april6 2017
VERNONIA’S
volume11 issue7
reflecting the spirit of our community
www.vernoniasvoice.com
Churches Helping Churches
Vernonia’s Foursquare Church
needs a new place to worship
and Grace Family Fellowship
has offered them space
Following
the
flood
that
devastated much of Vernonia in 2007, the
Vernonia Assembly of God Church and
Pastor Wayne Marr needed a place to hold
their services while repairs were made to
their building. Pastor Carl Pense and the
congregation at the Vernonia Foursquare
Church graciously opened their hearts and
their doors to Pastor Marr and his group,
and the two churches shared services for
two years, while the needed repairs took
place.
Ten years later, Pastor Pense and
his Foursquare congregation are in need
and another church in the community,
Grace Family Fellowship, has stepped
forward to help them.
The Foursquare Church building
at 850 Madison Avenue is in need of
some serious repairs. The post and beam
foundation under the building is slowly
collapsing and the building is sagging
dramatically, which is causing the roof to
bow as well. One step inside the door and
you notice the slope towards the center of
the building.
During a recent inspection
in March by the Foursquare District
Supervisor to discuss the needed repairs
and the safety of the building, Pense was
told that the repairs were too extensive
and that his congregation would need to
abandon the building and find a new place
to worship. Pense was told he needed to
find a new place to meet by Easter.
Pense says his congregation had
begun discussing making repairs last year
and had reached an agreement with Grace
Family Fellowship to use their chapel as a
temporary meeting place.
“They said, ‘We can make the
Chapel available to you,’ so we had this
on the back burner,” explains Pense.
inside
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hold town hall
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free
“They responded very quickly when they
heard about our new need.”
The Grace Chapel will be the new home
of the Vernonia Foursquare Church.
The Grace Chapel, located at 358
A Street, is part of the expanded Grace
Family Fellowship campus and was part
of the purchase of two buildings from the
Baptist Church that met there formerly.
Grace Family Fellowship did some repairs
and renovations on the building and have
used it for bible study, weddings, baby
showers, and other community needs.
Greg “Mac” McCallum, pastor
at Grace Family Fellowship, says, “We
are excited and happy to help. We always
want to see what we can do, as our church
family, to help the community. I always
hope we can work together, because think
of how much we can accomplish if all the
churches worked together to promote the
gospel and share God’s love and show
the community of Vernonia what God is
like.”
continued on page 11
School Bond Panel Answers
Community Questions
The Vernonia School Bond
Committee hosted a Town Hall Forum
on Saturday, April 1, 2017 with a panel
of local experts to answer questions
about the upcoming School Bond
Measure, which will be voted on in the
May 16, 2017 election.
new school campus. The Town Hall
was moderated by Vernonia’s Voice
publisher Scott Laird.
The School Bond Committee
is made up of local citizens and
has used funds they raised to help
educate the public about the need
With Measure 5-265 the
Vernonia School District is asking for
voters to approve a $6.8 million dollar
bond to pay off debt from the campus
construction, complete the school
campus, add facilities and technology,
and do needed repairs and renovations
to the Mist School. If passed, the
District is guaranteed to receive
$2.35 million is state matching funds
through an Oregon School Capital
Improvement Matching Program
(OSCIM) grant, bringing the total
amount the District will receive to
$9.15 million.
The Bond would mature in 30
years with a tax rate increase of $0.20
per thousand of assessed value.
The panel for the Town
Hall included State Senator Betsy
Johnson, Vernonia School District
Superintendent Aaron Miller, current
School Board Chair Brett Costley,
and Jim Krahn who was the School
Board Chair during construction of the
for the community to pass the bond
through public meetings, meetings
with specific groups, mailers, and
other efforts. The Town Hall meeting
was streamed live on Facebook and
the video remains available at the
“Vernonia School Bond Committee”
Facebook page.
School Bond Committee
Chair Sharon Bernal provided some
background on the current need for
a second bond and explained that in
2009 voters passed a $13 million bond
that helped jumpstart the District’s
efforts to move the school campus after
it was damaged during the December
2007 flood. Bernal said the District
faced a deadline of September 2012
to have students in the new school in
order for the District to receive $12
million from FEMA for a buyout of
the old campus. Bernal said original
estimates from bids prior to the start
of construction were for the campus
continued on page 7
The Public Health Foundation
Announces Changes at Vernonia Health Center
In a mailer sent to the Vernonia
community, The Public Health
Foundation of Columbia County
(PHFCC) has announced changes to
their service at the Vernonia Health
Center.
In her letter, Public Health Ad-
ministrator Sherrie Ford noted that dis-
cussions are underway for a new part-
ner to operate the primary care services
at the Vernonia Health Center, which
have been provided by PHFCC since
February, 2013.
The Vernonia Health Center is
owned by the Vernonia Health Board
who has a lease agreement with PHFCC
to operate it and provide primary care
services.
“We support the transition
to a partner in health with years of
experience in rural health care,” stated
Ford in her letter. “It is our expectation
that this transition will provide
Vernonia with a long-lasting resource
in the community.”
PHFCC’s official last day will
be August 5, 2017.
When asked what prompted
the announcement that PHFCC would
no longer be providing primary care
service in Vernonia, Ford said they had
heard unofficially through staff, pa-
tients, and colleagues that their lease
agreement was not going to be re-
newed by the Health Board in the fall,
but was unable to receive confirmation
from the Health Board.
“One of our concerns was, if
we were not given formal notice enough
in advance, then we can’t give the
appropriate formal notice to our staff
and our patients, and that is not the way
we do business,” said Ford. “Because
we had heard from enough different
sources that we felt were reliable, that a
new partner was coming in the fall, we
felt it was best to go ahead and set an
end date so we can manage notification
to staff and patients.”
When asked for a response to
the letter from PHFCC, the Vernonia
Health Board responded, “Since its
inception in 1976, the goal of the Ver-
nonia Health Center Board has been to
bring professional, sustainable health-
care to the Vernonia and Upper Ne-
halem Valley region without regard for
patient income levels. We are in a new
iteration of that process now. We are
currently in discussions with a health-
care organization that shares a similar
commitment to providing quality, af-
fordable healthcare with a focus on
services within our community. Within
the next 30 days, we anticipate being
able to provide further details.”
Ford says the plan is for
PHFCC to continue to provide other
public health services they offer to
the community.
“We borrow the
space at the Health Center from the
Health Board for WIC services,” said
Ford during a recent interview, “so
we’ll continue to pursue that option
continued on page 8