7A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2017
Fort Stevens: Current social climate crept into preparations
Continued from Page 1A
“It’s just a great adven-
ture for families,” said Scott
Ingalls, who portrays a Con-
federate artillery soldier.
Actors will play soldiers,
doctors, engineers and a range
of other roles throughout the
weekend. An Abraham Lin-
coln impersonator will be on
hand to deliver a presiden-
tial speech. Spectators at bat-
tlefields, military camps and
hospitals will be able to
speak to the characters and
touch items commonly used
during the war.
“It’s not all the time, but
you’re kind of in that charac-
ter when you’re with the pub-
lic,” said Matt Bishop, who
plays a Confederate infantry
commander.
Some of the actors, along
with their families, have
devoted their energies to re-en-
actments for decades, dedicat-
ing both time and money to the
hobby. Benson, for instance,
estimates he has spent at least
$20,000 in the decade since he
joined the council. As a cav-
alry soldier, he brings numer-
ous props — including pis-
tols, four horses and carvings
— when he travels to each
year’s event from his home in
Yamhill.
Once he arrives to the bat-
tlefield, Benson has a field day.
“As far as horses are con-
cerned, it’s the best battlefield
we have,” Benson said. “It’s
large and you can sit there in
the trees and the crowd won’t
even know you’re back there.”
Actors typically pick which
army they would like to fight
for and, like any soldier, work
their way up the ranks.
“Some people go to join the
north or south unit; others just
find guys they get along with,”
said Ingalls, who was recruited
16 years ago by a friend who
played an artillery soldier. “It’s
great to see. It’s a cool repre-
sentation of history and not
political in any way.”
Social climate
But the reality of the cur-
rent social climate has crept
into event preparations.
The council has received
indirectly threatening Face-
book messages in the past few
weeks. Some messages have
contained derisive requests for
actors to use real bullets during
battles, while others express
hope that someone in the
crowd will fire shots at actors.
The council has discussed
among themselves and with
police how to handle any dis-
ruptions or protests, Bishop
said.
Warrenton Police Chief
Mathew Workman said he
will send extra patrols to Fort
Stevens this weekend. He has
advised park rangers and lead-
ers of the council to have their
cellphones readily available
should a disruption occur.
“They don’t anticipate any-
thing. We don’t anticipate any-
thing. But it’s always good to
be prepared,” Workman said.
Ingalls said people should
not conflate the national debate
revolving around Confederate
symbols with this weekend’s
re-enactment.
“We’re still going to pres-
ent a living history accurately,”
he said. “The new connota-
tions of the Confederate flag
have nothing to do with what
we’re doing.”
Warming center: ‘We
have reached a very
detailed understanding’
Continued from Page 1A
Colin Murphey/The Daily Astorian
A truck traveling through the Arch Cape tunnel leaves behind a trail of lights in this long exposure. The state is set to
spend $6.7 million to replace asphalt on a 6-mile section of U.S. Highway 101 from Ecola Creek to the tunnel.
Highway: County will get money for several projects
Continued from Page 1A
As of December, the plan
included more than $100 mil-
lion worth of work in Dis-
trict 1, which covers Clatsop,
Columbia, Tillamook and a
small portion of northwestern
Washington counties.
Fixing bad pavement
In the early 1980s,
ODOT’s District 1 Man-
ager Mark Buffington said,
the state experimented with
a larger, more porous grade
of asphalt known as F-mix in
places like Highway 26.
“The idea is that water
flows through F-mix for
drainage purposes,” he said.
“And we have a lot of springs
out there, so they were having
trouble with drainage off that
stretch of road.”
But the F-mix was topped
with 2 inches of B-mix, a
tighter pavement. Buffing-
ton said. “What they ended
up doing was like taking a
sponge, like foam rubber, and
then putting a piece of plastic
on top of it,” he said.
Water comes up through
the F-mix, freezes, breaks
off portions of the B-mix on
top and causes large potholes
along highways, he said. The
paving project funded by the
transportation package will
grind through and replace
both pavement layers from
shoulder to shoulder on High-
way 26 between the turnoffs
for Oregon highways 53 and
103, replacing them with a
tighter, single layer of asphalt.
