Image provided by: Friends of the Sandy Public Library; Sandy, OR
About Sandy post. (Sandy, Oregon) 1938-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 18, 1982)
V o l. 72 N o . 46 SANDY OREGON THURSDAY NOVEMBER 18. 1982 ( IS P S ISI-IWH Single Copy 25< Volunteers hub of center activities by DAM D ILLO N Nightly newscasts and morning newspapers grim ly report rising unemployment figures But for many, the unemployed rem ain just faceless numbers For a band of 41 dedicated volunteers at Sandy's Community Action Center, those unemploy ment figures are very human and the volunteers deal with them on a daily basis "People don't realize how bad some of these people are o ff." said Freda Goodwin, a volunteer at the center for six years "We have people who are sleep ing in cars because they can't a f ford rent You look at their clothes and you can tell they 're sleeping in their car ” But for Goodwin who puts in three-hour shifts sorting donated clothes and helping clients, there is a reward. " I think there's a need for volunteers." she said. “ It kind of makes you feel good to help peo ple ” Helping people has been what the Sandy Com m unity Action Center has been about since its in ception in the 1960s In 1970, faced with a cutoff of federal funds, a group of local volunteers got together, formed a corporation and it has been up to volunteers ever since The Sandy center remains the only action center in Clackamas County without a paid director Pete Sulzbach. chairman of the cen ter, estim ates that center volunteers spend about half an hour working with each client who comes into the center The average is nearly 1.000 clients a month "We go from chaos to order, chaos to order." Sulzbach said smiling. The reasons clients w alk in are varied T h e c e n te r p ro v id e s food baskets, vouchers for gasoline, clothing and bedding, and this winter w ill again help with the fuel assistance program, that can pro vide as much as $100 help on a fuel bill "People are coming in having their heat turned off," Sulzbach said. “ It ’s kind of amusing in a way. To some extent P G E does social work. They tell somebody where they can get food stamps, so maybe they can pay their PG E bill " Even the food stamps leave shortfalls, however "The food stamps they’re han ding out isn't enough to hold them fo r a m o n th ,’ ’ said Colleen Mod Hartley. Pete Sulzbach and Frank M arcy tote in a couch that will go to help a fam ily in need. by DAN DILLON New City Manager Tom Reber learned early on that Sandy residents and the Sandy Police Department are on the ball He was in the process of moving in to temporary quarters at the hon e of former City Manager Roger Jordan when he received a visit from the local police. Someone had reported a suspicious vehicle at the residence Reber hopes that unfam iliarity won’t be repeated as he spends the early days of his stay in Sandy meeting the people, getting his finger on the pulse of the city council and fam iliarizing himself with situations unique to the community. Photos by Dan Dillon The sorting of donations never ends as Colleen Pledger, left, and Freda Goodwin look over a new batch of clothes at the Community Action Center. Pledger, who has helped out at the center for eight months The trip to apply for the food stamps at Gladstone or M arylhurst often requires a voucher for gasoline. The center, on the other hand, o nly p u rp o rts to o ffe r food assistance for three to four days. The bulk of its food supply comes from the Food Bank in Portland, but other sources lend a helping hand with cash and food donations, including the local Kiwanis Club, V F W Auxiliary, TOPS Club and four local churches. " I f we had help from all of them, we could almost be independent." Sulzbach mused The Clackamas County Gleaners have filled a void throughout the harvest season, dropping off 3,000 pounds of turnips, 1,300 pounds of cabbages, and e q u a lly la rg e amounts of potatoes, apples and squash. “ I thought those turnips would never go aw ay," Sulzbach chuckl ed. That kind of bulk food goes on the center's “ help-yourself sh elf." Although there are local donations and money comes from the city of Sandy, routed through Clackamas County officials in a string of red tape, the center relies on donations and contributions from clients and local residents. “ The contribution can has been kind of lean though lately," Good win said. ‘ ‘ P e o p le q u e s tio n w hat volunteers do here,” said Nod Hartley. "W orkers spend hours in that room sorting, hanging clothes on the racks so they can be displayed." What isn't used at the center is sent to the Goodwill depot in Gresnam The center gets between 2,000 and 3,000 household items every month. Helen Sulzbach makes quilts from scraps of m aterials left over from sewing and she has made "in the hundreds," said Goodwin. "Most of the tim e that's mainly what we have to give out to the clients,” Pledger said. "W e don't get many blankets.” With all the donations filling the tin y b u ild in g on P io n e e r Boulevard, the center has search ed for a new home. The center has a grant and a $30,000 bequest from the estate of Lydia Koch to purchase a new site, but so far no deal has been made “ We want a permanent home," Sulzbach said. "Rent is the biggest item in the Community Action Center finances. I