S ERVING THE S ILVERTON A REA S INCE 1880
50 C ENTS
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A U NIQUE E DITION OF THE S TATESMAN J OURNAL
V OL . 136, N O . 38
W EDNESDAY , S EPTEMBER 6, 2017
SILVERTONAPPEAL.COM
Tax breaks
for Amazon
worthwhile,
experts say
JONATHAN BACH
STATESMAN JOURNAL
DANIELLE PETERSON | STATESMAN JOURNAL FILE
The glockenspiel can be appreciated year-round, not just during the Mount Angel Oktoberfest celebration each
September.
Oktoberfest
Tiny Mt. Angel prepares for
onslaught of festival revelers
See OKTOBERFEST, Page 3A
ZACH URNESS
STATESMAN JOURNAL
COURTESY OF OKTOBERFEST BOARD OF DIRECTORS
They ran out of supplies early in 1966, the first year of
the Oktoberfest. Planners accounted for that in later
years.
Online
For a detailed schedule of Oktoberfest events, visit
www.oktoberfest.org/schedule
Who has the best Oktoberfest in the country? Mt.
Angel’s is in the running. Visit www.10best.com/awards/
travel/best-oktoberfest-2017/mt-angel-oktoberfest-
mount-angel-ore
Businesses open near downtown core
CHRISTENA BROOKS
SPECIAL TO THE APPEAL TRIBUNE
SILVERTON – Two
new businesses have
opened just outside the
downtown core this sum-
mer, one by a local-boy-
come-home and the other
by a newcomer to the
area.
Ort Chiropractic Clinic
began accepting patients
last week, while the
McClaine House bed-and-
breakfast has been host-
ing guests since early
summer.
Born and raised in Sil-
verton, Dr. Josh Ort, 33,
has come home with a
wife, two daughters, two
degrees and six years ex-
perience as a chiroprac-
tor. His wife, Danyelle, a
certified nursing assis-
tant, is his partner and
business manager.
“We want to serve and
be an asset to the commu-
CHRISTENA BROOKS / SPECIAL TO THE APPEAL TRIBUNE
The McClaine House.
nity,” Ort said. “My favor-
ite part of being a chiro-
practor is sitting with pa-
tients and really listening
to them and their needs.”
Ort Chiropractic is lo-
cated in the shuttered
Online at SilvertonAppeal.com
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See AMAZON, Page 3A
With Oregon on
fire, outdoor
planning is hard
JUSTIN MUCH, APPEAL TRIBUNE
The first Oktoberfest in Mt. Angel was a doozy,
and it set a pace and precedent for all 52 fests
since.
In 1966 Mt. Angel’s population hovered some-
where between its 1960 census number, 1,428, and
its 1970 figure, 1,973. Nobody can say for sure the
exact population then, but they do recall that the
initial Oktoberfest brought in 39,000 visitors to
the small German cultured hamlet.
“The one thing that always impressed me
about Oktoberfest is that first year (drew) 39,000
into this town, and they really rolled it out,” said
Monica Bochsler, the fest’s director of marketing.
“The stories still abound about how difficult
that first year was,” added Jerry Lauzon, a U.S.
Army retiree and former Oktoberfest marketing
director who, like many involved in hosting this
iconic mid-Willamette Valley event, can’t pull
himself away from it entirely.
Lauzon said stories revealed that the initial
event was a three-day affair, but by Friday night
they were already running out of supplies. They
raided grocery stores around the area for hot
dogs and other fixings to keep the party going.
Amazon.com is poised
to receive more than $3.7
million in property tax
breaks for its new Salem
packing and shipping cen-
ter, but experts say that’s
a relatively small cost for
taxpayers
considering
the larger, long-term
benefits the area will re-
ceive.
The online retailer’s
1,000 new jobs means
more personal spending,
a surge in income tax col-
lections and — after a
three year tax break peri-
od — fresh property tax
revenue where there had
been none. The land
hadn’t been on property
tax rolls before because it
was once state-owned
farmland for the Oregon
Department of Correc-
tions.
But Jeffrey Michael, a
public policy professor at
the University of the Pa-
cific in California, ques-
tioned whether Amazon
needed a tax incentive to
place a fulfillment center
close to Interstate 5 in Sa-
lem.
“These are growing
fast and locating on the
periphery of every major
consumer market in the
U.S., so an incentive was
certainly not necessary to
get one, or maybe even
two, of these to locate in
the Willamette Valley,”
Michael said in an email.
In June, Amazon an-
nounced plans to build a
similar packing and ship-
ping center in Troutdale
just east of Portland.
A Marion County esti-
mate puts the annual tax
bill for Amazon’s $90 mil-
lion, one-million-square-
foot building in the Mill
Creek Corporate Center
at more than $1.23 million
a year. But the county
can’t start to collect for
three years because the
company qualified for an
enterprise zone tax abate-
ment.
“We gave away three
years of something we’re
not getting,” said Chad
Freeman, president of the
nonprofit Strategic Eco-
nomic
Development
Corp., which promotes en-
terprise zones in the area.
Curt Arthur, managing
director of Sperry Van
McClaine Street Clinic in
the shopping complex oc-
cupied by Ace Hardware
and Hi-School Pharmacy.
The Orts are leasing about
half of the old clinic space
from building owner Jack
Holt and have spent the
summer
renovating
1,460 square feet into a
bright new reception
area, rehab space and
patient rooms.
For the past six
years, Ort has worked
at Heresco Chiroprac-
tic in Corvallis. He re-
fers to himself as a “di-
versified” chiroprac-
tor, with an emphasis
on manual adjusting
and the Thompson
technique. He also uses
ArthroStim adjusting
instruments and SOT
blocks as needed.
“We’re primarily fo-
cused on the biome-
chanics of the body,” he
said. “But you have to
have a variety of tools
if you’re going to ad-
dress the various
needs of patients.”
Ort grew up here
See OPEN, Page 2A
INSIDE
Classifieds..............................3B
Life in the Valley.................4A
Obituaries.............................2A
Sports......................................1B
©2017
Printed on recycled paper
Look at a map of wild-
fires in Oregon’s Cascade
Range, and it’s not a pret-
ty sight.
Giant fires from Mount
Jefferson
to
Mount
McLoughlin — and even
to the Southern Oregon
Coast — have made plan-
ning for outdoor adven-
ture a nightmare.
Whether an area is
closed, open or blanketed
in smoke has often been
unclear as new fires ap-
pear daily and an area half
the size of Rhode Island
burns.
Here’s a look around
the state at places normal-
ly popular for outdoor
recreation.
PHOTO COURTESY OF NASA AND
DARRYL LLOYD
This map shows satellite
view of Oregon's wildfires.
Mostly fire-free
You can’t escape the
smoke no matter where
you travel in Oregon, but
are still plenty of places
that are mostly free of
large wildfires.
The central and north-
ern Oregon Coast is a good
place to start, even though
you might find pretty hef-
ty crowds.
Even better is Oregon’s
Coast Range, where old-
growth forest, waterfalls
and less-traveled camp-
grounds offer smaller
crowds.
For an alpine experi-
ence, the Mount Hood
area is generally free of
big fires. My pick would
be the mountains of East-
ern Oregon, specifically
the
Strawberries,
See FIRE, Page 3A