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