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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, JUNE 27, 2017
Seaside: Marijuana taxes are expected to reach $15,000
Don Frank/Submitted Photo
A $15 million renovation of the Seaside Civic and Convention Center could begin in March.
Continued from Page 1A
BUDGET HIGHLIGHTS
experienced a bump from $5.8
million to $6.4 million, Win-
stanley said.
The city budget lists 30
funds overall, among them,
public works, the downtown
maintenance district and pub-
lic safety, with a budget of $5.7
million. Comprised of fire,
police, lifeguards and Munic-
ipal Court, this year’s pub-
lic safety fund stood at $4.3
million.
Marijuana taxes, included
for the first time as a public
safety budget line, are expected
to reach $15,000. Liquor taxes
are budgeted at more than
$100,000 in revenue.
Health, medical and dental
costs are going up across the
board. The police department
will see a rise of 13 percent,
with retirement costs esca-
lating about 8 percent. Simi-
lar numbers are seen in other
departments.
While Seaside does not
participate in the state’s Public
• Seaside Library: An 11 percent increase in the book-acquisition
budget
• Fire: Addition of a fourth paid fireman and implementation of a
water rescue program.
• Building Department: Possibility of two large projects — conven-
tion center renovation; new motel/hotel.
• Public Works: Acquisition of a new garbage truck and the repair of
the public works building roof.
• Library Trust: Acquisition of a generator for the library.
• Capital improvement and maintenance: community center
renovation.
• Convention center: $15 million renovation starting 2018.
Employees Retirement Sys-
tem, the city’s two employee
retirement plans are also fac-
ing rising costs, Winstanley
added.
Holding the line
Councilors Dana Phil-
lips, Steve Wright, Seth Mor-
risey and Randy Frank, along
with Mayor Jay Barber, voted
to approve the budget. Coun-
cilors Tom Horning and Tita
Montero were absent.
“It really holds the line in
terms of our expenditures,”
Barber said after the meeting.
“I know the budget commit-
tee was trying to hold steady
rather than to make any big
jumps. Overall, it’s a very
moderate budget and I think it
speaks well of the council and
particularly our city manager.”
Following the budget vote,
councilors also approved a
bid process for a construction
manager-general contractor
for the convention center con-
struction project.
Pet love: ‘It’s all in good fun. We have some big decisions to make’
Continued from Page 1A
event after she noticed tension
mounting in the waning two
weeks of this year’s legislative
session.
Lawmakers are squabbling
over new taxes and the compo-
nents of a transportation pack-
age, and emotions can rise and
sink with the fate of each bill in
front of them.
“One of the things I noticed
is when we have schoolchil-
dren (in the House chamber),
the dynamic changes,” Bynum
said.
She mentioned her obser-
vation to Mandi McGowan,
administrative assistant in the
Chief Clerk’s Office, and sug-
gested bringing babies into the
Capitol to calm legislators.
McGowan told Bynum that
the Oregon Humane Society
sometimes brings cats and dogs
into workplaces during the
stressful Christmas season and
pitched the idea of doing the
same at the statehouse.
Paris Achen/Capital Bureau
LEFT: Marc Miller, legislative director for Rep. David Brock Smith, R-Port Orford, holds Christopher Walken, an 8-week-old
puppy up for adoption at the Oregon Humane Society, during a Snuggle Express at the Oregon Capitol in Salem Monday. The
event was meant to reduce stress in the waning days of the legislative session. RIGHT: Rep. Janelle Bynum, D-Clackamas,
holds Spotlight, a 9-week-old kitten up for adoption at the Oregon Humane Society, during a Snuggle Express at the Oregon
Capitol in Salem Monday. Bynum organized the event as a way to reduce stress in the waning days of the legislative session.
Pups and kits
“Who doesn’t love pup-
pies and kittens?” McGowan
said. “A lot of people get
cocktails after work to relieve
stress.”
Holding a puppy or kitten
can provide the same sooth-
ing effect, she said.
“And hopefully, the ani-
mals find homes. Everyone
benefits,” she said.
New cyberattack causes
mass disruption globally
Ukraine hit hard
by intrusions
By RAPHAEL SATTER
Associated Press
PARIS — A new and highly
virulent outbreak of mali-
cious data-scrambling software
appears to be causing mass dis-
ruption across the world, hitting
companies and governments in
Europe especially hard.
Officials in Ukraine reported
serious intrusions of the coun-
try’s power grid as well as at
banks and government offices,
where one senior executive
posted a photo of a darkened
computer screen and the words,
“the whole network is down.”
