7A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, JULY 24, 2017
Seaside: Southeastern areas would need to be annexed into city
Continued from Page 1
Improvements
drive funding
Urban renewal is a financ-
ing program authorized under
state law and implemented
locally allowing the use of
property tax revenues from
city and regional taxing dis-
tricts to grow the economy in
blighted or underdeveloped
areas.
Past Seaside urban-re-
newal plans paved the way for
upgrades on the Turnaround
and Prom, the city’s sewage
plant, 12th Avenue improve-
ments and construction of a
new library in 2008.
Using tax-increment financ-
ing, funding comes through
increases in assessed values of
local properties.
As new development
arrives and existing properties
are improved, assessments rise
and see property-tax increases.
Property taxes on the growth in
assessed value in the urban-re-
newal area are frozen and
increases are allocated to the
city’s urban renewal agency
and not the taxing districts.
Subsequent
improvements
can lead to higher home val-
ues and in turn higher assess-
ments, ultimately generating
more funds for the urban-re-
newal district.
The most significant funds
could be slated for the lon-
ger-term, when the money
accumulates.
“You’re not going to have
development in place in the
early years because you’re not
generating any money yet,”
Winstanley said. “So, it takes
a while to get this going. The
major projects are always
going to be on the tail end of
an urban-renewal district, not
in the beginning.”
Numbers are forecast
assuming 5 percent growth,
Winstanley said. According to
the report, the estimated total
amount of tax increment reve-
nues to service the $68.5 mil-
lion maximum indebtedness
is $78.5 million, made up of
tax-increment revenues from
permanent rate levies.
The urban-renewal area
could be in existence for
25 years or until it reaches
its maximum indebtedness,
whichever comes first. “If you
hit either one of those, you’re
done,” Winstanley said.
Bridge upgrades
Projects to be completed
using urban-renewal funds fall
into four categories: school
infrastructure, general infra-
structure, business assistance
Colin Murphey/The Daily Astorian
The Southeast Seaside Urban Renewal Plan includes
work on bridges in the community such as the one shown
here on Avenue G. The proposed work would include mak-
ing the bridges compliant with the Americans with Dis-
abilities Act and seismic standards.
and administration.
The school could see up
to $9 million in funds, desig-
nated for U.S. Highway 101
turn signals, road access to
the new campus and sewer
system needs, among other
improvements.
Business assistance funds
of $300,000 could be used for
storefront redesign, property
acquisition, signage or work-
force housing. Administration
of the district is expected to
exceed $1.1 million.
Improvements in south Sea-
side make up the largest piece
of the funding pie, with, by far,
the largest portion of the esti-
mated $45 million considered
for bridge improvements. The
report identifies a need for new
bridges at avenues A, G, S and
U, each with a center turn lane,
multipurpose path and Ameri-
cans with Disabilities Act-ac-
cessible sidewalks.
“The amount of $26 mil-
lion equates to about $5 mil-
lion per bridge,” Tom Horning,
a geologist and first-term city
councilor who ran on a plat-
Eclipse: Forest Service bringing in extra rangers
Continued from Page 1A
The nightmare scenario is
a wildfire breaking out while
roads are clogged with cars
and campgrounds filled with
people.
But there’s also concern
about thousands of people fight-
ing for just a few open camp-
sites, along with flip-flop-wear-
ing hikers attempting to climb
dangerous mountains.
“The thing we’re worried
about is people waking up the
morning of the eclipse, head-
ing out and expecting to find
a campsite or beautiful place
to view it,” said Cody Norris,
public information officer for
Mark Twain National Forest in
Missouri.
“Don’t show up at the last
minute,” Norris said. “And
once you’re here, be prepared
to get stuck somewhere for a
long time.”
Virtually all public camp-
sites that can be reserved within
the eclipse path were snapped
up long ago, officials said.
But in places such as Illi-
nois’ Shawnee National Forest,
all campgrounds are first-come,
first-served. That could mean
competition for sites given the
number of people expected, for-
est spokeswoman Sue Hirsch
said.
“We’re expecting high num-
bers and I wouldn’t be surprised
if people got here pretty early,”
she said. “But it’s hard to gauge
how many people will actually
show up, and we’ve opened up
three other areas so we have
room for everybody.”
It’s not just about where
people spend the night, but also
where they plan to view the
eclipse.
