Sisters educator retiring after
33-year teaching career page 5
Journey’s
adventure page 9
Dr. Seuss celebrated at
Sisters school page 17
The Nugget
Vol. XXXX No. 9
P OSTAL CUSTOMER
News and Opinion
from Sisters, Oregon
www.NuggetNews.com
Wednesday, Marc2 1, 2017
Work underway on Sisters roundabout
Work has begun in earnest
on the roundabout at the west
end of Sisters.
Access to Barclay Drive
at Highway 20 will be closed
for about a month while
Knife River excavates, places
base rock, installs curbs and
sidewalks and paves the
Barclay side of the round-
about. By constructing the
roundabout in phases, clos-
ing first Barclay Drive and
later McKinney Butte Drive
(in April), it will be possible
to maintain the Highway 20
traffic with no significant
impact during daytime hours.
Both signed and unsigned
detour routes will carry
Barclay and McKinney Butte
traffic around the construc-
tion zone.
Work will be ongoing
during the daytime Monday
through Saturday.
Highway 20 remains
open, with through traffic
guided by an extensive lay-
out of orange traffic control
posts. Travelers who seek to
input in all phases of plan-
ning the roundabout project.
See ROUNDABOUT on page 22
See UBER on page 30
PHOTO BY JIM CORNELIUS
As with the Cascade
Avenue improvement proj-
ect, ODOT has made exten-
sive effort to include citizen
Uber may
be headed
to Sisters
Sisters’ city government is
moving toward clearing the
way for the Uber ride-sharing
service to operate in town.
Action by Sisters would com-
plete the triangle of Central
Oregon cities.
“I saw Bend and Redmond
were doing it,” said Interim
City Manager Rick Allen.
He met with Uber repre-
sentatives, who are interested
in being able to operate here.
If Sisters doesn’t opt in, Uber
drivers could drive passen-
gers to Sisters, but would not
be able to pick up passengers
here.
“They can Uber up, but if
we don’t have an agreement,
they can’t Uber back,” Allen
said.
City action would
entail a simple ordinance
Detours and p2ased work will allow t2roug2 traffic to continue during construction of t2e Sisters roundabout.
access Ponderosa Lodge off
Barclay Drive can follow
signed detour routes using
Pine Street.
PRE-SORTED STANDARD
ECRWSS
U.S. POSTAGE PAID
Sisters, OR
Permit No. 15
Sisters school program Shed fire causes $12,000 in damage
named best in Oregon
By Steve Kadel
Correspondent
A program for young
people in Sisters was named
O r e g o n ’s E x c e p t i o n a l
Program for 2017 at the
February 16-17 Oregon
Transition Conference in
Portland.
“The Sisters Transition
Program is designed to pre-
pare our students with spe-
cial needs in the Sisters
School District for adult-
hood,” Sisters High School
Principal Joe Hosang wrote
in an email. “This includes
job training, internships and
employment, socialization
activities, classes at COCC,
exercise opportunities and
much more.”
He noted the program,
Inside...
headed by Josh Nordell with
a dedicated crew, has a phi-
losophy of “no barriers.”
“This is a very creative
group of people,” Hosang said
in his email. “Additionally
this same group started our
Unified Sports Program and
secured a $300,000 grant to
fund a regional coordinator so
all schools in Central Oregon
can have a Unified Team.”
Unified Sports joins stu-
dents with special needs and
general education students on
the same basketball, soccer or
softball teams.
Nordell is a life skills/
transition teacher for Sisters
School District and is case
manager for more than 20 stu-
dents. He said the transition
See PROGRAM on page 31
Smoldering fireplace
ashes were the culprit in a
shed fire last Thursday that
did an estimated $12,000 in
damage.
According to Deputy Fire
Chief Tim Craig, a home-
owner on Camp Polk Road
cleaned out his fireplace at
about 1 p.m., placing the
ashes in a plastic container
and leaving the container next
to a yard shed. He believed
the ashes were dead out. They
weren’t.
The homeowner left the
property for errands. At about
5:45 p.m., his daughter called
911 to report a fire. Heat or
flame from the ashes had
flared up into a blaze.
“Before she could fin-
ish the 911 call, the fire had
run up the side of the shed,”
Craig reported.
Sisters firefighters
responded quickly and got
PHOTO PROVIDED
Improperly disposed fireplace as2es were t2e culprit in a s2ed fire last
week. Always dispose of as2es in a metal container wit2 a lid.
the fire knocked down before
it spread to the house. The
shed and its contents, how-
ever, were a total loss. Craig
estimated contents loss at
$10,000 and the shed damage
at about $2,000.
The deputy chief told The
Nugget that fireplace ashes
should always be disposed
of in a metal container with a
lid, and left for many days to
ensure that they are dead out.
Better yet, he said, is to add
water to the container and
mix the ashes into a slurry.
Letters/Weather ................ 2 Bunkhouse Chronicle ......... 6 Paw Prints ....................... 10 Movies & Entertainment ....13 Classifieds .................. 27-29
Meetings ........................... 3 Sisters Naturalist ............... 9 Announcements ................12 Crossword ....................... 26 Real Estate .................30-32