The prime minister cautioned
that the country’s “vital sys-
tems” hadn’t been affected.
Russia’s Rosneft oil com-
pany also reported falling vic-
tim to hacking and said it had
narrowly avoided major dam-
age, as did Danish shipping
giant A.P. Moller-Maersk.
“We are talking about a
cyberattack,” said Anders
Rosendahl, a spokesman for
the Copenhagen-based ship-
ping group. “It has affected all
branches of our business, at
home and abroad.”
The attack was con-
firmed to have spread beyond
Europe when U.S. drugmaker
Merck, based in New Jersey,
said its systems had also been
compromised.
The number of compa-
nies and agencies reportedly
affected by the ransomware
campaign was piling up fast,
and the electronic rampage
appeared to be rapidly snow-
balling into a worldwide crisis.
There’s very little infor-
mation about what might be
behind the disruption at each
specific company, but cyberse-
curity experts rapidly zeroed in
on a form of ransomware, the
name given to programs that
hold data hostage by scram-
bling it until a payment is made.
“A massive ransomware
campaign is currently unfold-
ing worldwide,” said Roma-
nian cybersecurity company
Bitdefender, where analyst
Bogdan Botezatu said that it
appeared to be nearly identical
to GoldenEye, one of a fam-
ily of hostage-taking programs
that has been circulating for
months. Some analysts were
calling the new form of ran-
somware Petya.
It’s not clear whether or
why the ransomware has sud-
denly become so much more
potent, but Botezatu said that it
was likely spreading automati-
cally across a network, without
the need for human interaction.
Such self-spreading software,
often called “worms,” are par-
ticularly feared because they
can replicate rapidly, like a con-
tagious disease.
“It’s like somebody sneez-
ing into a train full of people,”
Botezatu told The Associated
Press. “You just have to exist
there and you’re vulnerable.”
The world is still recover-
ing from a previous outbreak of
ransomware, called WannaCry
or WannaCrypt, which spread
rapidly using digital break-in
tools originally created by the
U.S. National Security Agency
and recently leaked to the web.
“Data breaches and cyber
hacks are one of the biggest
risks facing business world-
wide,” said Michelle Crorie,
a partner at law firm Clyde &
Co. who specializes in cyberse-
curity issues. “The WannaCry
attack and now Petya clearly
demonstrate that hackers do
not discriminate which type of
business they are targeting.”
This particular variant of
ransomware leaves a mes-
sage with a contact email;
several messages sent to the
address were not immediately
returned.
Associated Press writ-
ers Vladimir Isachenkov in
Moscow and Jan M. Olsen in
Copenhagen, Denmark, con-
tributed to this report.
Number of people using Facebook reaches 2 billion
Associated Press
MENLO PARK, Calif. —
Facebook is reaching another
milestone, announcing that it
now has more than 2 billion
users.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg
says the new marker was
reached early Tuesday and in
a Facebook post said that he’s
proud of the role his company
is playing in connecting peo-
ple around the world.
Facebook says more than
175 million people declare
they “love” something on
the site daily and an aver-
age of more than 800 million
people hit Facebook’s like
button.
Facebook users will likely
see a personalized video cel-
ebrating the milestone in the
next few days.
The Menlo Park, Califor-
nia, company is putting more
emphasis on creating vir-
tual communities within the
site while it also works to
reduce violent, hateful and
misleading content on the
service.
Bynum said she knew
people at the Capitol needed
stress relief, but she was sur-
prised there was “a lineup like
a rock concert” for the event.
The Oregon Humane
Society provided the event
for free at the Capitol. The
program costs businesses a
$1,000 donation fee during
the Christmas season, but off-
season the organization will
provide the service without
the fee in certain cases, sad
David Lytle, a spokesman
for the humane society. Par-
ticipants were asked to give
a donation to help home-
less animals during Mon-
day’s event. A final tally of
how much was raised for the
organization was unavail-
able Monday afternoon, Lytle
said.
Many animals find their
new homes during the Snug-
gle Express, he said. The
humane society maintains
a web site with photos of
all of the pets available for
adoption.
Buzz about the event
spread to the Senate wing of
the Capitol, where at least one
senator and his staff mem-
ber expressed jealousy that
the Senate wasn’t invited,
Bynum said.
“It’s all in good fun,”
Bynum said. “We have some
big decisions to make before
the end of the session.”