march21 2013
VERNONIA’S
volume7 issue6
www.vernoniasvoice.com
reflecting the spirit of our community
Vernonia Loggerbots Take 3 rd
Place at Regional Competition
The Vernonia High School Logger-
bots finished in third place at the Oregon
FIRST Robotics Competition on March 8
and 9, 2013 at the Memorial Coliseum in
Portland, Oregon.
free
lis High School to join their alliance.
“Having done so well, and having
been an alliance captain in just our second
year means we know what happens at the
very top levels of the competition,” said
Easter Egg Hunt
Saturday,
March 30th
10:00 AM sharp!
Hawkins Park
CC Rider to Reduce Services
The Loggerbots, in just their second
year of competing, led the entire field of fifty-
nine teams after the first day of the regional
competition. After the end of the qualifying
round on Saturday, the Loggerbots were in
third place overall and had qualified for the
elimination round.
“The regional competition was an
outstanding learning experience,” said VHS
instructor James Brookins “The kids real-
ized that they really can hold their own with
teams that are bigger, and that have been
around longer than they have.”
The Loggerbots are made up of stu-
dents from high school as well as several
middle school students. They received as-
sistance from a team of community mentors.
The top eight teams in the elimina-
tion round choose two partner teams and
create an alliance with whom they compete
together for the rest of the competition.
The Loggerbots chose West Valley
High School from Spokane, WA and Corval-
inside
3
10
12
14
19
city budget
anderson art
sustainability day
vhs sports
the scuttlebutt
Brookins.
The Loggerbots and their partner
teams won their best-of three quarterfinal,
losing the first match 76-77, before rebound-
ing in the second match 78-76 and forcing
a decisive final match. The Loggers and
their partners prevailed in the third match
92-63 and advanced to the final four and the
semifinals.
The Loggerbots were eliminated in
the semifinals, losing 59- 41 and 88-62. The
Loggerbots were awarded third place based
on their overall point score of 214 points.
“A reliable, consistent design is
more important than trying to build the
most sophisticated robot on the planet,” said
Brookins. “Falling just short of qualifying
for Worlds provides motivation to try to do
better next year and get that trip to St. Louis,
and proves to us that doing so is a realistic
goal.”
continued on page 3
The Columbia County
Rider public transit service in plan-
ning to significantly reduce services
they provide in certain areas of the
county, including Vernonia, starting
April 2, 2013.
Among the cuts to the Ver-
nonia service are a reduction of the
Dial-a-Ride (DAR) Service to two
days a week and a reduction to the
Nehalem Valley Route from five
days to three days a week, with the
elimination of the midday loop.
The reduction was an-
nounced to the Vernonia City
Council at their meeting on March
18, 2013 in a report provided by
Columbia County Transit Director
Janet Wright. According to the re-
port, reductions in service are nec-
essary for three reasons:
-The County’s General
Fund can no longer supplement the
transit program’s operating costs.
-CC Rider does not gener-
ate enough revenue to match avail-
able grant allocations to support
current service levels.
-The County must comply
with a requirement to establish an
operating reserve of 2.5 times their
monthly expenses.
In addition to the reduc-
tions to service for Vernonia, CC
Rider will also be eliminating DAR
service in Clatskanie and combin-
ing it with the Rainier DAR; re-
ducing the Rainier DAR service
to three days a week, five hours
per day; reducing DAR service in
St, Helens, Scappoose and Colum-
bia City to five hours per day, five
days a week; reduce service on
the Westport to Longview and the
North Flex Routes to three days a
week service. There were no reduc-
tions made to the South Flex Route
which serves St. Helens to Portland.
Vernonia DAR service will
now be available only on Tues-
days and Thursdays. The Nehalem
Route will only run on Monday,
Wednesday and Friday.
CC Rider staff and the
Columbia County Citizens Transit
Advisory Committee (CCCTAC)
decided to institute the upcoming
reductions after reviews of financial
and ridership data. CC Rider staff
determined a need to reduce service
hours throughout the system by 204
hours/week, a 36% reduction.
Students Spend Spring Break in Vernonia
A group of college students
are spending their Spring Break this
year in Vernonia.
Yes, you read that correctly.
Twelve students have forsaken
sunshine, bikinis and parties to work
outdoors in the rainy coastal range of
Oregon.
The students signed up
through Sierra Service Project
based out of Carmichael, California
near Sacramento. The students are
from Washington State University
and the University of Idaho. Next
week students arrive from Central
Washington University for a similar
experience. And in April a group
about fifty students aged twelve to
eighteen who are affiliated with
church youth groups from all over
the west will arrive in Vernonia to
work instead of play during their
Spring Break.
Morgan Blair is a nineteen
year old Virtual Technology and
Design student at the University
of Idaho. “This is a great excuse
to travel and it looks good on my
resume,” says Blair about his Sierra
Service experience.
Sierra Service Projects was
originally started by the United
Methodist Church but in recent years
it has been opened up and is now non-
denominational. “Basically anyone
who wants to come out and serve
God is more than welcome,” says
Robbie Frederiksen who is a Regional
Coordinator for the Portland office
for Sierra Service Projects. “We’ve
had people from the Mormon faith,
the Catholic faith - anybody who
wants to come out and work we are
more than happy to have their hands.
We actually have people here who
don’t have a faith at all but want to
be of service.” Frederiksen has been
working with locals to organize the
logistics for the work project.
The first group was building
garden boxes for the Community
Garden project at the Vernonia
Schools. The group used Western
Juniper Lumber to build the boxes,
an untreated, sustainable and durable
continued on page 10
