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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • THURSDAY, JUNE 1, 2017
St. Clare: Remains in jail on a hold from Snohomish County
Continued from Page 1A
Inside the car were 42 cats,
one of which had died two days
earlier. Animal control, wear-
ing breathing masks because
of the overwhelming smell of
ammonia, were able to remove
the cats from the vehicle.
St. Clare is required not to
own or possess animals as part
of her probation. If she violates
probation, the plea agreement
stipulates she will serve 20
months in prison.
She originally was charged
with 40 counts of animal
neglect and one count of
first-degree animal abuse.
Since the arrest, some of the
cats have died or have had to be
euthanized, while others were
born since then.
Photos by Colin Murphey/The Daily Astorian
ABOVE: One of the dozens of cats rescued from a local
individual’s vehicle gets some attention at the Clatsop
County Animal Shelter. LEFT: Kathryn St. Clare, right,
pleaded guilty Wednesday to four counts of second-de-
gree animal neglect.
History of hoarding
St. Clare’s history of keep-
ing her cats from authorities
dates back to a court case in
Snohomish County.
She was convicted there last
year of hoarding 111 cats in a
recreational trailer. The cats
were covered in lice and mites,
dehydrated and malnourished,
covered in urine and feces and
had multiple viruses. All 111
cats were euthanized after her
arrest in that case.
She then skipped a court
hearing in April 2016 that
determined how much she
would pay the county back
for its investigation. Instead,
St. Clare headed south to Ore-
gon, where she believed her
cats were safer from Snohom-
ish County authorities.
“Frankly, that probation
failed,” Clatsop County Dis-
trict Attorney Josh Marquis
said.
He said at the sentencing
the probation was designed
to be straightforward, seeking
only a strong incentive for her
to no longer own animals.
St. Clare revealed she had
been trying to find a permanent
home for the cats in Clatsop
County for roughly a year. She
said she worked on a farm for a
short period of time, as the cats
had room to spread out, but left
when she found out the farm
owner was a methamphet-
amine addict.
“I knew they needed to
be cleaned, and I knew they
needed to be fed,” she said. “I
just failed in trying to get them
out of the car.”
Leukemia problem
Marquis presented evi-
dence at St. Clare’s arraign-
ment in April that she knew
one of her cats suffered from
leukemia, a potentially lethal
virus that is easily transfer-
able to other cats. She brought
the cat to Columbia Veterinary
Hospital, and later, Bayshore
Animal Hospital, when she
noticed the cat had an upper-re-
spiratory issue.
She was told there that
the cat had leukemia and was
warned of its effects. St. Clare
said, though, that since the
fatality rate of the virus is not
100 percent, she didn’t want
to turn the animals over to be
euthanized.
“In my mind, it was not
a death sentence,” St. Clare
said. “To euthanize these
guys just because they test pos-
itive for a virus, I believe, is
wrong.”
Marquis said the only rea-
son he wasn’t seeking prison
time for St. Clare was that she
agreed to surrender the cats
from her possession before
the deal was made. Out of the
27 total cats that are tapped as
available for adoption from the
Clatsop County Animal Shel-
ter, 15 are eligible immedi-
ately. The shelter will hold an
adoption event noon to 4 p.m.
Friday.
Many of the cats will not be
as lucky, though.
“I am sure in some way Ms.
St. Clare believes she’s saving
these animals,” Marquis said.
“The irony is that she was con-
demning them to a much ear-
lier death.”
St. Clare remains in the
Clatsop County Jail on a hold
from Snohomish County. If
Snohomish County seeks
extradition and further prose-
cution, St. Clare may face up to
30 days in jail.
Fisheries: Fishing is still lucrative
Continued from Page 1A
industry provides to the com-
munity as a whole, and the
well-paying jobs that still exist
on boats and in fish processing
plants. “It’s organic, it’s free-
range … it’s diet-free, what-
ever,” joked Scott McMul-
len, of the Oregon Fishermen’s
Cable Committee, about rock-
fish and how certain stocks like
canary rockfish have recently
been delisted.
Da Yang
Seafood
Processing
Plant Man-
ager Chang
Lee. right,
holds up an
example of
the product
during a tour
of the facility.
