Pass weed, skeeter levies

Bur buttercup might not be a pain in your neck, but it sure smarts if you ever step with bare feet on a sun-cured patch of the stuff.

Fortunately, neither bur buttercup nor any of Baker County's other noxious weeds can fly under their own power.

Mosquitoes, however, are quite agile in the air.

They're quite capable of ruining a barbecue or a ballgame, too.

We mention both the weeds and the insect because, starting in a couple days, voters will decide whether to continue adding a relative pittance to their property taxes to battle both pests.

The ballot for the May 20 election will include extensions for the tax levies that pay to control weeds and mosquitoes (the latter is called the "vector control" levy.

Voters throughout the county will decide whether to extend the weed levy for four more years.

The mosquito levy applies to property within a 200,000-acre district that encompasses most of Baker, Keating and Bowen valleys.

We urge voters to approve both measures.

The weed levy, which totals $90,000 per year, does more than kill the weeds that, if left unchecked, could wreak havoc on agriculture, the biggest sector of Baker County's economy.

The tax dollars also serve as seed money (perhaps a poor metaphor when weeds are the topic) to leverage dollars from other sources, including the BLM, Oregon Department of Agriculture and Idaho Power Co.

During the past fiscal year, for instance, the county weed district actually spent $330,000.

Besides which, the weed levy is a bargain, at 8 cents per $1,000 of assessed property value. For the owner of a $175,000 property, that's $14.88 per year.

Voters in the vector control district, which includes Baker City, will also decide on a four-year extension of the district's $140,000-per-year local option levy (the district also has a permanent levy that raises about $208,000 per year).

The mosquito-control levy costs property owners about 24 cents per $1,000 — for the owner of a $175,000 property, that amounts to about $42 a year.

We think that's a price worth paying, considering mosquitoes, which spread the potentially fatal West Nile virus, are no longer merely an annoyance.