McMahan said his office
has fielded numerous calls
from people planning to climb
Mount Jefferson, Oregon’s sec-
ond-tallest mountain, to view
the eclipse.
The problem is the 10,495-
foot mountain is a dangerous
and technical climb that’s taken
multiple lives in recent years.
Here’s a few common ques-
tions — and answers — about
what to expect in the outdoors
during what’s been dubbed the
Great American Eclipse.
Why is this
a big deal again?
At 10:16 a.m., the sky will
go dark over Oregon.
The moon will pass in front
of the sun, creating a shadow
that will turn day into eerie twi-
light on earth. But the phenom-
enon will only be seen in total-
ity within a narrow path that
happens to pass directly over
Newport and Lincoln City,
Salem and Albany, Detroit and
Madras, into Eastern Oregon
and then the rest of the nation.
That has meant eclipse chas-
ers and lots of other people
looking to see the phenome-
non while having a fun vacation
have spotlighted Oregon. Every
hotel, motel, campsite and
patch of grass has been booked
— some for almost a decade.
Ian Sane/Flickr
Mount Jefferson is a focal point of interest for many of
those traveling to Oregon for the 2017 total solar eclipse.
In terms of places to actu-
ally watch the eclipse, however,
few places offer a more spec-
tacular backdrop than Oregon’s
mountains. The sight of the sun-
blocked disc shimmering above
Cascade Range volcanoes has
many photographers drooling.
All of this has led visitors
to the state’s vast swath of pub-
lic lands on the coast, Cascades
and Central Oregon.
Will I be able to drive to
the coast or mountains?
This might be the tough-
est question to answer, because
officials have no real idea how
many people are going to show
up.
Unlike a Super Bowl or
World Series, where there’s a
defined number of people in the
stadium, the count visiting Ore-
gon could range from 200,000
to well over 1 million.
Either way, state highways
are expected to be a mess from
Aug. 17 to 22.
The most gridlocked roads
are expected to be Oregon
highways 18 and 22 between
Salem and the Oregon Coast,
along with Oregon 22/20 from
Salem to Santiam Pass and Sis-
ters, said Oregon Department of
Transportation spokesman Lou
Torres.
U.S. 101 and Interstate 5
could also be a major challenge.
“These are roads where traf-
fic is already slow on normal
summer weekends,” Torres
said. “Add this into the mix, and
we’re expecting severe conges-
tion to total gridlock.”
Torres suggested residents
in places such as Lincoln City,
Mill City and Detroit get their
supplies in advance and try to
avoid being on highways during
the six-day window.
ODOT officials are planning
to stage emergency responders
at various locations in advance,
but getting emergency vehicles
to injured people in the event of
a crash could be daunting.
“The message we’re trying
to spread is for people to get
to their location early and stay
there, well past the eclipse,” he
said. “If you are on the road,
make sure you have extra food,
water and gas, and make sure
you think about a place to use
the restroom. You might be
there for a while.”
All of this assumes just lots
of people, but there are X fac-
tors as well. On eclipse day,
if people wake up in Lincoln
City to a foggy morning, there
could be a rush east on Oregon
18 which leads to an essential
parking lot.
“I don’t think any event (in
Oregon’s history) compares to
this,” Torres said.
Will there be any
campsites open?
Every public campsite that
can be reserved within the
eclipse’s path of totality has
been snapped up, officials said.
Oregon state park campsites
sold out more than 1,000 sites
within an hour of opening for
registration in April.
There are camping spots
on private land available, but
be ready to shell out serious
money. Eclipse Camp, in Jef-
ferson, is offering four nights of
camping for $499.
On public land, the only
sites that remain are a handful
of Forest Service first-come,
first-served sites.
The first-come sites are typi-
cally at small campgrounds and
are scattered throughout Siu-
slaw, Willamette and Deschutes
national forests (call ranger dis-
tricts for details).
Nabbing one of those sites
would likely require claiming
it early — perhaps as early as
14 days in advance, the maxi-
mum length of stay allowed at a
national forest campsite.
Where can I pitch
a tent or stay overnight
in national forest?
On public land — which in
the eclipse path includes Siu-
slaw, Willamette and Deschutes
national forests — people are
allowed to stay overnight pretty
much wherever they please.
The practice of camping
at sites that are not designated
is known as “dispersed camp-
ing.” People typically do it on
the side of Forest Service Roads
or by carrying gear to a specific
spot.