Some troubles
But concerns crept in, too.
For example, a species
like canary rockfish has been
off-limits and off the market
for so long on the West Coast
that fishermen are “fighting to
get back into the shelf space,”
McMullen said. While they
were absent, other markets and
countries filled the void.
Managers at Da Yang Sea-
food and processing giant
Pacific Coast Seafood talked
about the difficulty of recruit-
ing labor to the area. People
don’t seem to understand that
processing jobs can be well-
paid, they said. Pacific Coast
Seafood has started to recruit
farther afield and made do
with fewer employees, while
Da Yang has looked into auto-
mation. The lack of afford-
able, short-term rental housing
options for seasonal workers
complicates hiring, too, they
say.
Colin Murphey
The Daily
Astorian
munity College’s Marine and
Environmental Research and
Training Station.
In actuality, however, fish-
ermen have to juggle a com-
plex mix of regulations and
they have to know how to
manage a small business in
the middle of uncertain ocean,
river and market conditions
each season.
Both the fishermen, repre-
sented by groups like the Ore-
gon Dungeness Crab Commis-
sion and the Oregon Salmon
and Albacore Commissions,
and the seafood processors
are looking at high school job
fairs, trying to change the idea,
as Antilla put it, that: “Fishing
is something you do when you
can’t do anything else.”
Boat building
Still lucrative
Fishermen, meanwhile, say
fishing is still lucrative. Many
fishermen talked about buy-
ing or building houses and
sending their kids to college
on the money they earn fish-
ing. But there is still a stereo-
type that fishermen are “poorly
trained, poorly educated,” said
guest speaker Bill Antilla, a
former commercial fishermen
and instructor at Clatsop Com-
Boat builders and fabrica-
tors talked about the need for
greater infrastructure if busi-
nesses like theirs wanted to
grow. The two companies the
tour visited, WCT Marine &
Construction Inc. and J&H
Boatworks, are both based at
the Port of Astoria’s Tongue
Point site.
But the Port faces chal-
lenges in developing the site
due in large part to the costly
lease of the land. Astoria City
Councilor Bruce Jones asked
WCT yard superintendent
Willie Toristoja what it would
take to get more boat building
at Tongue Point. A travel lift,
deeper water and facilities out
on the pier, Toristoja replied.
All big, expensive projects,
said Jim Knight, the Port’s
executive director.
In attendance
Representatives from local
government, fishing groups
and state agencies, as well as
people from banks and invest-
ment groups, two Oregon fish
and wildlife commission-
ers and U.S. Rep. Suzanne
Bonamici attended the tour.
Bonamici said she was there
to listen to the concerns of
the community. After lunch at
Englund Marine & Industrial
Supply, the Oregon Democrat
briefed attendees on several
policy issues affecting fishing
communities: bills on ocean
acidification, tsunami warn-
ing and detection systems,
research on harmful algal
blooms, and climate change.
She was critical of Presi-
dent Donald Trump’s budget
proposal.
“The president’s budget
does not align with Oregon
values,” she said, noting how
it would slash at National Oce-
anic and Atmospheric Admin-
istration funding and infra-
structure grants such as the
TIGER grants the Port of
Astoria contemplates using for
future development at Tongue
Point. The congresswoman
also noted how the budget
would completely eliminate
Sea Grant.
Organizer Amanda Glad-
ics, who works in extension
fisheries management with Sea
Grant, wanted people unfamil-
iar with local fishery efforts to
walk away with more informa-
tion, and to give people in the
fishing industry a chance to tell
their side of the story. She also
hoped the tour would build
connections and relationships,
“so people have a face and a
name to ask the questions they
didn’t think about today,” she
said.
Sea Grant has run similar
tours in Newport — “Shop on
the Dock” — intended to edu-
cate consumers about seafood
and guide them along the city’s
commercial fishing docks,
showing them where they can
buy fresh seafood directly
from fishermen.
Package: Snowstorms helped shape legislation
Continued from Page 1A
The money for the plan
would come from a combina-
tion of hikes in the gas tax and
registration and license fees,
tolls, new taxes on payroll,
vehicle dealers and adult bicy-
cle purchases.