Beyond the
new package
Clatsop County is slated
to receive more than $51 mil-
lion worth of highway work
in the larger transportation
improvement plan. Nearly
half is for continued painting
of deck trusses on the Astoria
Bridge.
The state will spend $6.7
million replacing F-mix on a
6-mile stretch of U.S. High-
way 101 between Ecola
Creek and the Arch Cape tun-
nel. By 2021, District 1 will
have about 79 miles worth of
F-mix left to replace, at a rate
of about 10 miles every two
years, Buffington said.
One of the more impactful
projects will be the replace-
ment of the deck and other
safety features on the New
Youngs Bay Bridge from the
Astoria approach to Nep-
tune Drive in Warrenton in
2021, Buffington said. The
$2.5 million project will tem-
porarily reduce traffic on the
bridge to eastbound-only and
reroute traffic into Highway
101 Business.
“Anything from Astoria
to Warrenton will have to use
the detour,” Buffington said,
adding the project would be
timed during lower-traffic
months in the winter.
Other major projects pro-
posed between 2018 and 2021
include:
• $3.6 million to replace
a culvert on Highway 26 at
Rock Creek.
• $2.1 million to install
a left-turn lane on the west-
bound side of Highway 101
at Fort Stevens, along with a
U-turn.
• Nearly $1.8 million to
replace the substructure and
other features of a bridge
over the Klaskanine River on
Youngs River Road.
• More than $1.6 million to
construct sidewalks and bike
lanes along Marine Drive
in Astoria from Dresden to
Fourth streets.
• $400,000 in engineer-
ing work to prepare for the
replacement of a bridge over
Ecola Creek on Highway 101.
Church at the corner of 11th
Street and Franklin Avenue
during the winter months.
“I think they did a great
job of taking all the com-
ments and information
we thought needed to be
changed, as far as we’re con-
cerned,” said Dulcye Tay-
lor, president of the Astoria
Downtown Historic District
Association.
Along with other changes,
warming center board mem-
bers rewrote the agreement
to include more detailed
“guest rules,” a promise of
expanded training for staff
and volunteers on how to
respond to people at the
center dealing with mental
health issues, and a chore list
for users of the center.
Thursday’s meeting, a
continuation of discussions
around the agreement that
began Wednesday night, was
a quieter and shorter pro-
ceeding with roughly half the
attendance.
The Planning Commis-
sion is scheduled to make
a decision on the condi-
tional use permit at a meet-
ing Wednesday. The com-
mission delayed a decision in
August to give the warming
center, the neighbors and the
downtown association more
time to craft a good-neighbor
agreement.
At the time, the major-
ity of the commission —
David Pearson, Jan Mitch-
ell, Jennifer Cameron-Lattek
and Brookley Henri — indi-
cated they were “leaning on
the side of approval.” Com-
missioners Daryl Moore and
Kent Easom said they did not
oppose the idea of a warming
center, but said a residential
area is not the right location.
They said they would likely
vote to deny the application.
Any decision the com-
mission makes could be
appealed to the City Council.
Planning Commissioner
Sean Fitzpatrick, an owner
of the Illahee Apartments
located across the street from
the church, recused himself
from discussions and a pub-
lic hearing about the warm-
ing center’s application. He
submitted testimony urging
the commission to deny the
permit, citing ongoing con-
cerns about impacts to neigh-
bors. Like Moore and Easom,
he supported the center’s
mission but said it shouldn’t
be located in the Frank-
lin Avenue neighborhood.
He attended both commu-
nity meetings to discuss the
good-neighbor agreement.
At the end of Thursday’s
meeting, he said, “I am more
comfortable with this than
not having an agreement at
all.”
Dan Parkison, the presi-
dent of the warming center’s
board, said he is pleased with
the final document.
“We have reached a very
detailed understanding and
agreement about how we’re
going to be operating,” he
said.
Warrenton City Com-
missioner Rick Newton,
who attended Thursday’s
meeting representing the
Warrenton Warming Cen-
ter, commended the Asto-
ria community for “talking
about it and working it out.”
The Warrenton center is in
the middle of re-examining
its own rules and is watch-
ing how Astoria balances the
need for a warming center
with the neighborhood’s con-
cerns and the city’s require-
ments, he said.
