COTTAGE & GARDEN TOUR IN CANNON BEACH COAST WEEKEND • INSIDE
DailyAstorian.com // THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 2017
145TH YEAR, NO. 49
ONE DOLLAR
Warming
center
gets city
blessing
Board worked with
neighbors, merchants
By KATIE FRANKOWICZ
The Daily Astorian
RV park proposed
near Arcadia Beach
Submitted Photos
James Smejkal wants to develop an RV park across from Arcadia Beach.
Environmental
concerns raised
over project
See WARMING CENTER, Page 7A
By BRENNA VISSER
The Daily Astorian
A
RCH CAPE — A proposed
RV park across the highway
from Arcadia Beach is facing
criticism from environmental groups
for encroaching on the threatened mar-
bled murrelet and disregard for forestry
practices.
A land use compatibility statement was
submitted earlier this year by James Sme-
jkal, the owner of the 17.6-acre parcel of
forested land, requesting temporary access
from U.S. Highway 101 from the Oregon
Department of Transportation to conduct
surveys on the property.
Smejkal thinks the property would be
well-suited for an RV park, mostly because
it is one of the only types of development
allowed with the land’s zoning, he said.
“Because of the high volume of camp-
ers that visit the coast in the summer,
I don’t think there will be a problem,”
Smejkal said. “Planners designated it
for park use because they saw it as a need.”
This early on in the project, signifi cant
details — such as a site plan and geohaz-
ard surveys — will need to be completed
before any site development or road con-
struction can begin, Clatsop County Plan-
ning Manager Will Caplinger said.
The land was owned by the Oregon
Parks and Recreation Department before it
was traded to Smejkal in 2002 in exchange
for land he owned in Columbia County.
In 2009, Smejkal attempted to develop
the property as housing , which was ulti-
mately denied by the c ounty Planning
Commission.
Cameron La Follette, director of the
environmental advocacy group Ore-
gon Coast Alliance , said urbanization —
whether it be houses or RVs — is not the
best use for the property.
La Follette argues the development
When Dan Parkison, president of the
Astoria Warming Center b oard, realized
the Astoria Planning Commission had just
approved the center’s permit in a 4-2 vote
Wednesday night, his shoulders dipped for-
ward slightly and he took a short, visible
breath of relief.
Commissioner Jan Mitchell, who is trav-
eling overseas, and Commissioner Jennifer
Cameron-Lattek, who is in Canada, used a
video chat service to participate in the meet-
ing and voted with Commissioner Brookley
Henri and Commission President Dave Pear-
son to approve the one-year conditional use
permit .
They said the key to their approval was
a good-neighbor agreement hammered out
last week between the warming center board,
people who live in the neighborhood near the
Environmentalists are concerned about the project.
The marbled murrelet, a threatened
species that halted plans for devel-
opment in 2009.
lacks the infrastructure to support an urban
project in a rural area, and that ultimately,
the land should be back in public hands.
“Just because the parks system didn’t
have a plan for this plot didn’t mean it
was valueless to the public,” La Follette
said. “Put in a trail loop, install other inter-
pretive uses. There are lots of things you
can do there. But an RV park in this area
is something we don’t feel comfortable
with.”
Smejkal said he intends the project
to be executed like another RV park he
developed in Wallowa County, which he
described as “upscale.”
Cease-and-desist order
Four parcels of Smejkal’s land are
zoned for recreation management and one
parcel for agriculture-forestry.
It is legal for Smejkal to log the parcel
zoned for forestry, but the county issued
a cease-and-desist order in July after the
Department of Forestry reported he was
planning a logging operation on the other
four parcels without county approval,
Caplinger said.
For now, Smejkal is only permitted
to clear brush in the right of way granted
by the Department of Transportation for a
temporary service road. Smejkal said he is
brushing his property under the state For-
est Practices Act to provide a fi rebreak, a
gap in vegetation that acts as a barrier to
slow the progress of a brushfi re or wildfi re.
“We’re brushing it according to fi re-
break standards so engineers and geolo-
gists can wade through it for surveys,” he
said.
Caplinger said this does not apply the
same way on land zoned for recreation
management — the majority of Smejkal’s
property. He said he is working with Sme-
jkal to fi nd a way to temporarily allow
legal brushing on the land to accommodate
the geohazard surveys the county requires
to move forward in the process.
Oregon’s
jury law
under
scrutiny
By PARIS ACHEN
Capital Bureau
Oregon’s long time law allowing felony
convictions by non-unanimous juries could
be tested if the U.S. Supreme Court accepts a
case challenging a similar law in Louisiana.
Only in Oregon and Louisiana can a
defendant be convicted of a felony with a
10- 2 jury vote. All other states and the federal
government require a unanimous verdict.
Lawyers for defendant Dale Lambert
argue that the court should overturn its pre-
vious rulings that Louisiana’s and Oregon’s
non-unanimous jury laws are constitutional.
The statutes deprive certain defendants
of equal protection under the law and deny
them the right to have accusations confi rmed
by a jury of 12 of their peers, according to
Lambert’s petition.
“This law essentially eviscerates the idea
that you are entitled to a jury of your peers
when you are a black person who resides in
Oregon, because statistically speaking, you
are lucky if you get even one juror who is
black, and that juror’s voice may just not
count at all,” said Mat dos Santos, legal
director of the ACLU of Oregon.
See RV PARK, Page 7A
See JURY LAW, Page 7A
Port, Life Flight seek deal on new hangar
Port doesn’t
have money for
improvements
By EDWARD STRATTON
The Daily Astorian
Since the failure of a bond
measure in May to pay for
infrastructure improvements at
the Astoria Regional Airport,
a schism has formed between
the Port of Astoria and Life
Flight Network on how to
move forward.
Life Flight Regional
Director Jacob Dalstra and
Base Manager Dan Travers
appealed to the Port Commis-
sion on Tuesday for a fi nal
direction on where to place the
service’s new hangar and crew
quarters, funded by a $665,000
ConnectOregon state infra-
structure grant and $285,000
of internal investment.
The Port wants Life Flight
to build the new hangar at the
south end of the airport, past
several rows of hangars and
away from other airport traffi c,
but doesn’t have the money to
install an estimated $500,000
worth of infrastructure.
Since the bond’s fail-
ure, Life Flight has moved to
build the hangar at its current
location near the 12th Place
entrance to the airport, which
would cost drastically less, but
which Port staff and the Air-
port Advisory Committee have
deemed unsuitable because
of operational confl icts with
nearby aviators.
“We have not been able
to get a straight answer and
have got the runaround and
been misled several times, in
respect to fi nalizing a site for
our hangar,” Travers told the
Port Commission Tuesday.
“We’ve done everything pos-
sible to be good partners, to
be patient, to be supportive,
but we don’t feel like we’re
See HANGAR, Page 7A
The Daily Astorian/File P hoto
Life Flight Network has been operating out of a temporary
trailer since arriving two years ago. The medevac service is
trying to build a new hangar at the Astoria Regional Airport.