Specific projects
The plan identifies a few
specific projects to ease con-
gestion, but other projects
would be prioritized by the
Oregon Transportation Com-
mission. Specific projects
would:
• Add lanes on Interstate
5 near Portland’s Rose Quar-
ter from Interstate 84 to Inter-
state 405.
• Add northbound and
southbound lanes on High-
way 217 through the Portland
metro area.
• Widen Interstate 205 to
six lanes from Oregon City to
Stafford Road.
• Widen and seismically
reinforce Interstate 205’s
Abernethy Bridge.
The plan raises an average
of about $800 million per year
in additional transportation
funding.
The money would come
from increases in the gas tax
and vehicle fees and a set of
new taxes over the next 10
years, including:
• Gradual gas tax increase
from 30 cents to 42 cents by
2025.
• Tiered increases in title
and registration fees, depend-
ing on type of vehicle.
• A surcharge of $100 for
electric vehicles and $15 for
other vehicles.
• Statewide payroll tax of
one-tenth of 1 percent to pay
for mass transit.
• Tolls to be determined.
• Bicycle excise tax of 5
percent.
• Dealer privilege tax of
0.75 percent on new and used
vehicle purchases.
The bill also includes sev-
eral accountability measures,
including:
• Giving authority to
appoint the director of the Ore-
gon Department of Transpor-
tation to the Oregon Transpor-
tation Commission.
• Requiring a website
where taxpayers could follow
the progress and budgets of
projects in their area.
• Providing an independent
staff for the Oregon Transpor-
tation Commission, which sets
policy for ODOT.
The state’s December and
January snowstorms also
shaped the package. One
provision requires ODOT
and cities with a population
greater than 160,000 to salt
roads when there is more
than 2 inches of snow on the
ground.
The Capital Bureau is a
collaboration between EO
Media Group and Pamplin
Media Group.
Colin Murphey/The Daily Astorian
The Astoria Police Department places notices on vehi-
cles that are about to be towed and impounded.
Trespass: Study will
examine a possible
county jail relocation
Continued from Page 1A
Repeat offenders
The Clatsop County
Jail has dealt with over-
crowding issues for more
than a decade, so many
who are arrested locally are
released from jail during a
pending court case with-
out posting bail. Because
they either can’t afford to
pay a fine or know there is
a high likelihood they will
be released early if arrested,
convincing repeat offend-
ers to abide by the city code
can be a challenge, Halver-
son said.
“We’re dealing with a
small percentage of people
repeatedly,” he said.
The Clatsop County Sher-
iff’s Office can hold up to 70
inmates, 10 of whom could
occupy rented jail beds in
Tillamook County. Past
estimates have indicated
the county may need up to
200 beds to fully resolve
overcrowding.
The county Board of
Commissioners authorized
a $51,000 study last week
that will examine a possible
jail relocation to the current
site of the North Coast Youth
Correctional Facility near the
Sheriff’s Office in Warren-
ton. State officials have indi-
cated the facility likely will
close as part of an effort to
address a $1.6 billion budget
deficit.
Abandoned cars
Many callers to police
dispatchers have also com-
plained recently about aban-
doned cars. Most of these
calls stem from residential
neighborhoods, while some
are a result of occupied rec-
reational vehicles parked for
an extended period of time,
Halverson said. While the
city code restricts parking
in one spot on city streets
for more than 24 hours, call-
ers often will report vehicles
abandoned for a couple of
weeks.
Astoria
Police
are
attempting to curb trespass-
ing issues, along with aggres-
sive panhandling incidents
downtown, through a pro-
gram called Property Watch.
Since the program was
reinstated in March, 11 prop-
erty owners have signed a
one-year contract allowing
police to supervise proper-
ties and remove people who
engage in disorderly activity
after business hours. Busi-
ness owners are also encour-
aged to post signs warning
against unruly behavior and
that officers have the right to
enforce trespass laws on that
property.
“I’ve seen a decrease
in unruly behavior since I
posted that sign,” said Sam-
uel McDaniel, manager of
Astoria Downtown Market.
“My problems have been
mitigated substantially.”
Colin Murphey/The Daily Astorian
Clatsop County law enforcement officers have seen a
rise in the number of vehicles reported by residents to
have been abandoned.