f times get tougher, with local help, we could operate in our own building." Improvement district voided; city to start over by DAN D ILLO N A recent Oregon Supreme Court decision not to review the six-year- old case of Local Im provem ent District 4 has sent the city of Sandy back to the drawing board The court's refusal to hear the city's appeal of an earlier ruling by the state Court of Appeals has local officials scrambling to, in effect, begin at the beginning “ In a sense, we don't have a local improvement district," said City M anager Tom Reber So, City Engineer Greg DiLoreto is preparing a report that follows the ci ty ordinance outlining what a local improvement district should be That report is expected to be delivered to city council members to day. The council will meet in ex ecutive session Monday evening at 7 p.m to discuss the situation. That evening the council is expected to ap prove the new engineer's report and set a public hearing for Dec. 13. The project to pave Heritage Square parking lot should not have been divided into two phases and con tinued without initiating new pro ceedings, according to Associate Judge Edward Warren of the Oregon Court of Appeals. At the tim e of cost overruns that caused the city to take that action, it should have gone back, re initiated the proceedings and began it again That is what it is doing now. "You start all over with the pro-' cedure for establishing a local im provement district Legally, that is what's happening,” Reber said “ I ’m sure that that's not what is going to happen with all th at’s gone into it." The city hopes to persuade the ad jacent property owners to agree to pay for the parking lot and to decide what portion of the cost they are w ill ing to pay—all or part of it. City officials w ill have a list of alternatives ready for the Dec. 13 hearing in case the property owners remonstrate against the new L ID and effectively kill it. The parking lot project began in M arch 1976 when property owners asked the Sandy City Council to build a 106-space municipal parking lot th ro u g h a lo c a l im p ro v e m e n t district. The engineer's report filed then, however, didn’t detail plans and specifications but sim ply listed general work with estimated costs It didn't include the cost of property ac quisition, appraisal fees, lighting, water lines and hydrants, utilities or attorney fees The report estimated the project's cost at $57,565 By October 1976, however, pro blems arose The property owners were concerned that the project hadn’t progressed In executive ses sion, the city council decided to divide the project into two phases, a t tempting to expedite the project. When assessments for Phase I w e re b ille d , th e y to ta le d $104,989,76—n e a r ly d o u b le th e original estimate. The property owners argued that the city denied them the right to remonstrate against a proposal that differed from the original L ID . Property owners involved in the L ID project included the owners of Decker’s Store, the Bolster-Scales Professional Building, the Heritage Square Building, the Double Dragon. TJ's Fireside Dining, the Wheatland Building a , . ' ‘he Frontier Building. Two property owners later applied for Bancroft bonding to pay for their assessments. H o w eve r, pending litigation has prevented collection of any assessments The Court of Ap peals ru lin g , w hich essen tially eliminated the L ID . negated the assessments Hoodland volunteers seek ‘sendee’ policy review by MICHAEL P. JONES Post Correspondent The Volunteer Association of the Hoodland Rural F ire Department last week asked the board of direc tors to allow a committee to explore the potential impact of a new policy, forbidding board membership by fire department staff. That includes volunteers who are now re fe r re d to as p a rt-tim e employees The policy was heavily opposed by b oth f u ll - t i m e an d v o lu n te e r fire fig h te rs who questioned the legality and motive of the policy at the board's October meeting The board, however, adopted the policy and board members Dave Olson and Ray M iller resigned as department volunteers In a letter to the Tire board last week, Barbara Matheson, president of the Volunteer Association asked the board to endorse a committee to approach government agencies to study the potential legal ra m ific a tions of the policy The volunteers fear that because they are looked on as part-tim e staff, they w ill have to be paid minim um wage and have social security and other benefits Peggy Hergert, board president. doesn't see any difference in the status of the volunteers since the policy went into effect "O ff the top of my head I can see no change." agreed M iller, "since other districts in the state operate under this same policy .” F ire Chief Don Armintrout told the board that taxes for a person w ill be taken out only if they are paid to be at a certain place at a certain tim e If this is the case then the benefits will have to be taken out He said an auditor just recently informed him that the departm ent's part tim e weekend help are considered "paid person n el." T hat means social security should have been withheld, but was not. A r m in t r o u t d o e s n 't fe e l withholdings have to be taken from volunteers' reinbursement checks He said the auditor told him