“If you’re planning to do it,
we’re asking people to think
about leaving no trace and
picking places that are already
impacted,” McMahan said.
“Don’t put a tent down or try to
camp on fresh vegetation.”
How serious is the
fire danger?
That depends where you’re
headed. Fire danger becomes
worse the farther east you go.
On the west side of the Cas-
cades — around Detroit Lake,
for example — the spread of a
catastrophic wildfire is a con-
cern, but not an overwhelming
one.
“There certainly is the risk
of fire, but here on the west side,
fires tend to be a little slower in
spreading,” said Grady McMa-
han, district ranger for Detroit
Ranger District. “We’re plan-
ning to have extra engines and
support from the air staged at
different places to fight the fires
if they break out.”
Fear is greater on the drier
east side of the Cascades.
Central Oregon — which is
expected to see the greatest
number of visitors — will have
prime conditions for a fast-mov-
ing fire, Nelson-Dean said.
“We have a lot of tall grass
from the wet winter and spring,
and by late August, it’s really
going to be dried out,” she said.
“A single spark could get the
grass and brush going. We will
have teams staged and ready
to respond, but it really could
not be a greater threat in terms
of wildfire and our ability to
respond.”
Should I climb
Mount Jefferson
to view the eclipse?
Only if you have a lot of
mountaineering experience.
Oregon’s
second-tallest
mountain has emerged as a focal
point for people looking for that
epic view of the eclipse, McMa-
han said. So has Three Fingered
Jack and Mount Washington,
which are both within the path
of totality for the eclipse.
The problem is all three
mountains are technical and
very challenging, meaning
unless you have experience,
climbing them is an awful idea.
Multiple people have died on
the trio of mountains in recent
years.
McMahan said the For-
est Service is bringing in extra
climbing rangers to be near
the peaks and talk with peo-
ple before they make a summit
attempt.
“We’re getting calls every
day from people really excited
about getting to that high point
— particularly Mount Jeffer-
son,” he said. “But a lot of peo-
ple clearly don’t know what
they’re getting into. So we’re
trying to explain that, and the
extra rangers will be there to
make sure people are prepared
and have the right equipment.”
What about
backpacking into
wilderness spots like
Jefferson Park?
Expect a lot of friends.
Hiking trails that lead to
views of iconic mountains and
the eclipse are expected to be
very crowded, said McMahan
and Nelson-Dean.
If you’re planning to visit
places such as Jefferson Park
or Canyon Creek in the Mount
Jefferson Wilderness, get there
early and expect plenty of
company.
Extra wilderness rangers
will be at trailheads providing
information about Leave No
Trace principles.
form of tsunami preparedness.
“This is a reasonable number
under present conditions, but
assumes subdued inflation.”
According to Horning, the
four bridges are essential tsu-
nami-evacuation infrastruc-
ture. “They need to remain
standing and be accessible
by the public when the com-
ing magnitude 9 earthquake
strikes, because the earthquake
will generate a tsunami that
floods over Seaside within 20
to 30 minutes,” Horning said.
“The present bridges will not
survive the shaking and will
become impassable because
of collapse, trapping residents
and visitors alike. By replac-
ing the bridges, we will save
several thousand lives, if the
quake happens during the
summer.”
The most important bridge
to replace first is Avenue G,
based on the number of peo-
ple who are presently criti-
cally endangered and the time
it takes to evacuate, he said.
A pedestrian footbridge
could be even more import-
ant, Horning said. “In terms of
saving the greatest number of
lives, a pedestrian bridge that
crosses near the south end of
Holladay Drive would be the
best use of limited funds.”
A footbridge crossing the
Necanicum in the vicinity of
Avenues N to S, budgeted at
about $5 million, could pro-
vide timely evacuation that
none of the other bridges can,
he added. “Given the commu-
nity parks plan and our expe-
rience with other bridges we
have replaced, having extraw-
ide sidewalks and bike lanes
is desirable, as well as a cen-
ter turn lane for smooth traf-
fic flow onto Holladay and to
carry evacuation traffic in the
event of tsunami.”
Approvals needed
Because part of the land in
the southeast Seaside urban
renewal area is owned by the
county, those areas would
need to be annexed into the
city. Annexation of county
land requires approval from
the Clatsop County Board of
Commissioners, which will
consider the issue Wednesday.
