Researchers ask:
Who’s your mama?
Seaside teams
cage the Cubs
WEEKEND
EDITION
IN ONE EAR • 1B
SPORTS • 7A
FRIDAY, JANUARY 9, 2015
142nd YEAR, No. 138
ONE DOLLAR
Five-year health challenge has $5 million as prize
-
wide to compete in the challenge creat-
ed by venture capitalist Esther Dyson to
promote healthy living.
Dyson and her advisers will visit
Clatsop County Tuesday and Wednes-
day for two town hall kick-off events.
-
By KYLE SPURR
The Daily Astorian
-
Clatsop County next week.
Clatsop County was chosen in Au-
side High School library from 5:30 p.m.
to 7 p.m. Tuesday.
The event on Wednesday will be
at the Warrenton High School library
from 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m.
The public is encouraged to attend
year challenge.
Bonnie Thompson, chief oper-
Hospital and member of the local
leadership team for the challenge,
said the town hall meetings are an
THE CHANGING OF THE GUARD
important opportunity for residents to
say what health priorities should be
pursued.
The initial focus areas for Clatsop
County include chemical dependency,
mental health, access to primary care,
employment, obesity and food ac-
cess, prenatal education and care, and
time-banking service exchange.
See WELLVILLE, Page 8A
Putting
faces on
the wall
Photos of Clatsop
County Vietnam
vets sought for
D.C. memorial
By KYLE SPURR
The Daily Astorian
A national effort to match a face
with each of the 58,286 names on the
Vietnam Memorial Wall in Wash-
ington, D.C., has reached Clatsop
County.
Janna Hoehn, a volunteer with the
Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund
from Maui, Hawaii, sent The Daily
Astorian a list of 12 Clatsop County
Vietnam casualties, and said she is
JOSHUA BESSEX — The Daily Astorian
Astoria Mayor Arline LaMear sees infrastructure, including the brownfield cleanup and the renovation of the Astoria Public Library, as
immediate challenges facing the city. LaMear also wants to create more transparency in City Council dealings.
Infrastructure, transparency are priorities for the new Astoria mayor
By DERRICK DEPLEDGE
The Daily Astorian
Wading into the nuts and bolts
of governing, Astoria Mayor Ar-
line LaMear sees infrastructure as
among the most immediate chal-
lenges facing the city.
The new mayor, sworn in to a
four-year term Monday, pointed to
the potential disruption from the
16th Street sewer improvement
project near downtown this spring
or summer, the frustration over the
that has left a gaping hole at Heri-
tage Square, and the long anticipat-
ed renovation of the Astoria Public
Library.
LaMear, a former librarian, had
made the library’s renovation a
theme of her campaign. But she un-
derstands that a plan to expand the
library into the vacant Waldorf Ho-
tel — also known as the Merwyn
— is contentious, since some want
JOSHUA BESSEX — The Daily Astorian
Astoria Mayor Arline LaMear addresses the group during her first
Meet the Mayor session at City Hall. The monthly session is intend-
ed for citizens to talk with the mayor in an open, informal, setting.
to preserve the privately owned
“It really is a quandary,” she
Meet the Mayor event Wednesday
Federal agency seeks
input on tidal project
By EDWARD STRATTON
The Daily Astorian
The Bonneville Power Administra-
tion is accepting comments until Jan.
28 on the draft environmental assess-
of the Wallooskee (also Walluski) and
Youngs rivers and turn it over to con-
servation by the Cowlitz Indian Tribe.
-
and conserve 221 acres of historical
tideland to re-establish tidal marshes
for salmon, steelhead and other wild-
life habitat. More information about
the project and a copy of BPA’s draft
environmental assessment can be
afternoon at City Hall. “What wor-
ries me more than anything else is,
let’s say the community rises up
and says ‘We need to save the Wal-
dorf,’ that it will sit there another
25 years boarded up as a derelict
building.”
LaMear wants to make the City
Council more responsive to public
concerns and more transparent in
deliberations by holding work ses-
sions where the mayor and council-
ors can openly talk through issues
that might come before the council
without violating the state’s public
meetings law.
While work sessions are com-
mon for councils in other cities, she
said they have been rare in Astoria
since 2008 when she started serv-
ing on the council.
“It’s been just a real frustration
to me that we’ll have these really
thorny issues, and we read about
them, but when we come to the
council meetings, we really don’t
know how one another feels, or
why they feel the way they feel,”
she said.
See LAMEAR, Page 8A
of the veterans.
The five remaining veterans
without photographs are Ron-
ald S. Anderson, Astoria; Alan
L. Barnett, Astoria; Francis D.
Campbell, Gearhart; Dan T.
Klindt, Astoria; Gordon L. Zim-
merle, Seaside.
So far, Hoehn and other volun-
teers have collected 39,400 photo-
graphs across the country. All of the
photographs will be sent to the Wall
of Faces online memorial and fea-
tured in the future Education Center
planned adjacent to the Washington,
D.C., memorial.
“Putting a face with a name
changes the whole dynamic of the
Wall, it keeps these soldiers alive
and will honor them, our heroes sto-
-
gotten,” Hoehn said.
Hoehn has personally found
1,200 photos since the project started
six years ago. She began in Hawaii,
then her hometown in California,
followed by Washington, Idaho and
now Oregon.
See MEMORIAL, Page 8A
‘Putting a face with
a name changes the
whole dynamic of
the Wall.’
Janna Hoehn
volunteer, Vietnam Veterans Memorial
Fund
found at http://1.usa.gov/1BPenIr
BPA is accepting comments on the
project by mail and online. Comments
can be made online at www.bpa.gov/
comment or mailed to: Bonneville
Power Administration; Public Affairs
— DKE-7; P.O. Box 14428; Portland,
OR 97293-4428. When commenting,
refer to the full project name.
The proposed Wallooskee-Youngs
breaches a levy authorized by the 1936
Flood Control Act and managed by
Clatsop County. It surrounds a point of
former dairy farmland jutting south-
west from Oregon Highway 202 about
EDWARD STRATTON — The Daily Astorian
Congress deauthorized the levee (as
a federal levee) within the project
See BPA, Page 8A
The 221-acre parcel proposed for wetland mitigation, seen here in the
center of the photo, comprises a slab of tidal marshland jutting south-
west from Oregon Highway 202 near the confluence of the Wallooskee
(Walluski) and Youngs rivers.