THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, AUGUST 17, 2015
NORTH COAST
3A
Cannon Beach takes ‘community
approach’ to emergency planning
By DANI PALMER
EO Media Group
CANNON BEACH —
When an emergency hits, the
city of Cannon Beach intends
to be ready, and it wants the
community to play a part.
During a City Council
work session Tuesday, Emer-
gency Management Consul-
tant Stacy Burr gave a pre-
sentation on the community
emergency asset program,
which aims to coordinate
community resources to pro-
tect lives and property fol-
lowing a disaster.
After stocking up on food
and water at its three emer-
gency cache sites for three
years, Cannon Beach cur-
rently has enough to support
about 1,500 people short-
term, Public Works Director
Dan Grassick said. Money
is in the general budget to
replace those items when
needed.
The city also encourages
residents to prepare go-bags,
¿lled with items such as food
and water to last at least 24
hours after a disaster, and of-
fers barrels for residents to
purchase and store supplies
in. About 100 are currently
in use.
“That program remains
intact and we hope to ex-
pand it,” City Manager Brant
Kucera said.
He said the city needs
to establish a “more robust
framework” for dealing with
potential emergencies.
During an Emergency Pre-
paredness Committee meeting
in July, Mayor Sam Steidel
said staff need to work on
helping “people stay alive”
for longer than a few days.
Warrenton’s April
Clark moves up
to ¿nance director
Submitted Photo
Stacy Burr, emergency pre-
paredness coordinator for
the city of Cannon Beach,
addressed city officials
Tuesday night.
Assessing needs
The community emergen-
cy asset program is based on
the Federal Emergency Man-
agement Agency’s “whole
community approach” in
which residents, emergency
managers, community lead-
ers and government of¿cials
work together to assess needs
and determine how to best
strengthen assets, Burr said.
Those assets include food,
water, medical resources,
transportation, continuity of
government assets and more.
Cannon Beach budgeted
nearly $40,000 for hooking
up water and power services
to the cache container and as-
sembly sites this ¿scal year.
Burr said the city needs to
take more preparatory mea-
sures to build disaster-resis-
tant and resilient resources, be
collaborative with community
organizations and be coordi-
nated to provide effective re-
sponse and recovery.
“A more sophisticated un-
derstanding of a community’s
needs and capabilities also
leads to a more ef¿cient use of
existing resources,” she said.
The program’s goals in-
clude developing continuity
of operations and a govern-
ment plan, and an emergency
operations plan that reÀects
the whole community ap-
proach at each of the cache
sites.
So who is in charge?
Kucera is listed as the
emergency manager under
the city manager job de-
scription, but Emergency
Preparedness
Committee
Chairwoman Karolyn Ad-
amson said the city needs to
address the fact many staff,
including Kucera, don’t live
in the city.
She added that residents
may find themselves at a
cache site without an author-
ity figure. The discovery of
guns in personal emergency
barrels has already raised
safety concerns.
“Unless we can schedule
emergencies between 8 and
5, we need to have an inci-
dent commander who lives
in Cannon Beach,” Council-
or Mike Benefield said.
Burr noted someone at
the city level, perhaps the
fire chief or public works
director, could serve as that
leader.
“It doesn’t mean the com-
munity isn’t a critical part of
the conversation,” she added.
It’s just that the city is
obligated to provide services
while a community member
may decide to ignore an old-
er population, for example,
in order to provide more
food to a younger one.
Burr said staff are aiming
to have those draft emergen-
cy operation plans ready to
go by February.
A dog day at McClure
13-year city employee to assist
with budget, perform audit
By ERICK BENGEL
The Daily Astorian
WARRENTON — The
city of Warrenton didn’t need
to look far to ¿nd the right
¿nance director. April Clark,
a 13-year employee with the
city, stepped into the position
last week.
One of 11 applicants, and
one of two interviewed in per-
son, Clark will oversee the
city’s ¿nancial operations,
including assisting with the
budget and performing the
annual audit. She will also
be involved in labor nego-
tiations, City Manager Kurt
Fritsch said.
A Warrenton resident,
Clark was hired as the city’s
account tech in 2002 before
moving up to accountant in
2006. With her latest promo-
tion, Clark replaces Laurie
Sawrey, who became Cannon
Beach’s ¿nance director in
June after 14 years with War-
renton.
“She has a tremendous
amount of knowledge about
Warrenton. She has a great
deal of experience. It’s going
to be an easy transition for
her to come in and be the full-
time ¿nance director,” Mayor
Mark Kujala said.
Clark, who served as the
interim ¿nance director after
Sawrey’s departure, said she
is most looking forward to
“the opportunity to continue
to serve the citizens of War-
renton and learn new things
and working with the staff.”
Clark’s annual salary starts
at $74,000.
“We’re just glad to have
April,” Fritsch said. “All of
our executive staff work well
with April and look forward
to working with her in this
new position.”