At Seaside’s Aug. 14 coun-
cil meeting, councilors will
consider whether the urban-re-
newal district is in compliance
with city goals. “City council-
ors will be looking at it from
the standpoint of the mer-
its of the district and whether
they believe the goals and
the impacts of the district are
acceptable to the city of Sea-
side,” Winstanley said.
Donihe: Ideas
started flowing after
his move to Astoria
Continued from Page 1A
have a market,” he said.
“I just kind of wrote it for
my own benefit, because I
assumed there was no pub-
lisher for it.”
While surfing the inter-
net, Donihe found Eraserhead
Press, a Portland publisher he
said wanted the fundamen-
tally weird books nobody else
did. “I was like, ‘Oh, my God;
I finally found a publisher that
is right for me.’”
Donihe joined the ground
level of Eraserhead Press
before the term bizarro fiction
was coined in the mid-2000s.
He described bizarro fiction
as the genre of the weird, like
the cult section of a throw-
back video store but for
books. The genre appealed to
him because of the total cre-
ative freedom.
“We thought it was just
us for a while, but there is a
true hunger for the weird,”
he said of the growing genre.
“People’s tastes are getting
increasingly stranger over
time.”
Donihe has published at
least 13 books under Eraser-
head Press. Two of them —
“Space Walrus,” about the
unrequited love of a walrus in
a space station for a scientist
experimenting on him; and
“House of Houses,” about the
intimate love between a man
and his house — have won
best novel at the Wonderland
Book Awards, the preeminent
gathering of the bizarro fic-
tion world for the past decade.
Donihe said he wants peo-
ple reading his books to form
an emotional connection to
things they might not oth-
erwise bond with. He said
many of his best ideas come
from flashes out of his sub-
conscious, which he imme-
diately takes down and starts
forming into stories. The sys-
tem has largely worked for
Donihe, who said he has been
able to make a living as a full-
time bizarro fiction writer for
20 years, until recently.
“I was feeling rather unin-
spired in my previous loca-
tion,” Donihe said of Tennes-
see. “I hadn’t written a book
in three years.”
Donihe had friends in
Astoria and a publisher
in Portland. He started a
GoFundMe account to
finance his move to Asto-
ria, where he said the ideas
started flowing. Aside from
his job at Fort George Brew-
ery, Donihe has two books in
the works.
One, he said, is inspired by
his apartment on the edge of
Uniontown, a Victorian mon-
strosity he said is rumored to
be one of the last operating
brothels in Astoria. Another,
“Daddy, Please Don’t Kill
Me Again,” is about a family
man trying to escape a loop
of repeatedly killing his fam-
ily for the entertainment of
the rich. Donihe said the lat-
ter is on contract for Eraser-
head Press, due by the end of
the month, and could be out
as soon as early next year.
With a place to live, a
job at Fort George Brewery
and his creative juices once
again flowing freely, Donihe
said Astoria already feels like
home.
— Edward Stratton
Weather: Dry weather
will affect wildfire season
Continued from Page 1A
A persistent high-pressure
ridge offshore should steer
rain clouds away from most
of Washington and northwest
Oregon. That doesn’t bode
well for the second half of
wildfire season.
And it keeps Seattle, Port-
land and some other North-
west cities on track toward
possibly setting new records
for their longest dry spells.
The record dry streak for
Seattle is 51 days of dryness,
set in 1951. As of Friday,
the 2017 dry streak stood at
34 days and counting. There
have been six Julys with no
measurable rain in Seat-
tle: 1896, 1922, 1930, 1958,
1960 and 2013.
Portland has not received
rain in 34 days either. But the
race toward the record is a
longer one. The Rose City’s
record for consecutive days
without measurable rain is
71 days, set in 1967.
A weak frontal sys-
tem dropped scattered rain
Thursday along the Pacific
Northwest coast, in Olym-
pia, Bellingham, McMinn-
ville and Cascade Mountain
rain gauges.
“The onshore flow mov-
ing from the Pacific to the
interior of Western Wash-
ington and east of the Cas-
cades looks like it is going
to continue, some days a
little stronger than oth-
ers.” Buehner said. “That
can result in days with
some morning clouds and
then afternoon sunshine.”
“East of the Cascades it
looks like it will continue to
be warmer than the west side
and as a result of the onshore
flow also windy at times,”
Buehner added.
