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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, JUNE 20, 2017
Stabbing: No arrests have been made Property:
Continued from Page 1A
Burgess and Jantes said
they helped the injured man
and applied pressure to his
wound until emergency per-
sonnel arrived. He also suf-
fered cuts above his left eye
and on both lips.
Astoria Police found the
man and woman near Bay
Street minutes later. Police
searched the scene and inter-
viewed multiple witnesses
before eventually bringing the
two in for questioning. The
couple was identified as Nick-
olys A. Glaser, 23, of Spring
Valley, New York, and Erika
N. Rasmussen, 21, of Oche-
lata, Oklahoma.
The wounded man, iden-
tified as Aaron Lee Ashby,
50, of Port Townsend, Wash-
ington, was taken to Colum-
bia Memorial Hospital shortly
after 7:30 p.m. Police said
Ashby was treated for an
injury that was not life-threat-
ening and admitted overnight
for observation.
Another man, Clinton
Holman, 32, of Astoria, was
taken to the hospital after
Colin Murphey/The Daily Astorian
Emergency personnel attend to a stabbing victim in Asto-
ria near the Doughboy Monument Monday night.
allegedly being kicked repeat-
edly. Police said Holman was
treated and released.
Astoria Police said the
altercation reportedly started
after Ashby allegedly touched
Glaser’s dog inappropriately.
Ashby also reportedly also
assaulted Holman.
No arrests have been made.
“This is a very com-
plex, convoluted situation
involving numerous people,”
Astoria Police Deputy Chief
Eric Halverson said in a state-
ment. “Detectives will be
working on collecting sur-
veillance video from the area,
and following up with wit-
nesses in an attempt to deter-
mine exactly what happened.
We would ask that anyone
who believes they witnessed
this incident, who has not
already spoken with police,
contact Detective Ken Han-
sen at the Astoria Police
Department.”
Melisa McKinley, 21,
of Seaside, said she could
sense people in the group
were under the influence of
intoxicants.
“I could tell they were
definitely on something,” she
said. “They were just chilling
and then decided to fight.”
When police and emer-
gency personnel left the scene
after 8:30 p.m., the partygoers
returned to the restaurant for
the baby shower.
“That was crazy,” McKin-
ley said. “This will be one
memorable baby shower.
That’s for sure.”
Cannon Beach: Petition outlines grievances
Continued from Page 1A
opportunity to write to them
or come to offer any different
ideas.”
A petition outlining griev-
ances with the plan started cir-
culating about a week ago. As
of Monday, the petition had
114 signatures, though many
who signed live outside of
Cannon Beach.
The petition, started by
Voyages Toy Co. owner Jer-
emy Clifford, argued that
timed parking would “neg-
atively impact the relax-
ing atmosphere” of the town,
“increase traffic congestion
when cars need to be moved,”
and “not allow visitors enough
time to enjoy the restaurants
and browse through the local
shops.”
Clifford said there hasn’t
been any evidence to show
that higher turnover would
lead to higher sales in a town
like Cannon Beach.
“We want people to come
out to the beach and then
come into town to shop and
eat in our restaurants. Three
hours isn’t enough time to do
that,” Clifford said. “Believe
me: I want to make more
money. And if I thought for
one minute I thought the time
limit would bring more cus-
tomers in my store I’d support
it, but I don’t believe it.”
In a year where sales
across all businesses have
been down due to an unusu-
ally harsh winter, Clifford
said business owners object
to experimenting during the
city’s busiest season.
“The summer here is
our Christmastime for other
retailers,” Clifford said. “Best
practices tells us you don’t do
tests like this during your bus-
iest season. If there are going
to be negative impacts, you
don’t want them to be huge.”
Clifford and others who
signed the petition are pleased
the city is postponing the plan
to get feedback from the com-
munity. Ultimately, Clifford
said he fears timed parking
signage and an increase in
parking tickets from viola-
tions would negatively impact
the quaint, small-town visitor
experience — as well as their
desire to ever return.
“If (employees parking on
Hemlock) is the problem you
are trying to solve, then that’s
a different problem to solve.
Let’s all agree on that because
I want the customers to have
easy access to my stores,”
Clifford said. “But the park-
ing problem in Cannon Beach
is larger than that. It’s con-
nected to housing, commut-
ing, city infrastructure — it
will take many years.”
Clearing up confusion
In an effort to clear up con-
fusion about the city’s inten-
tion with timed parking, City
Councilor George Vetter spent
last week walking, measuring
and counting all the parking
within a five-minute walk of
the corner of Morris’ Fireside
at Hemlock and Second.
In total, Vetter counted
spaces for 835 cars the size
of a Dodge Grand Caravan.
Of those spaces, about 100
are affected by timed parking,
he said. Since his experiment,
he said he has been speaking
with some concerned business
owners about what he found.
“My goal was to present
the facts,” Vetter said. “The
negative reactions from peo-
ple seemed like they were
fearing something they didn’t
know all the facts about. So I
wanted to inform them and let
them decide.”
