unlimited and unregulated growth, leads inexorably to a lowered
quality of life.
More
about Governor Tom McCall
Oregon Blue
Book
Oregon State Archives
Oregon
Historical Society
Recommended
reading:
Fire at Eden's Gate: Tom McCall and the Oregon Story by Brent Walsh
|
