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About The nugget. (Sisters, Or.) 1994-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 20, 2021)
The Nugget Vol. XLIV No. 41 P OSTAL CUSTOMER News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon www.NuggetNews.com SPRD seeks more staff for preschool PRE-SORTED STANDARD ECRWSS U.S. POSTAGE PAID Sisters, OR Permit No. 15 Wednesday, October 20, 2021 Sisters rental market is very tight Extreme focus... By Sue Stafford By Bill Bartlett Correspondent Correspondent The rooms at Sisters Park and Recreation District (SPRD) preschool are cheer- fully bright, with mini tables and chairs for the pint-sized students. Everywhere is evi- dence of the fun, yet impor- tant, learning and creating that takes place in these rooms every weekday. The only thing missing? Two and a half more teachers. Valerie Selig and Carissa Gascon, both well-qualified, experienced, and dedicated teachers who love their jobs, are each responsible for up to Stories about the hous- i ing shortage in Sisters, often r reported as a crisis, appear regularly on these pages. The focus is usually on the lack of so-called affordable inven- tory and escalating prices of single family homes, which is pricing nearly all entry-level workers out of the market. Little attention is given to the rental market, in par- ticular the lack of afford- able apartments. There are literally none in the tradi- tional sense 4 rents equal to 30 percent of living wage. AJ Scholl delivers a header in Outlaws soccer action against Stayton. See related story, page 9. See RENTAL on page 18 See PRESCHOOL on page 22 PHOTO BY JERRY BALDOCK Housing at forefront of Controlling speed in a neighborhood government’s minds By Sue Stafford Correspondent By Sue Stafford Correspondent One thing everyone could agree on at last week9s joint Sisters City Council/ Deschutes County Board of Commissioners meet- ing, is that houselessness in Deschutes County is increas- ing. One of the major factors in that rise is the increasingly high cost of housing. Colleen Thomas of Deschutes County Health Services, the County9s Houselessness Coordina- tor, presented to the joint meeting what she and Katy DeVito are doing to meet the houseless population where they are, whether that is in camps out in the forest, in shelters, along city streets, or at the local libraries, where they are able to access the internet. Their goal is to have direct outreach, face- to-face, to provide food ben- efits, propane, mental health services, case management, Inside... and connections to necessary services. With the direct con- tact, they are better able to assess who is without hous- ing and what their needs are. Two people to cover all of Deschutes County presents a herculean task that requires more personnel and mon- etary resources. For now, Thomas and DeVito are vis- iting homeless camps from Sisters to LaPine as well as managing the isolation motel established to house home- less COVID-19 patients. In theory, they are sup- posed to spend one day each week in the Sisters area, where a majority of those experiencing house- lessness live within five miles of Sisters, mainly out in the Deschutes National Forest. During three days in September, they attempted to do a survey of all the camps and make some determinations. They were See HOUSING on page 23 Traffic volume and speed are increasing all over town, especially in the downtown core. In an attempt to bypass that bottleneck, residents and tourists alike are using neigh- borhood streets as alterna- tive routes, especially on Jefferson, Washington, and Creekside Drive. Instead of traveling at the posted speed of 25 mph, drivers often far exceed that limit. The residents in the Timber Creek and Creekside neighborhoods will tell you that, now that the bridge on Creekside Drive over Whychus Creek has been discovered, any number of vehicles, many inappropri- ate for a narrow neighbor- hood street, use that route to cut through from town to Highway 126, avoiding the intersection at Highway 20 and Locust Street. In the last traffic safety study conducted by the City, data substantiated the con- cerns of the surrounding PHOTO BY SUE STAFFORD New speed humps have been installed in the Creekside neighborhood to slow down traffic using the bridge as an alternate route to and from Highway 126. neighbors: Too much traf- fic, traveling too fast. The Timber Creek homeowner9s association voted to install three speed <humps= on their private Timber Creek Drive, which has signage indicat- ing it is private and not for through-traffic use. People ignore the sign, so the home- owners decided to install the humps to hopefully discourage cut-throughs. The City agreed to install two speed humps on either end of the Creekside Drive bridge. All five humps were installed last week. Public Works Director Paul Bertagna indicated that the bridge humps are 10-mile-an-hour humps and See SPEED on page 22 Letters/Weather ............... 2 Announcements ................ 8 Fit for Sisters ...................14 Crossword .......................18 Classifieds ................. 20-21 Meetings .......................... 3 Entertainment .................. 9 Sisters Naturalist ............. 17 Fun & Games ....................19 Real Estate ................ 22-24