The dissertation I sent out yesterday did not include the following, and really needs to be shared:

One of the things that is rarely mentioned in discussing the Rajneesh situation is the costs incurred by the citizens of Wasco County and eventually the State of Oregon AND the Federal Government.

Thousands of hours were tied up by the Planning office enforcing laws, inspecting illegal buildings, time spend in court both for the citations and then the appeals.  Hiring an attorney to represent the county. 

Thousands of hours by the Sheriff’s Office as they had to deliver papers to the different corporations.  Remember it took a minimum of 4 hours just to get to the ranch, then time spent trying to locate the individuals who were named in the paper work the wear and tear on the patrol cars and the loss of that deputy until he got back into the rest of the county.

The investigation took thousands of hours and costs to the taxpayers was enormous – by the time it was completed it had to run into the millions.

As an example, when the prisoners were brought back from Germany all but two of them were housed at Federal expense until trial.

The other two were charged with state crimes only and Wasco County had to bear the burden of the costs.  Because we were no longer a jail but a holding facility – and we didn’t have space for females we had to use other County Jails to hold them. 

The cost of the jail time alone was just over $25,000, which does not include the costs of transportation, etc.

The harassment of the county court by the staged disruptions by Rajneesh caused more time to be taken in dealing with regular business.

The harassment of citizens and the mental and emotional anguish it caused cannot be measured, but it was a factor.

And then there was the poisoning.  Businesses had to close, employees lost their jobs, people couldn’t go to work because they were too sick, over 750 people sought medical care.

The costs of that one act alone had to run in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

It was an unbelievably expense laid on the citizens, because the leaders lied.