3A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, MARCH 6, 2017
Gearhart considers
new RV limits
after concerns
Cannon Beach chamber
celebrates ‘incredible year’
Direct impacts
of tourism hit
$123 million
By KATHERINE
LACAZE
For EO Media Group
CANNON BEACH —
“Here comes the sun” was the
message as the successes and
impact of the Cannon Beach
Chamber of Commerce were
celebrated Thursday during the
organization’s annual mem-
bership awards ceremony.
“What an incredible year it
has been,” Chamber of Com-
merce Executive Director
Court Carrier said at the event,
held at the chamber’s North
Spruce Street home.
Enjoying a spread of hors
d’oeuvres and libations, about
50 members took part in the
event, an opportunity to rec-
ognize a number of businesses
and individuals for a job well
done.
Tourism growth
Carrier shared a report on
the state of the tourism indus-
try. Lodging tax collections
have been “on a constant
climb,” he said.
While the summer quarter
in 2016 was only about 8 per-
cent higher than the same quar-
ter of 2015, the 2016 fall, win-
ter and spring quarters were up
17 percent, 25 percent and 23
percent, respectively.
“That is a huge growth in
business,” Carrier said. Speak-
ing to the chamber members,
he added, “You guys put that
together. It’s everyone in town
that made that happen, and it
made the success of what Can-
non Beach is today. So thank
Katherine Lacaze/For The Daily Astorian
Buddie Asay Anderson, of the Cannon Beach History
Center and Museum, accepts the award for Volunteer of
the Year at the Cannon Beach Chamber of Commerce’s
annual Membership Awards Ceremony Thursday.
2017 WINNERS:
Member of the Year: Beachcomber Vacation Homes
Volunteer of the Year: Buddie Asay Anderson
Supporter of the Year: Coaster Construction
Excellence in Customer Service: Maggie & Henry
you all for the great job you
have been doing. We have
grown dramatically as a result
of all of your efforts.”
Last year, the tourism
industry in Cannon Beach
brought in more than $3.8
million in total lodging taxes.
The estimated direct economic
impact of the industry was
almost $123 million. Using “a
conservative multiplier,” Car-
rier said, the estimated indi-
rect impact was about $368
million.
What’s happening at
the chamber?
Board
member
Kevin
Ridgway, the chairman of the
marketing committee, shared
an update on the chamber’s
goal to increase tourism, par-
ticularly during the winter, fall
and spring.
“That’s the need times
in Cannon Beach when we
want to fill more of our empty
rooms, generate more hotel
taxes so the city can do more
work for us as residents,” he
said, adding, “that’s the focus
of what we’re looking at.”
The marketing committee’s
strategies for achieving that
goal include expanding media
awareness in the Portland and
Seattle markets, making social
media channels more robust
and expanding digital market-
ing, to name a few.
In addition to bringing visi-
tors to town, the chamber also
aims to highlight the best of
what Cannon Beach has to
offer. One way it does so is
through the annual Sandcastle
Contest.
Debbie Nelson, who heads
a committee of more than a
dozen members and staff, said
it is important for her “to carry
on this hometown tradition
that is very near and dear to
my heart.”
On average, the contest
brings about 30,000 visitors
to Cannon Beach, requiring a
large force of volunteers and
sponsors.
“It’s great for advertising,
maybe not just for that week-
end, but for all year long,
because a lot of people connect
Cannon Beach with the Sand-
castle Contest,” Nelson said.
‘I’m really glad we’re still
doing Sandcastle all of these
53 years later.
Nelson unveiled the poster
for this year’s competition and
announced the date, June 17,
although a parade will be held
the day before and a 5K fun
run and walk the day after.
Other important cham-
ber events include the Stormy
Weather Arts Festival in
November and Haystack Hol-
idays from mid-November
through most of December.
Although January and
February have been slow —
“Mother Nature has not blessed
us with the last two months,”
Carrier said — chamber staff
is optimistic about the poten-
tial of 2017.
“I saw the sun today and it
was marvelous, and I’m really
excited,” Carrier added.
Parking,
sleeping at
issue for city
By R.J. MARX
The Daily Astorian
GEARHART — If you’re
a property owner and you
have an RV in Gearhart, you
can park on your property.
But you can’t live or camp
in the RV. The city seeks
to change that rule with a
modification permitting RV
owners to use their campers
twice a year, for a period of
no more than 96 hours each.
Those without the permit
would be subject to a fine.
“The ordinance as it
stands, which allows peo-
ple to stay in their RVs 96
hours at a time, twice a year,
through a permit, is going
to a hearing and a vote in
April,” City Administrator
Chad Sweet said.
