Before every business deal, Ryan Hurley commits to the decision thorough prayer — and that’s not just because he’s dealing with multimillion-dollar transactions.
“I’m committed to moral and ethical development,” he said. “The larger endeavor of good projects is that they benefit the community.”
Building by building, the 40-year-old real estate developer is making his mark on downtown Vancouver.
And though his business has proven successful over the years, Hurley said that what he really hopes to do is help the city that he calls home grow and flourish.
“I love this community,” he said. “Vancouver is a small city for a large county. I feel like we’re in adolescence, and I want to take a participatory role in how she grows up.”
Hurley was born and raised in Vancouver, graduating from Prairie High School before attending Portland Community College to study fire science. Though he’d planned to be a firefighter, he said that he was always drawn to business and even started a few food stands while taking classes.
Hurley said that his recipe for success is 20 percent hard work, 10 percent experience and 70 percent providence.
“I feel like I was called to this,” he said. “I felt God’s favor in this process.”
“Money and profits really come second to people,” he said. “The whole point of a thriving economic community is the benefit of people.”
He said that he wants to make a good name for himself and his family so that he can walk through the streets and still be met with a wave — even if that means stomaching a monetary loss, he said.
“I plan on living in this community until the end of my life,” he said.
Clark County Councilor Tom Mielke could face an investigation from the Washington State Public Disclosure Commission into an allegation that he used public resources to campaign last fall.
According to a complaint filed by Jackie Lane of Battle Ground, Mielke used his county email to campaign against the Home Rule Charter ballot measure, as well as against Craig Pridemore, who lost to Councilor Jeanne Stewart last November.
Mielke, however, said the complaint is a “reach in the best of sense.”
Lane alleges that the three email exchanges from 2014 contained in the complaint are in violation of state law forbidding elected officials from using public resources to campaign for candidates or ballot measures.
Lane discovered the emails after searching through public records requests posted on the Clark County website.
“I was dumbfounded,” she said. “Surely commissioners know they aren’t supposed to be electioneering on county time.”
Mielke said he has already made a statement to the Public Disclosure Commission justifying his email activities, and doesn’t think he’ll face repercussions from the complaint.
“I’m a little disappointed,” Mielke said of the complaint.
The timeline for the opening of a new rail-to-marine oil-transfer terminal in Vancouver keeps getting pushed back, but investors in Tesoro Corp., the publicly traded part of a joint venture proposing the facility, don’t seem overly concerned. In fact, some believe if the project were to fall through completely, Tesoro’s stock price would hardly be affected.
That’s the picture that emerges from a review of the company’s regulatory filings, interviews with investment managers and an inspection of analyst reports about the company.
One manager of a fund that invests in refinery companies said only about one-third of the investment banks following Tesoro assumed in their valuations that the Vancouver oil terminal would win government approval. The rest of the investment banks think Tesoro’s stock price would benefit from the oil terminal’s construction but is not tied to that approval, the manager said. The manager spoke on condition that he not be identified because the firm does not typically speak to the press.
The bottom line for investors seems to be that the proposed oil terminal will likely be built eventually, giving Tesoro a healthy boost in revenue for relatively little in capital expenditure. But even if the terminal plan crumbles, Tesoro will find other ways to get the necessary crude to its West Coast refineries, many believe. In other words, the Vancouver project is seen as a nice-to-have but not necessarily a need-to-have asset, said the refineries investment manager.
Since the Clark County Elections Department re-issued voter registration cards, Auditor Greg Kimsey said, he’s fielded question after question about why it was necessary.
At a cost of $45,000, the department sent 248,615 Clark County voters their new registration information this month.
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Though voters do not use the cards to find polling places due to Washington’s vote-by-mail system, Kimsey said the cards provide “valuable information” to voters following the approval of Clark County’s Home Rule Charter, which was passed last November.
The charter divided the county into four council districts as opposed to the former three commissioner districts. Voters from District 2, which includes western portions of Clark County north of Vancouver, will elect a new councilor this November. A council chair will be elected countywide.
The information on the cards will allow voters to know what races and issues to expect on their ballots, as well as to know what positions they’re eligible to run for if interested, Kimsey said. This year, the filing period for candidates is May 11 to 15.
The new cards have also allowed the county to identify 6,500 voters whose registration either needs to be updated or canceled, Kimsey said.
On the afternoon of Jan. 26, 56-year-old Linda Sperling was working in her yard when she heard what sounded like an explosion. She put her hand to her head and pulled it back to find blood.
She was treated and released at a hospital, but she continues to suffer from a concussion, memory and vision problems, and a constant headache.
The Sperlings say the object that hit her was a stray bullet from the 300-yard rifle range that points toward the Sperlings’ property.
Clark County Sheriff’s Office major crimes detectives investigated the incident, but couldn’t find the projectile on the Sperlings’ 5-acre property, which abuts the range.
Detectives ultimately concluded that they couldn’t definitively say what the projectile was, nor could they determine if it came from Clark Rifles. They also said they didn’t find any signs of recklessness, negligence or criminal intent.
George Pitts, the founder and chairman of the Oregon Association of Shooting Ranges, accompanied a sheriff’s deputy on an inspection of the range. He said he founded the organization 15 years ago as a way to ensure member gun clubs, currently totaling 29, are safe, are environmentally sound and comply with local and state rules and regulations.
In an interview Friday, Pitts said that he looked the range over top to bottom and assessed Clark Rifles as above par.
“My sense of this was (Clark Rifles) has been very, very cautious and very responsible,” Pitts said. “Everything I saw looked like these guys were bending over backwards to be good guys.”
