Letter to the Editor: Borst Avenue Work Supported by Fund Was a Scam

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My name is Silas Guy. I’ve lived in Centralia for over 40 years. I love it and the friendly people. 

About five years ago my friend was working very hard to get Edna Fund, Republican, elected as County Commissioner. She won and said that two kids who ride bicycles said it was unsafe to ride to the high school. She employed lobbyists who obtained a 30 year grant of $ 3.2 million to repair Borst Avenue. Mayor Lee Combs said, “great.”  

The Borst Avenue project was for a 10-foot wide sidewalk on the north side only, not the standard 5 feet on each side for the students to ride and walk to the high school.  And there would be a water drainage ditch between the street and the sidewalk.  At the time we had eight units on the south side of Borst and approximately 10 children that walked to either the high school or the middle school.  And, only one crosswalk.

The Public Works Property Management Agent, Bill Van der Hoeff, was the go-between to purchase the property from the land owners and also the removal of the trees.  We understood that Edna Fund recommended him.

Bill Van der Hoeff met with us numerous times regarding the sidewalk and the two trees that needed to be removed. We finally came to an agreement on the tree removal, and our verbal agreement with him was to have a sidewalk formed and prepared for us to pour cement so the children on our property would have a sidewalk the length of our property.  Bill wrote it down and I signed it, but never received a copy of our agreement, and this did not happen.  

What we got was possibly a black top mixture about 3 feet wide sloped right up against the street. Did Bill drop the ball, or was he overridden by the commissioners and Public Works?  This work was done by the labor unions and we know they are Democratic.



Peter Abbarno says I am a troublemaker because I said the Borst Street Project is a scam.  A scam to get government funds for a waste water ditch on Borst Avenue.  What do Edna Fund and Peter Abbarno have to say now?  It is the property owners who suffer.

Here we are in 2020 with a similar situation coming from Edna Fund, running for re-election.  She is proposing we obtain a grant to improve Maple Street (where City Hall is located) and other east/west streets to make the sidewalks/streets safe for bicycles. How many bicyclists do you see downtown? It sounds good, for a re-election campaign, but here again it would be union workers. 

 

Silas Guy

Centralia