Vetter said that having a
higher turnover rate would
give more people a chance
to park downtown, which in
turn would increase the num-
ber of possible customers for
businesses. The City Coun-
cil voted unanimously for the
pilot program in May.
“Everybody likes conve-
nience. And the most con-
venient place is Hemlock,”
Vetter said. “This is a way to
have more people use down-
town for parking to shop and
eat downtown. And employ-
ees and beachgoers who use
parking for eight to nine hours
a day have 735 other options.
“It’s not easy to make
money in this town,” he
added. “You’ve got to maxi-
mize whatever you can.”
High priority
According to the city’s
citizen survey last year, the
community designated park-
ing a high priority. Vetter said
timed parking is the culmina-
tion of six months of conver-
sations about solutions.
While Vetter still has confi-
dence is the city’s test run, he
said pushing back implemen-
tation until after the July 10
council meeting will give the
community additional time to
communicate with councilors
and offer alternatives.
“There should have been
involvement with the business
community ahead of time,” he
said. “We didn’t not do our
duty, but we didn’t take it to
the point necessary to achieve
better results.”
Parks fee: Lodging tax increase also mulled
Continued from Page 1A
the city’s approximately 3,200
residential water meters, a pro-
cess Estes estimated could
take close to six months to
accomplish.
The Parks and Recreation
Department faced a $100,000
budget shortfall this year and
is struggling to find ways to
sustain itself into the future.
The city opted to cancel some
free community programs and
the City Council has contin-
ued to discuss solutions to the
department’s money woes. In
addition to a water meter fee,
the City Council has also dis-
cussed increasing the lodging
tax.
At Estes’ suggestion, coun-
cilors agreed to combine fur-
ther discussion of the water
meter fee with a discussion of
the lodging tax at its meeting
July 17. This way, Estes said,
there could be a full review of
the amount of revenue both
options could generate.
‘Make it fair’
Astoria resident Judy
Woodward said parks are very
important, but she objected to
“unfair fees and taxes.”
“If you must add a tax to
the water bill to fund parks
and rec that doesn’t have a
connection to public works or
our water bill, make it fair,”
she said during a public com-
ment period. “Base it on water
usage, but don’t expect a sin-
gle-person household to sub-
sidize the operation and main-
tenance of parks and rec for
multiperson households.”
Joshua Bessex/The Daily Astorian
The city is considering new fees and taxes to help parks.
City Councilor Bruce Jones
said he agreed. Originally, he
had supported the proposed
$3 per water meter, per month
fee. He says adding the fee
to water bills is efficient and
cost-effective since a collec-
tion system is already in place
through the water billing sys-
tem. But, he added, it isn’t his
intent to put the burden more
on one group of Astorians by
charging per meter versus per
unit, he said. City Councilor
Cindy Price, who has pushed
for the fee as a way to quickly
raise money for the parks
department, said she agreed.
City Councilor Zetty Nem-
lowill continued to be the only
councilor against the pro-
posed fee. She echoed the
concerns of resident Roger
Lindsley who argued Mon-
day night that the Parks and
Recreation Department’s ser-
vices are not connected to the
water and sewer services pub-
lic works provides. The bill-
ing through the Public Works
Department reflects the actual
costs of essential services,
Lindsley said. He was against
adding a fee to an “essential
city service” to fill the “bud-
get shortfalls of an unrelated
department.”
Voluntary fee
Nemlowill told the coun-
cil Monday she could sup-
port a voluntary fee. If a fee
is charged, she said it isn’t fair
to only target residents. Busi-
nesses should also pay, she
said. In previous discussions,
other councilors had wanted
to avoid double-charging busi-
ness owners who also lived in
town.
Estes emphasized that the
financial issues faced by the
Parks and Recreation Depart-
ment are not the result of mis-
management by parks staff. It
is a situation a long time in the
making, he and others have
said.
Since 1975, the depart-
ment has added 42 additional
parks to its roster and cur-
rently maintains 310 acres of
parks, trails and natural areas
as well as a number of pro-
grams and facilities — includ-
ing the Astoria Aquatic Cen-
ter — while being severely
understaffed. Until recently
the department did not oper-
ate under a master plan to help
guide its decisions.
Parks Director Angela
Cosby said she has already
begun to lose key staff mem-
bers and worries about los-
ing more. Any decision at
this point would be helpful,
she said, since it would give
the department a guarantee of
future money.
Several people asked the
City Council to consider a
smaller increase to the lodging
tax. The council is considering
an increase from 9 percent to
12 percent. Skip Hauke, exec-
utive director of the Asto-
ria-Warrenton Area Cham-
ber of Commerce, suggested
an increase to only 10 or 10.5
percent.
If the council went with an
increase to 12 percent, “I think
we’d be the highest on the
coast,” he said. Warrenton has
a 12 percent lodging tax, but
that ends up applying mostly
to camping and trailer spaces,
he said.
The lodging tax has been
touted as a long-term way to
generate money for the depart-
ment, while the water meter
fee was considered a short-
term option, to be reviewed a
year after implementation.
‘It’s definitely a
safety problem’
Continued from Page 1A
Signs
Olvey’s property feels
like a cross between an art
project, a museum and a
political protest.
