FROM PAGE ONE
THURSDAY, APRIL 14, 2022
SCHOOLS
MORE INFORMATION
Continued from Page A1
such as Black Lives Matter
and LGBTQ pride fl ags, on
school district property. A
few months after that vote, the
school board fi red its superin-
tendent without cause.
Fallout from the controver-
sial board decisions led to an
unsuccessful but close recall
eff ort against Newberg School
Board members Dave Brown
and Brian Shannon in Jan-
uary. The election revealed
sharp public divide on
whether the school board was
representing its community,
with 52% of voters opposed
to the recall and 48% voting
in favor.
A large number of respon-
dents cite political infl uences
in their disapproval of their
local school board.
“School boards have
become too political,” one
Yamhill County Repub-
lican noted. “They should
focus on education, not
social justice and political
indoctrination.”
A Deschutes County
Republican respondent said:
“The school board is focused
on social issues, culture and
indoctrination. They do not
take the steps to improve
education only making sup-
porting programs that fi t their
agenda. This is done to the
detriment of learning.”
But another Deschutes
County survey taker, a Dem-
ocrat, said her school board
was “not doing enough to
support POC & LGBT com-
munity. Racism, sexism, &
homophobia are rampant in
Bend & concerns by parents
are ignored. … They talk the
talk, but don’t walk the walk.”
In Clackamas County,
Cris Waller said her local
school board was “taken
over by conservatives” in the
last election.
“I’ve heard from people I
know about what a disheart-
ening time it is to be a school
board because of the relent-
less pressure from right-wing
groups,” Waller said when
reached by Pamplin Media
Group. She said that the same
groups that have been taking
over school board meet-
ings have been taking over
Clackamas County’s board of
commissioners.
In Washington County,
one woman said voters in her
community “managed to keep
crazy, fringe characters” off
the school board. “However,
they are banging at the door to
get in with their white-pride,
Christian-zealot fervor.”
Kwee Heong Tan, also
of Washington County, said
his local school board “cares
about admin and non-educa-
tion areas like artifi cial grass,
while textbooks are old, and
emphasis on AP subjects
are reduced due to lack of
teachers.”
While Oregonians are
The Oregon Values and Beliefs
Center is committed to the
highest level of public opinion
research. To help obtain that,
the nonprofi t is building a large
research panel of Oregonians to
ensure that all voices are repre-
sented in discussions of public
policy in a valid and statistically
reliable way.
Selected panelists earn points for
their participation, which can be
redeemed for cash or donated to
a charity. To learn more, click here.
split on whether they are
being served and represented
by local school leadership,
the survey shows broad sup-
port (70% or higher) for an
array of taxpayer-funded
family support services like
tutoring, sports, after-school
clubs, children’s health care
and youth mental health
services.
Even those services that
garnered the least sup-
port, like culturally inclu-
sive learning materials and
required cultural awareness
and implicit-bias training
for school staff , showed
70% of those polled felt they
were valuable.
When it comes to sup-
porting child care and early
learning programs, partic-
ularly for kids with special
needs or disabilities, more
than half (56%) of Oregonians
say it’s “very important” to
off er childcare and learning
programs. More than 86% of
those polled said it’s some-
what or very important to
fund programs for special
needs children.
Similarly, 79% said
it was somewhat or very
important to make child care
more aff ordable for families
through additional govern-
ment funding.
“Women are more likely
than men to express strong
support for using taxpayer
funds to bolster early learning
and childhood programs and
services,” the OVBC noted in
its summary of survey results.
“Lower-income residents are
also more supportive.”
Still, residents are mixed
on how to pay for those ser-
vices. In Multnomah County,
which enacted new tax mea-
sures in 2020, and in Port-
land, specifi cally, which now
has the highest state and
local combined income-tax
rate in the nation, higher-in-
come earners are feeling
the squeeze.
“I currently pay over $500
per month in property tax. I
get a little over $1,000 from
SS. I am raising my grand-
children. Do the math,”
one woman in Multnomah
County, who identifi es as
a Democrat with a “some-
what liberal” social ideology,
told surveyors. “I cringe at
the thought of all these well-
meaning projects being pro-
posed, knowing full well it
will be property taxes that pay
for it.”
THE OBSERVER — A7
MINE
Continued from Page A1
at Sanger Mine in June
of 2021 over a 10-day
stretch.
“Sometimes they
fi lmed for an hour and
only a minute of the
footage appeared in the
show,” Candlish said.
He said he learned a
great deal about mining
over the 10-day period.
“They showed me
things like how the con-
fi gurations of sluice boxes
can make a big diff erence
in how much gold you can
get,” Candlish said.
Sluices are long,
narrow boxes that water
passes through when
put in a creek or stream.
Sluicing is a method of
separating and recov-
ering gold from gravel by
the use of running water.
McCLOUD
Continued from Page A1
for Deschutes County is
$693,000, according to
Redfi n real estate reports.
Meanwhile, Multnomah
County’s median home
value is approximately
$493,000, according to
Redfi n.
“An issue that pushed
me into homelessness
was, you know, having
not enough opportunities
for aff ordable housing,”
McCloud said. “We have
to be looking at how we
can increase access to
aff ordable housing for all
kinds of Oregonians, but
especially those that don’t
prefer to be homeless,
because I think there’s a
distinction to be made.”
McCloud said one of
his priorities as governor
would be to focus on devel-
oping aff ordable housing
— including multi-family
and single-family homes
— by tapping into Ore-
gon’s massive timber
industry and building new
communities in Oregon
in order to address the
housing crisis.
