Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (July 11, 2018)
4A THE DAILY ASTORIAN • WEDNESDAY, JULY 11, 2018 editor@dailyastorian.com KARI BORGEN Publisher JIM VAN NOSTRAND Editor Founded in 1873 JEREMY FELDMAN Circulation Manager DEBRA BLOOM Business Manager Water under the bridge JOHN D. BRUIJN Production Manager CARL EARL Systems Manager modern, planned industrial area oriented to its location on the Columbia River shipping route for industries utilizing water transportation. The Oregon Highway Commission decided today in Salem to buy 1,466 acres of federal land to be added to 800-acre Fort Stevens state park. The commission said the $117,500 price for the land is only half the appraised value. The commission said Fort Stevens park will be one of the finest in the nation. Compiled by Bob Duke From the pages of Astoria’s daily newspapers Clatsop County’s house boat population is up against it. The state Sanitary Authority says all houseboats must cease putting untreated toilet wastes and garbage into rivers by Sept. 1. Otherwise, it’s a fine of not more than $1,000 or imprisonment for not more than a year. The statewide deadline affects some 95 houseboats in Clat- sop County on sloughs, the Columbia River, and the John Day River, said county Sanitarian Buckley Vaughan. 10 years ago this week — 2008 The time has come. Over the past three years, North Coast residents have seen dozens of public meetings on the Bradwood Landing liquefied natural gas project come and go. They’ve read volumes and volumes and volumes of documents. They’ve stood at protests and rallies and written countless letters. Next week the divisive project will come before the five-member Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, a board of presidential appointees that issues LNG licenses. At a regular meeting Thursday, FERC staff will summa- rize the public record, which has grown to many thousands of pages. Board members, who are expected to have read the whole thing, including all the public comments, will discuss the case with staff and ask questions. “Afterward,” the agenda says, “Chairman Kelliher may call for a vote.” 1968 – The USS Frank Knox will be the largest of four ships to put in at Astoria for the Regatta next month. The 2,200-ton radar picket destroyer provides fast car- rier attack groups with air early warning capability. park in the state. The park was built in 1988 and was a mere 3,900 square feet. After the remodel, the park spans 5,800 square feet and runs parallel to the right-field line of the field next to the park without encroaching upon it. New homes along the shore at Arch Cape are blocking the views from second-tier homes — and Joanne Johnson wants something done about it. She said residents of the tiny coastal community are divided, and people building and adding onto the houses along the shore are insensitive to the con- cerns of their neighbors. “There’s anger, there’s pain and maybe a little bit of revenge — who knows?” she said. Johnson said 31 residents of the community had “risen up” and signed a petition asking the county to intervene and change ordinances to restrict houses on the coast to a single story. An exceptional number of distress calls were received from pleasure craft operating outside the Columbia River bar during the holiday weekend, according to warrant officer Stan Mead, command- ing Cape Disappointment Coast Guard station. Twenty-nine of the 650 to 700 boats reported out- side the bar were towed to safety by Coast Guard rescue boats, Mead said. He reported that on nor- mal holidays about 1 percent of boats fishing in the area become disabled. Ollies, kickflips and rail grinds officially have a new home in Cannon Beach after the Friday opening of the Cannon Beach Skate Park. According to Rich Mays, Cannon Beach city manager, the city believed the previous park was the oldest and smallest Plans for development of Port Westward, a new industrial area on the deep water navigation route of the lower Columbia River, were announced Tuesday by Westward Properties Inc., a subsidiary of Kaiser Aluminum and Chemical corporation. The plan for Port Westward calls for its development into a 50 years ago — 1968 75 years ago — 1943 The state highway commission today blamed fail- ure of the federal government to approve a $500,000 extension project of U.S. Highway 101 between Sea- side and Astoria for possible failure to complete the road before the fall rains. The road, commission members said, was neces- sary because of the construction of the Astoria air- port extension. The farm labor situation in Clatsop County is dark, Don Jossy, acting agricultural agent said today. Enlistment of local part-time, weekend and vacation labor has been slow and inadequate. The general scarcity of farm workers throughout the state makes it imperative that all sources of local labor be exploited to the full before labor is sought from outside sources, Jossy said. With this in mind the county has sought to recruit peo- ple to work on days off, weekends, and vacation periods, and even in the evening. Women and young people may in many cases be used. Thousands of people flocked to Long Beach to spend the Fourth of July holiday weekend, crowd- ing all available accommodations beyond capacity. Unidentified pranksters, believed to have been service men, “borrowed” the wrecker car from Gallant Auto company parking lot Sunday night and before abandoning the machine at 27th and Franklin streets virtually wrecked the wrecker. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR This country can do better on immigration W e were thrilled with the enthusiasm and nearly 500-person turnout at the Rally to Keep Families Together on June 30th in Astoria, hosted by Indivisible North Coast Oregon (INCO). It was part of a nation- wide movement to protest President Donald Trump’s border policy ripping families apart. Many of these families are fleeing violence and death threats in their home countries, and are legally seeking asylum in the U.S. Immigrants have always played a vital role in building American communities, including here on the North Coast. Call your representa- tives in Congress — Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley and Rep. Suzanne Bonamici — to let them know how inhumane and antithet- ical to American values this treatment is. This country can, and must, do better. MONICA PEARSON, WENDELA HOWIE, JOAN HERMAN, JULIA HESSE, MEGAN HODGES, TIFFINY MITCH- ELL, SUE ZERANGUE, CAROLYN EADY, LAURA JACKSON AND LAURIE CAPLAN Indivisible North Coast Oregon Astoria Avoid a bad housing deal with lodging tax C ounty commissioners are considering increasing the lodging tax to help fund new jail costs at their meeting Wednesday. This is a bad idea. The intent behind the collection and use of lodging taxes is to develop tourism and the larger revenue base it brings into a com- munity. Only a small amount of the lodg- ing tax collected is allowed to pass through to the general fund. This proposal is short- sighted with its singular focus on the end use of these pass-through dollars, rather than how to derive a better return for tourism devel- opment. This harms both taxpayers and the legally operating small businesses in our area. The bigger problem with this issue, how- ever, relates to affordable housing. The continuing conversion of housing rent- als to vacation rentals is significantly worsen- ing the already scarce affordable housing mar- ket in our area. This proposal exacerbates the problem by encouraging the county to keep, rather than reduce or limit, short-term vaca- tion rentals in the housing market. If you’re going to consider raising the lodging tax, a better idea would be to increase the tax on only short-term vacation rentals and use this extra revenue to mitigate the wors- ening affordable housing crisis by funding affordable housing solutions. The county esti- mates the new tax will generate $1.4 million annually. This is represents $420,000 annually that could be used to help solve our affordable housing crisis. This would help many individ- uals stay and invest in our communities long- term and also assist area business struggling to find and keep employees. To combat the housing crisis, the further erosion of our communities, and the shift to what is rapidly becoming a transient work- force in our area, short-term vacation rent- als must be limited and more housing must be built. But this proposed use of lodging tax will only encourage the county to keep more short- term vacation rentals on the market. Find a different way to fund increased jail costs. The county should not risk becoming a lodging-tax junkie in order to expand the gen- eral fund while complicating the affordable housing crisis in our area. STEPHEN MALKOWSKI Owner, Arch Cape Inn and Retreat Former Clatsop County planning commissioner Empower kids for reading and learning success his year, 53 Start Making A Reader Today (SMART) volunteers in Clatsop County spent time reading one-on-one with 195 local students, and students picked out 2,281 books to keep. Now that summer is here, it’s import- ant that kids continue reading to maintain the gains they achieved during the school year. Students can lose up to one-fourth of their reading skills over the summer. This “summer T reading slide” has negative long-term impacts on student learning, especially when it comes to reaching the critical third-grade reading benchmark. According to state statistics, over half of Oregon’s third-graders are not meeting state reading standards. Here are five tips for counteracting the summer slide: Have books on hand during trips and errands; set a bedtime routine focused on giving kids time with books they enjoy; use favorite summertime activi- ties as opportunities to read about new top- ics; explore a range of reading materials, such as kid’s magazines and comic books; let your kids see you reading. To learn more about SMART, visit getSM- ARToregon.org or call 971-634-1614. PAULA SEID SMART North Coast program manager Portland Climate change will hit children, grandchildren hard egarding Carolyn Eady’s letter, “Need to address climate change is very urgent,” and in response to a website comment by a Gordon J. Fulks, policy advisor at the Heart- land Institute: The younger ones are those who are going to be hit full force with this inferno. It’s already devastating those who are poor in every country. Humans now number more than 7.6 billion, as the other animal species R populations plummet — except cockroaches and rats. Even starlings are rare, this silent spring and summer. Of course, in geologic time, it doesn’t matter a bit. But to your children and grand- children, it will mean more destitution, and even more violence. As a professional agi- tator for the Heartland Institute, I know you know this stuff. We live in a perilous time, when the Heartland is distracting us from finding ways to survive on an earth as we have known it, in the manner to which we have become accustomed — like electricity (most of the time), public water and sewage service, and the ability to drive around in single-pas- senger cars and buy tons of stuff in giant supermarkets. Thank you, Carolyn Eady, for your cease- less work to preserve what are now among the last remaining older-growth forested areas on the planet. Fulks’ scientific integrity and credibility doesn’t hold a candle to yours. SUE SKINNER Astoria Humor in deer headline D oes anyone else see the humor in this headline from The Daily Astorian from July 4, page 3A? “Man charged with shooting deer impaled with arrows.” DE RICHARDS Astoria