His signs spell out a one-
man crusade against societal
dilemmas and ills in general
and the city government,
legal system and media in
particular. The signs, some
of them small essays, detail
his complaints against all of
these groups as well as illu-
minate problems with the
house, problems he blames
on the city.
For the most part he
favors black or blue type
against a white background
and reserves bright col-
ors for decorative ele-
ments. There are exceptions,
though. One sign on high-
light-bright yellow paper
states, “Termite trained to
dig drench for climbing gas
line.” Nearly every letter is
in a different color.
Olvey’s concerns are
interspersed with a colorful
collection of objects: plas-
tic fish flutter on a line over-
head, a magnifying glass
points down at a miniature
can labeled “Dirty Old Man
Repellent,” a small statue of
an ostrich leans over with
its head stuck in the sand on
the dashboard of one of the
four cars rusting in his yard
and is labeled, “Astoria City
Council.”
‘D’ in Derelict
The signage and decor
are fairly new, said Olvey’s
nearest neighbor, Harry
Staples, whose house is so
close to Olvey’s the men
could open their windows
and almost pass a cup of
sugar back and forth if they
wanted to.
Before the signs, there
was a lot more trash and the
yard was even more over-
grown, Staples said. He has
nothing against Olvey per-
sonally, but he believes the
property, without a doubt,
qualifies as a nuisance.
“It’s definitely a safety
problem,” he said. “If his
house caught on fire, which
it is certainly prepped to
do, I wouldn’t have much
time to react and it certainly
would take mine right with
it.”
He can tell stories about
the feral cats and large river
rats the property attracts and
the damage some of these
animals have done to sur-
rounding properties.
In 2014, Olvey attempted
to purchase an undeveloped
lot adjacent to his property
from the city. His offer was
denied after Staples and a
handful of other neighbors
and concerned Astorians
showed up at a public hear-
ing and spoke against the
sale.
“Mr. Olvey capitalized
the ‘D’ in derelict building
ordinance,” one neighbor
testified.
Sinking into the
ground
Olvey claims a sewer
the city installed at the front
of his house has caused his
yard to flood and his house
to sink and made it impos-
sible for him to make the
improvements the city
desires.
“Every year that house
goes farther down into the
ground,” he said. On the
phone, he describes local
policymakers and law
enforcement as “crooks.”
He addresses a letter on his
property to the “concerned
citizens of Astoria.”
“More of you are cheats,
liars and thieves than are
not,” he writes. Farther
down he adds, “You peo-
ple are great at judging oth-
ers while the leaders you
look up to are …” and, in
a numbered list, he details
the ways leaders have kept
Americans alienated from
Cuba, feigned “concern for
rainforests while having
them cut down at an alarm-
ing rate to provide for our
needs,” framed innocent
men and women — among
other things.
The city says it isn’t
aware of any sewer com-
plaints filed by Olvey. Sta-
ples believes Olvey might
have a point on this issue,
but, he added, it’s a decades-
old grievance now.
“It’s not an ideal situ-
ation by any means,” Sta-
ples said about the sewer.
Olvey’s house essentially
became the lowest point
and the drainage point when
it was installed; Staples’
house became the second
lowest point. But, Staples
added, he doesn’t quite see
how an engineering issue
resulted in the overflowing
trash, the broken-down cars,
the neglected house and the
unkempt yard.
Native son
Modern-day Astoria is
not a place where Olvey
feels at home. When he was
younger, he said he felt like
he knew every inch of the
city. Now he sees problems
everywhere.
Olvey doesn’t live in
the house in Alderbrook
anymore. He lives in War-
renton, but his mother, a
slight, quiet woman with a
tidy bloom-filled yard, still
lives across the street from
his sign-filled property. She
says her stepson has always
treated her well.
A sign near Olvey’s
front porch, nearly hidden,
says simply, “And leave my
mother ALONE!”
“The only reason I kept
that house was because
of her,” Olvey said after
he learned of the City
Council’s decision Monday
night.
He doesn’t plan to pay
the city’s fines or fix up his
property. Instead, he thinks
he could have grounds for a
lawsuit. But he doesn’t trust
Oregon lawyers, and he has
not talked to any out-of-state
attorneys yet.
The process approved by
city councilors Monday is a
long one. It could take up to
a year to finalize a sale of the
property through the Clat-
sop County Sheriff’s Office.
At any point before the pub-
lic auction Olvey could con-
tact the city, pay the fines
and keep his property. If the
public auction occurs, he
will still have 180 days after
the sale to try to redeem the
property.
“This is really very sad,”
City Councilor Cindy Price
said before the council
voted.
Olvey, a former long-
shoreman who was born
in Seaside and lived his
life in Clatsop County, did
not attend the City Council
meeting. He is 77 years old,
he has high blood pressure,
diabetes and “a bad ticker,”
he said. Public speaking is
not something he can do. He
said his property speaks for
him.
Colin Murphey/The Daily Astorian
One neighbor said ‘Mr. Olvey capitalized the ‘D’ in
derelict building ordinance.’