‘THE BIRDS’ SWOOPS INTO ASTOR STREET OPRY COMPANY COAST WEEKEND • INSIDE
DailyAstorian.com // THURSDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2017
145TH YEAR, NO. 69
ONE DOLLAR
Locals
drawn to
downtown
shopping
Shoppers want staple
goods, analysis found
By EDWARD STRATTON
The Daily Astorian
Two-thirds of shoppers in downtown
Astoria come from Clatsop County, accord-
ing to a new retail analysis by the Astoria
Downtown Historic District Association.
The downtown association recently
unveiled the analysis showing the need for
more staple goods and a focus on locals as
a core demographic, with tourism a continu-
ally growing opportunity.
The analysis was one of several recom-
mendations by Michele Reeves, an urban
strategist brought in several years ago to ana-
lyze downtown and recommend improve-
ments. Helping finish the report was Bijan
Fayyaz, the county’s former emergency
management coordinator and now a project
manager with PacifiCorp.
Photos by Colin Murphey/The Daily Astorian
Astoria city councilors Bruce Jones, far right, and Cindy Price, second from right, take a tour of a tunnel system under
the streets of Astoria on Monday.
UNDERGROUND ASTORIA
See SHOPPERS, Page 5A
Tunnels, walls
supporting downtown
could cost
millions to replace
By KATIE FRANKOWICZ
The Daily Astorian
O
Damian Mulinix/EO Media Group
The corner of 14th Street and Commer-
cial Street in downtown Astoria.
Voices heard
in Gearhart’s
testy vacation
rental debate
Astoria city councilors make their way through a small system of tunnels un-
der the city during a recent informational tour.
City Council dives into
the partisan divide
By R.J. MARX
The Daily Astorian
GEARHART — Heaven on earth was
how a new South Marion Avenue resident
described the city.
Not so much, others said as both sides
in the vacation rental debate turned out
Wednesday night at City Hall. Mayor Matt
Brown and city councilors joined in the dis-
cussion as residents weighed in on Measure
4-188.
Supporters of the measure want to repeal
and replace rules enacted last fall related to
Astoria Assistant City Engineer Nathan Crater, left, and Public Works Superin-
tendent Ken Nelson, right, lead a group of city officials on a tour of a section
of tunnels under the streets of Astoria.
n Sundays, when many businesses
in downtown Astoria were closed,
half a dozen children slipped
underground.
It was the 1960s, and most merchants
had blocked the entrances to tunnels under
the streets and buildings. But the children
were small enough. They squeezed into
places no one thought they could. They
crept up into stores, helped themselves to
candy, moved cars around in an auto deal-
ership’s basement.
Later, after the police caught them and
their parents punished them, the children
learned they weren’t the first “mole gang”
— older siblings and prior generations
had found and explored the tunnels — and
they weren’t the last.
Thousands of feet of tunnels and sim-
ilar structures called “chairwalls” stretch
under downtown. They date from 1915
and 1923 and are the reason the city can’t
just simply fill the hole known as Heritage
Square near the Garden of Surging Waves
on Duane Street. The walls weren’t built to
carry that kind of load against their sides.
The chairwalls reshaped Astoria’s
waterfront, raising buildings and streets
above a tidal flat. Veined with power and
communication lines, they support streets
and are reminders of how the city rebuilt
itself after a massive fire leveled down-
town in 1922.
Up above, sidewalks and sidewalk
supports are beginning to show their
age. Below, the chairwalls are in rela-
tively good condition for now, but the
city is looking at how it will sustain these
important structures into the future.
See UNDERGROUND, Page 7A
See GEARHART, Page 5A
Audit urges state to improve oversight of in-home care
‘Immediate
action’ needed
to help seniors
By CLAIRE
WITHYCOMBE
Capital Bureau
SALEM — Lack of over-
sight, data gaps and over-
worked case managers could
continue to put low-income
Oregonians receiving in-home
care at risk, state auditors said
in a Wednesday report.
Auditors from the secretary
of state’s office said the state
Department of Human Ser-
vices should take “immediate
action” to improve in-home
care for seniors and people
with disabilities in a program
serving about 13,000 people.
The state offers several
in-home care programs for
seniors and people with dis-
abilities. The program that
auditors focused on is the Con-
sumer-Employed Provider, or
CEP, program.
About 13,230 people are
enrolled in the program, which
allows low-income seniors
and people with disabilities to
choose their own home-care
workers.
The program is for peo-
ple who qualify for Medicaid,
which is paid for by the state
and federal governments.
When a person is enrolled
in the program, he or she has
two main people on their
team: a case manager from
the Department of Human
Services who handles admin-
istrative functions like eval-
uating the person’s needs,
and a home-care worker who
does the day-to-day work of
in-home care, such as prepar-
ing meals and administering
medications.
A key part of the program
is that the people receiving
in-home care are also employ-
ers: they hire, train and dis-
miss their own in-home care
workers.
But an information vacuum
puts the agency at risk of miss-
ing when people in the pro-
gram need more help, accord-
ing to the audit.
State and federal rules stip-
ulate that case managers mon-
itor program participants, but
auditors found that a third
of patients they surveyed for
the audit didn’t get all of the
required check-ins from a case
manager in 2016.
Two-thirds never received
an in-person visit, other
than an annual assessment.
Home visits by case
managers are not required, but
can help case managers — and
the state — keep closer tabs on
whether in-home care recip-
ients are getting what they
need.
The agency is required
to conduct a risk assessment
when it initiates a service plan
for an in-home care recipient,
but auditors found cases where
case managers didn’t do an ini-
tial risk assessment.
Patients found to be high-
er-risk require more contacts
from case managers.
Auditors said that in the
cases they reviewed, “insuf-
ficient documentation” pre-
vented them from determining
whether high-risk patients got
the additional required contact
with case managers.
The data that the agency
does collect focuses more on
See AUDIT, Page 7A