Maggie Wilski leads her dog, Bandit, through the agility course during “Dog Days of Astoria” at McClure Park
Saturday afternoon. Dog lovers converged on the park for an event that helped pups and Friends of McClure Park.
Linh DePledge/For The Daily Astorian
Business group quietly works to shape wage debate
By HILLARY BORRUD
Capital Bureau
Erick Bengel/The Daily Astorian
April Clark, the city’s former accountant, stepped into the
finance director position last week. She replaces Laurie
Sawrey, who became Cannon Beach’s finance director in
June.
Coast Guard rescues
distressed surfer
The Daily Astorian
TILLAMOOK — A U.S.
Coast Guard MH-60 Jayhawk
helicopter crew from Air Sta-
tion Astoria medevaced a dis-
tressed surfer near Cape Ki-
wanda Sunday afternoon.
Tillamook emergency re-
sponders contacted the Coast
Guard requesting assistance
to rescue a surfer drifting in
and out of consciousness. The
helicopter, training nearby, di-
verted to the scene, while the
Coast Guard also launched a
47-foot motor lifeboat from
Station Tillamook Bay.
While the helicopter and
boat were en route, the Coast
Guard was noti¿ed that good
Samaritans pulled the surfer
onto a rock formation, and the
Coast Guard’s assistance was
no longer needed. But local
authorities decided a helicop-
ter hoist would be the safest
option for retrieving the man,
considering his location and
condition.
“This rescue highlights
the importance of team-
work with local emergency
response agencies,” Petty
Officer 3rd Class Brian Ro-
driguez, an aviation surviv-
al technician and member
of the crew who hoisted the
man, said in a release. “The
responders on scene were
well trained, and their clear
communication allowed us
get the man out quickly and
safely.”
W A NTED
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SALEM — A group of
Portland business leaders
wants to shape the debate
over raising Oregon’s min-
imum wage ahead of the
2016 legislative session.
New
Seasons
Mar-
ket co-founder Stan Amy
formed North Star Civic
Foundation earlier this year
with his wife Christy Eu-
genis, who is a partner in
a real estate development
company, and Rejuvenation
Hardware founder Jim Kel-
ly.
The group plans to work
on solutions to income in-
equality and climate change,
and it is quietly arranging a
statewide listening tour to
learn what Oregonians think
about the state’s minimum
wage. The tour appears to be
an effort to develop a min-
imum wage proposal with
support from rural areas as
well as urban centers.
“Oregon has one of the
strongest track records of
bipartisanship in the coun-
try, but in recent years we’ve
seen more polarization,”
North Star Civic Foundation
executive director Caitlin
Baggott wrote in an email.
Baggott helped launch
the Portland get-out-the-
vote nonprofit Bus Project in
2002 and served as its exec-
utive director form 2011 to
2013.
Amy said part of the
group’s strategy was to work
“in the background,” and he
referred questions to Bag-
gott.
Competing proposals
Oregon’s minimum wage
is currently $9.25 an hour
and two existing coalitions,
15 Now Oregon and Raise
the Wage, are promoting
competing proposals to in-
crease it. Both coalitions in-
clude unions, and both plan
to seek ballot measures in
2016.
Raise the Wage wants a
ballot measure that would
increase the minimum wage
to $13.50 by 2018, and 15
Now Oregon has filed pa-
perwork for a measure that
would raise the wage grad-
ually to $15 per hour by
2019. Raise the Wage also
plans to push for legisla-
tion next year that would
increase the minimum wage
to $13.50 an hour.
North Star Civic Foun-
dation has not yet put for-
ward its own minimum
wage proposal, and Baggott
said the group wants to first
gather input from people
around the state. Howev-
er, the group is concerned
about “the growing share of
low-wage workers who can-
not earn enough to support
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themselves without govern-
ment assistance,” Baggott
wrote in an email.
“It is clear that the min-
imum wage will be a major
focus in next legislative
session and that if it is not
resolved in that session ex-
pectations are it will be on
the ballot the following No-
vember — where current
polling shows strong sup-
port for an increased wage,”
Baggott wrote. “We’re in
the process of organizing
a series of “kitchen table”
conversations around the
state with rural and urban
business owners, farmers,
non-profit leaders, and com-
munity groups this fall.”
Connect with leaders
As North Star Civic
Foundation planned the
conversations, the group
sought recommendations
from newspaper executives
around the state. Publish-
ers of The Daily Astorian
and East Oregonian news-
papers were among those
that helped North Star Civ-
ic Foundation connect with
local business leaders and
other community mem-
bers.
Baggott said North Star
Civic Foundation wants to
engage “people on all sides
of this issue. We are opti-
mistic that there is an op-
portunity to find common
ground and a path forward
that works for all of Ore-
gon’s communities, and for
all the parts of Oregon’s
economy.”
The Capital Bureau is a
collaboration between EO
Media Group and Pamplin
Media Group.
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