At Wednesday’s City
Council meeting, councilors
presented an ordinance per-
mitting residents to obtain
the permit. According to the
proposed ordinance, RVs
cannot be parked in the pub-
lic right of way and the per-
mit may be revoked by the
police chief or enforcement
officer.
Homeowners may store
RVs on their property per-
manently as long as they are
not living in it. “This is just
covering private property
and being able to stay in the
RV,” Sweet said.
After approving con-
sideration of the new ordi-
nance, City Planner Carole
Connell “will put her find-
ings together as to the code,”
Sweet said. “This will go to
the City Council to make its
decision.”
Drug plan could yield unintended consequences
By PARIS ACHEN
Capital Bureau
SALEM — Pharmaceu-
tical representatives warned
an experimental bill to curtail
the rising cost of prescription
drugs could have unintended
consequences on the qual-
ity and availability of drugs in
Oregon.
“I am concerned that it will
stifle innovation,” said San-
dra Shotwell, CEO of Design-
Medix, a drug developer that
got its start at Portland State
University.
The legislation by state
Rep. Rob Nosse, D-Portland,
goes farther than any other law
in the nation to regulate pre-
scription prices.
The bill would cap patients’
out-of-pocket copayment for
prescriptions, require pharma-
ceutical companies to explain
steep increases in the cost of
a medication and mandate
rebates when prices exceed a
certain threshold.
Oregonians need relief
from exorbitant drug prices,
but addressing the problem is
complicated, Nosse said.
“The way drugs are devel-
oped and the way they are paid
for makes solving this problem
very hard,” the Portland law-
maker said.
The story of one Oregon
family, featured in the Portland
Business Journal, stands out,
Nosse said. When Les Rog-
ers’ 4-year-old daughter was
diagnosed with a rare seizure
disorder, the family learned
the treatment, a drug called
Acthar, cost $35,000 per vial.
The drug has been available
since the 1950s, but when Cal-
ifornia-based Questcor Phar-
maceuticals bought the rights
to it, the company raised the
price by 85,000 percent, from
No RV camping
$45 a vial, Nosse noted.
A separate ordinance lim-
iting RV public areas is also
before the council, driven
by a suggestion by Gear-
hart Police Chief Jeff Bow-
man, who sought to make
the “no sleeping” portion of
the city’s ordinance enforce-
able. This ordinance would
be directed to those RV own-
ers who “drive during the
day, sightsee, find someplace
and set up camp,” Bowman
said Thursday.
Bowman proposed lan-
guage prohibiting RVs
“parked or standing on
blocks, leveling supports,
Portland State research
DesignMedix has for the
past nine years been building
on research initiated at Port-
land State. The startup com-
pany has received state support
from the Venture Develop-
ment Fund and has contracted
for clinical trials and cap-
sules with Oregon companies,
DesignMedix CEO Shotwell
said.
“I’m looking at this (bill)
and thinking, so we’ve had all
this wind on our back, and now
it’s in our face,” Shotwell said.
R.J. Marx/The Daily Astorian
Police Chief Jeff Bowman
explained the difficulty of
enforcing Gearhart’s RV
rules during a November
meeting. New ordinances
will be presented in April.
pop-outs displayed or open,”
to enable enforcement.
Without it, he would have
no way of knowing if some-
one was sleeping in the RV
or not. “The main term here
is ‘sleep,’” he said. “There’s
no way we can have any type
of proof or evidence that
they’re sleeping in it.”
Bowman said any new
ordinance prohibiting RV
parking should not refer to
“sleeping,” but “storage.”
According to Bowman
in a letter to the council in
November, a recent viola-
tion was rejected by a judge
“who explained that appear-
ance of use has no bearing.
The violator can simply say
he isn’t sleeping or eating in
the RV under current rules.”
He said he would like an
ordinance specifying prohi-
bitions on how it is stored.
“I don’t care if you roll up
in your RV and it’s legally
parked for two days. A motor
home is still a vehicle. But
you can’t have your pop-
outs out on it, you can’t have
the tent trailer popped out,
you can’t be running por-
table generators, you can’t
have utilities hooked up to
it. I’m going to steer it more
toward a zoning thing than
a law enforcement thing.
Right now we can’t enforce
it.”
The council change in the
96-hour ordinance will be
presented to the public for
discussion at the council’s
next meeting.
A related ordinance, pro-
hibiting RVs from camping
in spaces open to the public
other than RV resorts, was
tabled until April. A draft
ordinance will be presented
in April, Sweet said.
