DailyAstorian.com // MONDAY, APRIL 24, 2017
144TH YEAR, NO. 212
ONE DOLLAR
Legislators
pitch cost
containing
measures
Options to reduce
budget shortfall
By CLAIRE WITHYCOMBE
Capital Bureau
Damian Mulinix/For The Daily Astorian
During a recent practice, jammers — with stars on their helmet — from the Astoria All Star Junior Roller Derby team try to
break the pivot line to start a jam. See more photos from the practice online at DailyAstorian.com
HUGS AND HIP CHECKS
FORMER SHANGHAIED ROLLER DOLLS TEACH NEW GENERATION TO SKATE
By EDWARD STRATTON
The Daily Astorian
SALEM — Concluding a week of height-
ened budget rhetoric at the state Legisla-
ture, a bipartisan group of legislators say the
state’s budget crunch could be addressed in
the short- and long-term through a score of
possible
measures,
including a hiring
freeze and tweaks to
the state’s public pen-
sion system.
However, it’s not
yet clear how much
these strategies, if
implemented, would
save as lawmakers try
to address a $1.6 bil-
lion shortfall in gen-
Richard
eral fund revenue nec-
Devlin
essary to maintain
current services.
State Sen. Richard Devlin, D-Tuala-
tin, a member of the group and co-chair of
the Joint Committee on Ways and Means
— which hammers out the state’s budget
— says the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal
Office could produce an estimate of poten-
tial savings as early as this week.
Devlin and four other lawmakers have
been meeting privately to find ways to cut
down on state spending. They released their
18 cost-containment ideas publicly for the
first time Friday.
D
erby bouts ended at the Astoria Armory last summer
when the Shanghaied Roller Dolls broke up.
But several former Roller Dolls have kept the tra-
dition alive through the Astoria All Star Junior Roller
Derby team, an initiative to build skating and self-confidence
skills among young people.
Each weekend at the Armory, Robyn “Hurricane Ka Ream
Ya” Koustik, Liz “Sasshole” Visser, Darcy “Darzylla” Fer-
guson, Walt “Coach Walt” Sabe and others drill their young
recruits in the ways of roller derby, like how to safely fall on a
hard wooden floor.
The junior derby includes girls — and one boy — of all
sizes. Skaters range from 5-year-old Saveri “Sabertooth” San-
chez, who is too young for derby bouts but too insistent to
be held out of practices, to 15-year-old Nea “Smack U Lara”
Johnson, who towers over most of her peers and lays big hits
on her coaches. The young skaters travel from as close as down
the block to as far as Nehalem, drawn to Astoria for the last
vestige of roller derby on the North Coast.
See BUDGET, Page 4A
Q&A
Advocate:
‘You’re not
trapped’
The Harbor is a safe
place for abuse victims
A family
Elinor “Bellatrix” Johnson, 11, was a mascot for the Roller
Dolls, dressing up as a pirate and doing laps during stoppages.
She and her older sister, Nea, have been a part of the team since
the founding several years ago as the SRDines. The youth
branch is now called the Astoria All Star Junior Roller Derby,
which draws up to 20 skaters on a given weekend.
By EDWARD STRATTON
The Daily Astorian
See ROLLER DERBY, Page 9A
‘It’s an awesome thing
for kids who don’t want
to do anything else. They
get serious exercise. They
get their butts kicked.’
Tess Johnson
parent of two sisters who are members of the Astoria All Star
Junior Roller Derby team
Damian Mulinix/For The Daily Astorian
Former Shanghaied Roller Doll Liz Visser works with members of
the Astoria All Star Junior Roller Derby team at a recent practice.
April is Sexual
Assault
Awareness
Month. Since August,
Crystal Moody has
been a member of
the domestic and sex-
ual assault response
team of The Harbor,
the region’s advocacy
group for abuse vic-
tims. For the past four
Crystal
months, Moody has
Moody
been a sexual assault
advocate.
She spoke of her work at The Harbor,
which operates a 24-hour crisis line.
See MOODY, Page 9A
New coordinator has lifelong passion for gardens
Jones promotes
sustainability
inda Jones remembers
as a young girl visit-
ing her grandma’s home in
York, Pennsylvania, learning
all about gardening and head-
ing home each time with cut-
tings, which eventually filled
her own room with plants.
She remembers growing up
in Alexandria, Virginia, sur-
rounded by historic homes and
gardens.
“It really started from
childhood,” Jones said of her
interest in horticulture, “And
I’ve been kind of a horticulture
nerd ever since. I’m passion-
L
ate about being environmen-
tally responsible, and inspir-
ing other people to get into
gardening, growing their own
food, sustainability.”
Jones, the wife of Astoria
City Councilor Bruce Jones,
has taken her lifelong passion
into a new position as coordi-
nator of Oregon State Univer-
sity Extension Service’s Mas-
ter Gardener program.
“We’re pretty committed to
sustainability, and also provide
information on growing your
own food,” she said. “We’re
committed to providing the
information to the public that
is the most environmentally
beneficial.”
“The goal is to teach the
home gardeners how to garden
in a way that they don’t need
… the sprays and the herbi-
cides and the pesticides.”
Jones, who moved around
the U.S. as part of her hus-
band’s career in the U.S. Coast
Guard, first trained as a master
gardener while living in Wis-
consin in 2007, adding to her
bachelor’s in marketing and
master’s in education. Upon
See JONES, Page 9A
Edward Stratton/The Daily Astorian
Linda Jones, a lifelong gardener, is the program coordina-
tor for Oregon State University Extension Service’s Mas-
ter Gardener program.