CAPE DISAPPOINTMENT
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FEMALE COMMANDER
PAGE 3A
DailyAstorian.com // TUESDAY, JUNE 19, 2018
145TH YEAR, NO. 251
JUMPING IN
City invests in parks workers
ONE DOLLAR
Addiction
treatment
centers
shut down
Astoria Pointe and
The Rosebriar close
By KATIE FRANKOWICZ
The Daily Astorian
Astoria, already short on options to
address addiction, has lost longtime drug and
alcohol treatment centers Astoria Pointe and The
Rosebriar.
Local service providers and current and for-
mer employees with Sunspire Health, the com-
pany behind the treatment centers, confirmed Asto-
ria Pointe in Uniontown has closed. The Rosebriar,
a women-only sister facility located above down-
town, is also closed.
There was no response to a request for com-
ment from Sunspire Health representatives at the
company’s corporate office. Levi Starbird, Astoria
Pointe’s director of operations, said he could not
provide any details.
Alan Evans, director of Helping Hands, a non-
profit based in Seaside that operates re-entry pro-
grams and shelters in several counties and plans to
open a facility in Astoria, told Astoria’s homeless-
ness task force at a meeting Monday he knows of
ongoing negotiations for another treatment center
to take over the building.
“We’ll see what happens,” he said.
Photos by Katie Frankowicz/The Daily Astorian
See CENTERS, Page 5A
Hannah McCarley watches the water during a lifeguard shift at the Astoria Aquatic Center.
By KATIE FRANKOWICZ
The Daily Astorian
Cemetery fees
are going up
T
he Astoria Parks and Recre-
ation Department hopes more
detailed job descriptions and an
array of wages and salaries for part-
time and seasonal employees will
encourage recruitment and help with
retention.
Small stuff and basic best practices,
said Angela Cosby, the department’s
director, but also steps toward sustain-
ability and stability the department
lacked in previous years.
The City Council approved the
changes Monday. Each position —
from a clerk to a lifeguard — now
includes eight steps and a range in pay.
An employee just starting out could
advance up through the ranks in as
quickly as six months.
The changes could impact one
important group in the department’s
part-time and seasonal workforce:
Teens.
“They’re a substantial amount of
our workforce,” Cosby said.
High schoolers fill numerous roles.
They work as lifeguards at the Asto-
ria Aquatic Center, maintain parkland
and help run programs at the Recre-
ation Center. They take positions that
could be difficult to fill otherwise, said
Maintenance still a concern
By HANNAH SIEVERT
The Daily Astorian
Terra Patterson, supervisor of the Astoria Aquatic Center, checks in with
lifeguard and recent high school graduate Hannah McCarley.
Terra Patterson, the Aquatic Center
supervisor.
Under the changes approved Mon-
day, a lifeguard could make $11.75 an
hour starting out and work up to $13.50
an hour. Lead lifeguards have the
opportunity to make even more.
It is important for the department
to provide these first-time, entry-level
jobs, Cosby said. But it is equally
important to provide a path up, she
added. The changes to the job descrip-
tions and wages add incentives to stay
on for someone who finds the work
suits them — whether that person is a
teenager or an adult.
The Astoria City Council voted Monday night
to increase fees at Ocean View Cemetery by 10
percent.
The fee increase will partly go toward mainte-
nance costs, and partly to close the gap between
what is charged for cemetery services and what the
services actually cost.
The city first increased fees at Ocean View by
40 percent in 2015 — after persistent complaints
about the condition of the cemetery in Warrenton
— and will continue to raise fees by 10 percent
every fiscal year until 2022.
“Fees for services at Ocean View Cemetery
have fallen behind the national, state and local
standards,” Angela Cosby, director of the Astoria
Parks and Recreation Department, said in a memo
to the City Council. “As a result, the costs of ser-
vices at Ocean View Cemetery are greater than the
fees charged for those services.”
See WORKERS, Page 7A
See CEMETERY, Page 5A
State lands considers forest management options
Counties or
private firms
could take over
By CLAIRE
WITHYCOMBE
Capital Bureau
SALEM
—
Oregon’s
Department of State Lands is
looking into whether other enti-
ties, including counties or pri-
vate companies, could manage
certain state trust forests more
cheaply than the state Depart-
ment of Forestry.
The Department of State
Lands relies on the state’s for-
estry department to manage
33,073 acres of land to generate
revenue for the Common School
Fund, which is essentially an
endowment for public education.
The state land board — Gov.
Kate Brown, Secretary of State
Dennis Richardson and Trea-
surer Tobias Read — last week
approved the department’s
request to look into alternative
management schemes for those
forests.
Interim Director Vicki
Walker, who has been at the
helm of the Department of State
Lands since March, had sug-
gested exploring other options
for forest management.
The idea is for the depart-
ment to figure out whether it
might be more economical to
have independent logging com-
panies or counties manage Com-
mon School Fund forestland in
18 counties.
“I’m trying to find the best
way to run the program at low
cost, keeping in mind our fidu-
ciary responsibility,” Walker told
the board last week.
That request was prompted
by the $4.8 million the forestry
department has asked for in the
next budget to manage those
lands. That would be a $1.5 mil-
lion increase from the current
budget.
See FORESTS, Page 5A
Oregon Department of Forestry
The Oregon Department of State Lands is investigating
whether counties or private entities might more cheap-
ly manage Common School Fund forestland. The Elliott
State Forest, pictured here, is part of that land.