Conservation groups lobby to nix sale of Elliott State Forest
Common School Fund. Con-
servation groups believe there
is a way to meet those obliga-
tions while protecting critical
habitat and maintaining public
access, although they remain
largely mum about the details.
One vote would
shift policy
By CLAIRE
WITHYCOMBE
Capital Bureau
SALEM — Opponents of
the planned sale of an 82,500-
acre swath of the Elliot State
Forest to a private partnership
are lobbying members of the
State Land Board to change
their vote and keep the forest
in public hands.
Meanwhile, officials at the
Department of State Lands are
both negotiating a sales agree-
ment for the forest and, at
the direction of the governor,
researching a public owner-
ship option.
Revenues from logging on
the forest is meant to bene-
fit the Common School Fund.
But in recent years, the forest
has operated at a loss.
In 2015, the land board
agreed to a detailed protocol
for finding a buyer and even-
tually selling the forest.
Only one entity — Lone
Rock Resources, a Rose-
burg timber firm, and the
Cow Creek Band of Umpqua
Tribe of Indians — submit-
ted a bid to buy the forest for
its assessed value, $220.8 mil-
lion. Under the proposal, the
Confederated Tribes of Coos,
Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw
Indians would hold a con-
servation easement on the
property.
Environmental groups are
Lobby day
Pamplin Media Group
Conservation groups are
lobbying state Treasurer
Tobias Read to reverse his
State Land Board vote to
sell the Elliot State Forest
to a private partnership.
lobbying the Legislature and
members of the board — Gov.
Kate Brown, Treasurer Tobias
Read and Secretary of State
Dennis Richardson — in ear-
nest to change course and find
a means of public ownership.
Brown, the only current
member of the land board who
was also on the board at the
time of the initial vote to sell
the forest, last month directed
the Department of State Lands
to come up with an alternative
public ownership proposal.
Read, a Democrat, and Rich-
ardson, a Republican, voted in
February to go forward with
the sale.
The governor can’t veto the
decision if Read and Richard-
son decide to continue with the
sale agreement at the board’s
next meeting in April, accord-
ing to the Department of State
Lands.
It’s not clear exactly what
the public ownership pro-
posal Brown has proposed will
look like, although the gover-
nor has suggested using up to
$100 million in state bonding
capacity to buy a portion of
the forest and negotiating with
the federal services to come
up with a habitat conservation
plan that permits “sustainable
timber harvest.”
Environmental groups say
they have been lobbying Rich-
ardson and Read to change
their votes.
Read has expressed con-
cerns about diverging from the
sale plan because of the state’s
fiduciary obligation to the
Environmental
groups,
including Cascadia Wildlands
and Portland Audobon, held
an official lobby day at the
state capitol last week, meet-
ing with Read and state leg-
islators. They’ve encouraged
their members to call legis-
lators and the land board to
push for the public ownership
option.
The Elliott Forest, environ-
mental groups say, has taken
on even greater urgency in
light of the Trump administra-
tion’s stance on environmental
policy.
Josh Laughlin, executive
of Cascadia Wild-
director
lands, said Wednesday that
selling the Elliott to Lone
Rock also presents a risk to
the state’s reputation as an out-
doors mecca — and particu-
larly, tourism officials’ inter-
est in drawing the Outdoor
Retailer conference to Oregon.
Bob Sallinger, conservation
director for Portland Audubon,
said he and two other people
met with Read Thursday.
Sallinger, reluctant to pro-
vide details about potential
proposals Thursday after-
noon, said he felt the treasurer
was “receptive” to the ideas
presented.
“What I can say based on
today is that I feel we’re mak-
ing headway,” Sallinger said
in a phone interview.
Read’s office said the
meeting
Thursday
was
“productive.”
Sallinger also said he felt
that members of the Legisla-
ture his group met with were
receptive to public ownership.
Courtney’s support
State Senate President
Peter Courtney, D-Salem, has
indicated his support for keep-
ing the forest public, and sug-
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gested in public testimony at
last month’s land board meet-
ing that revenue bonds —
which require repayment by
an income-generating activity
on the land such as logging —
could be an option.
The board will convene
again April 11. The Depart-
ment of State Lands, for its
part, also says it’s not yet
clear what will be discussed in
terms of the public option.
“The DSL director will be
providing an informational
update at a minimum, consis-
tent with the Governor’s direc-
tion at the February meeting
to look into public ownership
options,” spokeswoman Julie
Curtis wrote in an email.
The Capital Bureau is a
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Media Group and Pamplin
Media Group.
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