Commissioners affirm property auction rules.

Byline: COUNTY BEAT by Randi Bjornstad The Register-Guard

CORRECTION (ran 1/25/03): Former Lane County Commissioner Bill Rogers underwent two heart procedures Thursday. In addition to mitral valve repair, doctors also performed a "maze" procedure that may enable him eventually to stop reliance on a pacemaker to control fibrillation. A County Beat item on page 4D Friday didn't mention the second procedure.

GOING, GOING, GONE still rules when it comes to auctioning off property, the county commissioners decreed Wednesday, settling a dispute over a piece of surplus county property that failed to sell during a recent sale.

The county put a list of properties up for bid, including a house at 1985 Woodlawn St. in Eugene that had been taken in foreclosure for unpaid taxes.

For some reason, nobody bid on the house during the auction, so county property agent Jeff Turk let it be known that people still could submit competing offers until a clear buyer had come forward.

Several people began to bid, until the price got up to $130,000. At that point, bidder Ron Smith submitted an identical bid "to stop the bidding war," then appeared before the county commissioners, who have the final say about selling surplus county property, to offer $130,050 for the house.

Thanks but no thanks, the board said unanimously after discussing the situation. The first bidder of $130,000 gets the house.

In a situation like that, Commissioner Bill Dwyer said, "If someone really wants to stop the `bidding war,' they need to bid more than the other person is willing to pay. That's what an auction is all about."

Former commissioner has surgery

Bill Rogers, who served as a member of the Board of Commissioners from 1983 through 1990, underwent successful surgery Thursday at Sacred Heart Medical Center to repair a faulty mitral valve in his heart, his daughter, Colleen Jager, said.

"Everything went very well - his color was wonderful immediately after the surgery," said Jager, who traveled to Eugene from Boise to be with her parents.

"He should be out of intensive care (today), and out of the hospital within five days."

The procedure could even mean that Rogers no longer will need the pacemaker that he has relied upon to protect his heart from fibrillation for the the past several years, she said.

Rogers, 73, served in the state House of Representatives for two terms in the 1970s before becoming a county commissioner.

After his retirement, he moved to Harbor, just outside Brookings, where, Jager said, he really hasn't been all that retiring.

"He was supposed to slow down - wrong," she said. "He bought a fishing boat, and he's an active member of the Coast Guard Auxiliary. He's also active in the Lions Club. He's as busy as ever."

Rifle range draws fire

A group calling itself Citizens For Responsibility has delivered a letter to the county commissioners, asking them to schedule a public hearing to review "neighborhood issues and land use conflicts posed by the Eugene Izaak Walton League's shooting range," located off Spencer Creek southwest of Eugene.

Spokesman Phil Ziebert told the commissioners that the shooting range has violated the conditions of the conditional use permit issued to it in 1975, including incidents of unsafe shooting, inappropriate expansion of its facilities, contamination of streams and wetlands and exceeding established hours of operation.

The board sent the issue to the Land Management Division for review and a recommendation, but not without some skepticism on the part of Commissioner Bill Dwyer.

"This kind of reminds me of people out in southwest Eugene years ago who started buying houses near a feedlot, knowing full well the feedlot was there and what a feedlot smells like," Dwyer said. "A few years later, they finally had enough people out there to make the feedlot objectionable and to try to get rid of it, even though it was there first."

A three-year legal dispute over lead contamination from the shooting range ended earlier this month with an out-of-court settlement that includes cleaning up the site and allowing the reopening of the league's shotgun range.

The settlement also transferred about six acres of the league's 18-acre site to Adam Novick, the neighboring property owner who filed a federal lawsuit in 1999 alleging that accumulated lead shot and bullets were contaminating a stream in violation of federal law.

The settlement required the group to construct berms to minimize shot and bullets that escape the site.

The group also must establish within four years a regular recovery and recycling program for lead shot and bullets fired at its pistol, rifle and shotgun ranges.

The group must clean up the site and obtain a permit from the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality before reopening its shotgun range, which has been closed since Novick filed the lawsuit.

Lane County reporter Randi Bjornstad can be reached at 338-2321 or by e-mail at [e-mail]