“I am of course stealing
your agreement,” he joked.
The volunteer-run Asto-
ria Warming Center operates
seasonally, giving homeless
people a place to sleep when
temperatures dip to danger-
ous levels during the winter
months. The low-barrier cen-
ter will only be open for 90
days between Nov. 15 and
March 15, according to the
application submitted to the
Planning Commission
Academy: ‘It’s very important for our community to do this’
Continued from Page 1A
enrolled in the first- and- sec-
ond-grade blended class.
Nolazco still remem-
bers the sadness she felt
when she heard the news of
Cannon Beach Elementary
School closing, the school she
attended.
Going to school in Can-
non Beach was a large part of
her childhood, she said, and
she was happy to see with the
academy opening that was
an experience she could now
share with her brother.
“There were a lot of ups
and downs, and we were just
hoping for the best,” she said.
“A lot of people put a lot of
hard work into making this
happen.”
Because of budget issues,
the Cannon Beach Academy
board had to change locations
for the charter school in May.
That left only a few months to
secure the lease for the current
location at 3781 S Hemlock St.
from the city and finish neces-
sary renovations before a fall
opening.
Dania’s father, Rafael, said
he and his family have lived
in Cannon Beach for about 22
years. When they first heard
about the possibility of a char-
ter school coming to town,
they enrolled their son right
away.
For Rafael Nolazco, smaller
Colin Murphey/The Daily Astorian
Kellye Dewey and her daughter, Rian, attend the Cannon
Beach Academy open house on Thursday to celebrate
the start of the first school year. Dewey is the academy’s
board president.
class sizes and having a school
in the community where they
live and work were integral.
“This community is so
great. We deserve to have a
school,” he said.
While having a school
in town was an important
aspect for many of the parents
with enrolled children, what
brought many to commit to the
academy was a bilingual cur-
riculum — something unique
for the North Coast.
Cannon
Beach
resi-
dents Julianne and Jeff Kropf
decided to enroll their child
in Cannon Beach Academy
instead of Seaside partially
because of it.
“It was a difficult deci-
sion, because our daughter was
enrolled in Seaside Heights
last year,” Julianne Kropf said.
“There is a lot of value having
it near our home, but also the
fact they are teaching Span-
ish here was a huge positive to
switch.”
While the school is not
fully bilingual, teacher Leti-
cia Campos will be in charge
of making sure every student is
exposed to the language for a
portion of the day. While pur-
suing her bachelor’s degree in
history at Eastern Oregon Uni-
versity, Campos minored in
Spanish and the English lan-
guage learner program.
“It’s very important for our
community to do this because
languages open the doors to
the rest of the world,” Cam-
pos said. “It’s better to expose
language when they are young.
Kids are like sponges.”
This is Campos’ first job
as a teacher since earning her
degree, but she has been a
teacher’s assistant with Sea-
side School District for more
than 10 years. She heard about
the position to teach Spanish at
the academy from a co-worker
while she was working at the
high school. She said she’s
always known teaching young
children was her passion, and
she was intrigued by the idea
of being a part of a school from
the very beginning to help
grow programs.
But to get there, Cam-
pos balanced raising a family
and work with slowly pick-
ing away at classes at Clatsop
Community College and East-
ern Oregon University until
her kids were grown.
She then had the time to get
her master’s at Portland State
University to finish achieving
her dream.
“I love to teach younger
students because you get to
show them a world of oppor-
tunity,” she said. “There’s a
difference between having a
dream and making a dream
come true, and you can teach
them that.”
Joshua Bessex/The Daily Astorian
People take shelter at the warming center at First Unit-
ed Methodist Church in 2015.
conceal carry
permit classes
September 7 th
1pm and 6pm
BEST WESTERN
555 Hamburg Ave, Astoria, OR
$45 Oregon-only
$80 multi-State (Oregon included no-fee)
Required class to get an Oregon or multi-State
permit. Class includes:
• Fingerprinting & photo
• Oregon gun laws
• Washington gun laws
• Interstate travel laws
• Interaction with law enforcement
• Use of deadly force
• Firearm / ammunition / holster selection
360.921.2071
FirearmTrainingNW.com : FirearmrainingNW@gmail.com