that if the person has the opportunity to res- pond or not to the call, no social security would have to be taken out Olson, however, said that all volunteers are required to respond to a certain percentage of the calls This, he said, makes it a requirement to respond Class consolidation alarms Welches parents A change in teaching assignments and restructed first- and fifth-grade classes have parents roncemted the Welches School District Based on superintendent Kenneth Blackburn s recommendation, two fifth-grade classes have lieen com bined and the first-grade class split into two 13-students classes He maintains the district can't afford to maintain two fifth-grade teachers in their current positions and hire an extra first grade teacher as well As a result, Kathleen McDougall was reassigned Monday as a first- grade teacher The other fifth-grade teacher, Chuck Peterson, had his class increased from 11 students to 24 students Board chairperson Dick Hoffman said that the decision to make McDougall a first-grade teacher. New manager studies city, meets people rather than Peterson, was her tra in ing to teach the D IS T A R reading pro gram Rob H ill, a parent and former teacher at the school, is concerned how the school board made its deci sions He said the decisions were made in executive session, without giving the parents a chance to voice their opinion in the m atter. Parent Bruce Traasdahl agrees He told The Post the change was "slid under the table at us ’’ Upset with the board's handling of the problem, a group of parents a t tended the Nov. I l school board meeting to get answers to their ques tions According to M u rl S ilv ey , a counselor and Ph D candidate at the Oregon Graduate School of Profes sional Psychology, the students had " s u ffe re d fro m enough ad m inistrative indecision and changing of horses in m idstream ." Traasdahl said this class has been "jacked around more than any other," citing class changes in all five years Silvey said the administration and school board's use of economic criteria for bases of their decisions d o e sn 't co n sid e r th e n e g a tiv e psychological im pacts that con solidation has on the students Ijis t Thursday's meeting began on a sour note when parents learned that Blackburn would not attend He was away on special maneuvers with the National Guard at Fort Lewis, Wash., Nov. 11-14, and the board was aw are two months ago that he would be absent from the meeting Bob Meiser. a parent of three children attending the school, said he and the other parents want to meet with Blackburn to get some questions answered He said it was concern of parents whose children have been getting pushed around since they were were in the first grade and it had to come to a halt Silvey agreed He said the changes the students have undergone have created stress that could affect their ability to learn The affect of con solidation and splitting up of classes, he claimed, “ w ill be much more detrimental to some than it w ill be for others " In some instances, said Silvey. the stress may come out in the student's academics or in their relationships with one another Tom Reber Some of those situations won't be as foreign as might be expected. Sandy, according to the 31-year-old city manager, has some striking similarities to Jordan, Minn , where he spent four years as city ad ministrator. "It's quite sim ilar in that it is on the fringe of a metropolitan area, " he said Jordan is just 35 miles from the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. Although it was slightly sm aller, Reber said, the city provided a full range of services sim ilar to Sandy, except for senior citizen and library services which were provided by the home county. “ One area where it appears Jordan was providing a higher level was in parks and recreation,” he said, noting, however, that it did not enjoy the proximity to recreation areas like Mt. Hood and the Oregon coast. Reber also enjoyed a more open taxing situation in Minnesota “ I think Minnesotans are willing to pay for the higher level of services because they want to maintain their standard of living," he said The tax structure, supported by sales, property and income taxes, allowed him to submit a budget within an 8 percent growth lim it an nually without voter approval. The Oregon system of voter ap proval of levies could prove a challenge, he admitted. " It certainly seems to me to be an unstable situation when m isinform a tion or the timing of a certain event in relation to the election can affect the outcome,” Reber said. In Jordan. Reber worked closely with an economic development cor poration and hopes to continue that as Sandy makes its bid for industrial and commercial growth. He attended Mankato State U niver sity in Minnesota where he earned a bachelor's degree in urban and regional studies, and business ad ministration in 1973. He earned a master's degree from the same university in 1975 in urban and regional studies and management studies Reber expects his wife Nanette and daughter Katie to join him in Sandy no later than the first week of January. Index SECTION I Editorial, Opinion Keeping Posted Senior Center News Menus Church News What's Cooking Sports. Recreation 2 4 4 S 5 ....... • 11-12 SECTION II Classified Ads T V Revue ........... Inside Tab Im id e Tab
