Oregon news herald., March 01, 2025, Image 1

Vol #3 Issue #3 March 2025
FREE
Formerly the North Douglas Herald
New Photo Exhibition Documents Effects of Oregon’s Landscape Climate Change
A Changing Landscape is on view now at the Oregon Historical Society through November 23, 2025
Story by Rusty Savage
You can see how climate change has altered
Oregon’s geography in A Changing Landscape,
on view at the Oregon Historical Society in
downtown Portland now through November
23, 2025. This dramatic installation uses modern
and historical photographs to visually compare
100 years of environmental change across some
of Oregon’s most recognized mountains, lakes,
and glaciers.
Photo by Jim E. O’Connor, South Sister from the summit of Middle Sister., 2016
In the summer of 1920, the U.S. Forest
Service launched a three-month expedition to
lay the groundwork for a scenic road between
Crater Lake and the Columbia River Highway.
Led by recreational planner Frederick Cleator,
the “Skyline Party” traversed north along the
high country of the Cascade Range, with Cleator
taking 700 photographs documenting the terrain
and scenery.
While the scenic highway never came to be,
a recreational trail known as the Oregon Skyline
Trail opened to travelers in the summer of 1921.
Highlighting the beauty of the Cascades, the
Oregon Skyline Trail includes dramatic peaks,
glacial lakes, and alpine meadows, connecting
Oregonians and tourists to the natural wonders
of the state.
One hundred years later, geologist Jim
O’Connor followed Cleator’s footsteps and
recreated 75 of his Skyline Trail photographs
-- many taken on the same day and at the same
time as the original photographs. A Changing
Landscape features a selection of Cleator
and O’Connor’s photographs, showing this
picturesque stretch of geography, and the ways
climate change has altered the mountains, lakes,
and terrain throughout the past century. As
explained by O’Connor:
“I’ve been motivated by the century of
change revealed in these matched pairs, and the
photographs tell these stories much more vividly
than words. Plus, I revel in the challenge of finding
the exact places that previous photographers
like Cleator have set up their cameras, in some
instances probably places that have known few
footsteps since his. In this quest, I have been
revisiting the central Oregon Cascades for the
last 30 years with family, friends, and colleagues,
photographing and rephotographing scenes first
recorded in the early 1900s, at first to document
changes in the glaciers in the Three Sisters area,
but also becoming increasingly intrigued by
other landscape changes -- vegetation, lakes
and streams as well as human uses of the high
Continued on Page 2
Yoncalla High Participates in the Polar Plunge
Story and Photo by Chelsea Ross
Oregon Legislators Should Listen to Businesses
Story by Milo Banks
At Yoncalla High School, Special Olympics
and Unified Sports has a special place in our hearts.
What started as a senior project almost 10 years
ago, has blossomed into a schoolwide program and
annual tradition that celebrates and honors students
with intellectual disabilities and/or autism.
As a Unified school, we fundraise each year to
support our athletes through the Special Olympics
Polar Plunge. Taking place in Eugene, people
from all over the area converge in costumes and
outfits to dive into the chilly Willamette River. On
February 8 th 2025, 25 people from Yoncalla High
School took the plunge as our annual fundraiser.
Being a Unified Champion School, 50% of the
funds raised through our plunge, come directly
back to supporting students here at Yoncalla High.
Staff, students, parents, and even board members,
participated in this year’s plunge. While the water
was a very cold 38 degrees, the environment was
warm and welcoming.
For the second year in a row, Yoncalla took
home several trophies from our Polar Plunge. The
first being the largest school team to participate
and the second being top fundraising school for
our area. Mr. Sybrant, the head coach for Unified
Sports set the ambitious goal of reaching $5,000
this year. We are nearing our goal with a little under
$4,400 raised so far. Fundraising continues through
March 31 st , 2025.
Continued on Page 3
One reason Oregon struggles to attract business
investment is the state’s political culture, which undervalues
the private sector. In the Legislature, this culture is manifested
frequently as a willingness to shrug when businesses warn
about the likely effects of proposals that would harm them
– and often their employees, too.
Case in point: The 2022 Legislature’s passage of
House Bill 4002, which initiated a multi-year phase-out of
Oregon’s longstanding agricultural overtime exemption. In
2023 and 2024, employers were required to pay overtime to
agricultural workers after they’d worked 55 hours in a week.
The threshold is now 48 hours per week and will become 40
hours per week in 2027.
At the time lawmakers were considering HB 4002,
the Oregon Farm Bureau submitted a report explaining the
bill’s likely effects. Because farmers in Oregon compete
with those in other states and countries, they can’t easily pass
along increased costs to buyers, who can shift purchasing to
lower-cost suppliers. Meanwhile, Oregon’s mix of high-labor
crops, including tree fruits and berries, makes many of the
state’s farmers particularly vulnerable to policies that ramp
up labor costs.
For many specialty crop farm sectors, the report predicted,
“an overtime rule could result in very high pay rates that may
exceed the economic means of growers.”
While proponents of HB 4002 may have assumed
that agricultural workers would continue to work the same
number of hours and earn a lot more money, such an outcome
is simply at odds with economic reality. Instead, the report
concluded, three things were likely to happen:
1. Employers would reduce farm labor hours.
2. Employers would hire additional workers to reduce
overtime pay.
3. Some employers would reduce standard wage rates to
partially offset the effects of mandatory overtime.
The Legislature passed HB 4002 anyway.
To assess the law’s effects, economists at Oregon State
University collected anonymized payroll data covering 2022
and 2023 from several dairies, nurseries and cherry farms.
Beginning in 2023 – the first year of the overtime threshold
– per-hour pay went up for many workers, but overall pay
went down. In other words, farmers adjusted to the new law
by limiting workers’ hours, just as the Oregon Farm Bureau’s
report predicted they would.
The OSU economists, who reported their findings in a
Jan. 31 blog post, noted that farmers controlled labor costs in
other ways as well. Some operations have reduced year-end
bonuses. Others “report feeling less pressure to increase the
base-wage rate of employees that now earn overtime pay.”
Reducing overall pay for farm workers hardly seems like
the sort of outcome HB 4002’s backers were hoping for. Nor
is the following prediction offered by OSU’s economists: “On
the employee side, we should expect some farm workers to
seek second jobs, which may be with other farms, our outside
of agriculture.”
The consequences of HB 4002, which will intensify
as the overtime threshold drops, make a compelling case for
legislative reconsideration.
Meanwhile, the lesson of HB 4002 – that policymakers
should take the input of businesses seriously when proposing
to regulate them – is one legislators should apply to several
highly destructive bills now under consideration. These
Continued on Page 7