“It must be a priority.
We, right away, need to be
working with the timber
industry to end home-
lessness in Oregon,” he
said. “We have the renew-
able resources to do that,
and so, with the localized
resource that’s renewable,
within our borders, we
should be working with
the developers to set up
new communities of
all types, from multi-
unit housing to sin-
gle-family housing
and in between.”
According to
the Oregon Forest
Resources Institute,
Oregon leads the
Pete Candlish/Contributed Photo
Pete Candlish, right, and crew members of the Discovery show
“Gold Rush” pose for a group photo during fi lming in June 2021.
Mining as therapy
Pete Candlish started
mining while with the
U.S. Coast Guard 10
years ago in Alaska and
does it as a hobby to help
him cope with post-trau-
matic stress syndrome.
“It is great therapy
for me. It helps me with
physical and mental
healing,” said Can-
dlish, who talks about
this during the television
show.
The program about
Sanger Mine is available
to watch on subscrip-
tion streaming services,
including Discovery
Plus, and Candlish said
he has received a number
of calls and messages
from veterans who have
seen it.
They indicated that
the program helped them
deal with the challenges
they are facing.
“That has been grati-
fying to hear,” Candlish
said.
Another reason Can-
dlish is so drawn to
mining is that each time
someone spots gold they
are doing something his-
toric because the odds
are no person has seen it
before.
“You are probably the
fi rst person to ever see
it,” he said.
Candlish is optimistic
that there is more to be
found in the mines of
Baker County.
“There is still gold
out there that the old-
timers didn’t get,” Can-
dlish said.
nation in producing soft-
important, and, at the same
tion from the other can-
woods and plywood prod- time, we’re fi nding that our
didates. In that typical
ucts, with more than 28%
rural communities are sub-
language that’s generally
of U.S. plywood products
jected to harmful stereo-
used when we talk about
being made in the state.
types,” he said. “So I think
extremist policies, it will
McCloud decided to
it’s important, as somebody not apply to me,” he said.
join the race after being
who is going around trav-
“I think that’s an advan-
disappointed with the cur- eling, talking to people,
tage I have.”
rent lineup of gubernato-
meeting with them, lis-
While McCloud has
rial candidates.
tening to their stories, that
no previous government
experience, the decision to
“Before I was a can-
I have an opportunity to
run for governor was not
didate, I was an Oregon
stand in the gap and really
voter who looked across
help clarify and repair some taken lightly, he said.
“I was with my
the spectrum of candi-
of the perceptions that Ore-
13-year-old daughter, and I
dates to see the one that
gonians have developed
had fi nished typing out the
I felt would represent not
about each other.”
fi ling paperwork,” he said.
just me and my values,
McCloud also levied
but who was the one that
his status as the fi rst Black “And I said to her, ‘Should
I do this?’ And she is actu-
had the ability to unify
Republican gubernatorial
ally the one that pressed
the state of Oregon,” he
candidate in Oregon as a
the submit button, and let
said. “And after some time way to help bridge those
me know that my family
observing and listening, I
political divides.
was behind me 100%.”
felt that it was important
“I have some separa-
for me to attempt to
take matters into my
own hands, rather than
sit back and complain
about what another
candidate is or is not
doing, or what they can
or cannot do.”
McCloud said he
could be the candi-
date to unify Ore-
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Meadow hawkweed
Mouse-ear hawkweed
Orange hawkweed
Yellow hawkweed
Hoary cress -- Whitetop (within the
Grande Ronde
or Wolf Creek drainages)
Perennial pepperweed
Giant knotweed
Japanese knotweed
Himalayan knotweed
Hybrid or Bohemian knotweed
Tansy ragwort
Common crupina
Musk Thistle
Plumeless Thistle
Turkish Thistle
Russian knapweed
Common bugloss
Meadow knapweed
Yellow starthistle (outside the Cove
area)
Rush skeletonweed
Scotch broom
Leafy spurge (greater than 1 mile
from the Grande
Ronde River)
King-devil hawkweed
Dog Rose
Jointed goatgrass
Spotted knapweed
Diffuse knapweed
Yellow starthistle (Little Creek to Rinehart
Ln)
Oxeye daisy (except residential)
Canada thistle
Wild carrot – Queen Anne’s Lace
Leafy spurge (within 1 mile of Grande
Ronde River)
Hoary cress – Whitetop (within Powder
River Basin)
Dalmatian toadflax
Purple loosestrife
Buffalo Bur
Scotch thistle
Sulfur cinquefoil
Puncturevine
Houndstongue
Garlic Mustard
Dyer’s Woad
Yellow toadflax
Myrtle spurge (except residential)
Velvet leaf
Black henbane
Common tansy
Giant Foxtail
Ravenna Grass
Viper’s Bugloss
Rose Campion (except residential)
Mediterranean sage
Hoary Alyssum
Armenian (Himalayan) blackberry
Yellow flag iris
Medusahead rye
Ventena grass-- North Africa grass,
Wiregrass
Saltcedar
Sweet Briar Rose
Bittersweet Nightshade
Poison Hemlock
AGRICULTURAL CLASS “B” WEEDS
Agricultural Class “B” designated weed is a weed of economic importance within agricultural areas of
the County, which is both locally abundant and abundant in neighboring counties.
Common/Wild Sunflowers (within Ag and Right-of Way areas)
Horseweed – Mares tail
Catchweed bedstraw
Kochia
Quackgrass
Russian thistle
Creeping bentgrass (GMO-Roundup resistant)