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THE STRENGTH OF COWGIRLS COUNTY FAIR IN PHOTOS WEEKEND BREAK • 1C PAGE 5A • MORE AT DAILYASTORIAN.COM 146TH YEAR, NO. 25 ONE DOLLAR WEEKEND EDITION // FRIDAY, AUGUST 3, 2018 DRINK, RINSE, REFILL, REPEAT Housing commissioner resigns after email exchange Top administrator allegedly complained about investigation By JACK HEFFERNAN The Daily Astorian Photos by Colin Murphey/The Daily Astorian Evan Norris moves a rack of glass bottles to a machine on the factory floor at Buoy Beer Co. Buoy Beer joins push to reduce carbon footprint See EMAIL, Page 7A Longtime forester to run for City Council By EDWARD STRATTON The Daily Astorian F lats of 500-milliliter bottles clanged together at Buoy Beer Co.’s bottling line last week as workers loaded them to be filled with Czech-style Pilsner before being labeled and shipped out. But unlike older vessels, the new bottles will be washed, refilled and reused in an effort to lower the carbon footprint. Buoy Beer is one of seven Ore- gon breweries that have so far joined Oregon Beverage Recy- cling Cooperative’s BottleDrop Refill program, launched this year. Members in the program take on standardized, refillable 500- and 375-milliliter bottles made by Owens-Illinois Glass Plant in northeast Portland to last through at least 25 uses. Dave Kroening, general man- ager of Buoy Beer, said the com- pany recently started sending ship- ments of the refillable bottles to Clatsop Distributing and expects to see them on shelves in the next cou- ple of weeks around Oregon and southwest Washington state. The quickly growing brew- A Northwest Oregon Housing Authority commis- sioner has resigned follow- ing what she called a harass- ing email exchange in which a top administrator, who is on paid leave, complained about the agency’s handling of an ongoing investigation. Commissioner LinMarie DiCianni stepped down in July after emails from Dep- uty Director Teresa Sims about the housing agency and the news media. “These interactions with Ms. Sims were instrumental in my decision to resign from the board,” she said. “This is not something I welcome. It’s not something I brought on, and it’s harassment.” Sims was put on adminis- trative leave in May follow- ing complaints from several staff members. Around the same time, Sims sent a let- ter to Scott Lee, the chair- man of the housing agency’s board, with her own com- plaints about executive direc- tor Todd Johnston and staff. The agency launched two investigations and has declined to comment pub- licly about the details of either one. After a board meeting in early May — before she was placed on leave — Sims pulled DiCianni aside, the commissioner said. Follow- ing a discussion about the staff complaints, DiCianni sent Sims an email a week later advising her to collect written documentation. Sims did not respond until late June, when she sent a lengthy account of her side of the investigation. duty, and rose to the rank of master chief petty officer. He now lives with his wife, Michelle, and 13-year- old daughter, Ella, near Shively Park and is a field By JACK HEFFERNAN operations and policy man- The Daily Astorian ager with the forestry department. A longtime forester has “It’s service, really. I think filed for an Astoria City I have a good breadth of life Council seat. experiences. I feel I bring Ron Zilli, who has worked some relevant experience to for the state Depart- the seat, and I love ment of Forestry for Astoria,” he said. 25 years, will run for Zilli fought a pro- posed 150-foot Ver- the downtown Ward izon Wireless com- 3 seat held by City munications tower Councilor Cindy at Shively Park, con- Price, who is run- ning for mayor in the vincing the City Ron November election. Council in 2016 that Zilli Joan Herman, the tower would be significantly more a radio program- mer and city planning com- visible than Verizon and the missioner, has also filed to city had initially described. While he said he has replace Price. Zilli, 51, earned a forestry opinions about recent pol- degree from Northern Ari- icy issues at City Hall, he zona University. He served declined to share them. 30 years in the Navy, includ- ing eight years on active See ZILLI, Page 7A Zilli will seek downtown seat in November Josh Cuifiti packages bottles of beer as they come off the line. ery previously used a third-party mobile bottling line and supply of bottles. When it was looking to buy its own bottling line, the recy- cling collective reached out, Kroe- ning said. While Buoy will still can its beers, its entire bottling line has been designed around the refillable containers. “The entire program made way too much sense not to pursue,” he said. “It’s really exciting being able to reduce our waste by switching to a package (with) a way better car- bon and energy footprint than new glass bottles.” Joel Schoening, a spokesperson for the collective, said the program is an effort to bring consumers back to a time when milk, beer and many other items came in refillable con- tainers. Refillable bottles still repre- sent about 60 percent of Owens-Il- linois’ market in Latin America and 35 percent in Western Europe. “Research shows that on an average container of beer a con- sumer takes home, the bottle is 40 percent of the environmen- tal impact of the beer,” Schoen- ing said. “We’re billing this as the most sustainable choice in the beer aisle.” See BUOY BEER, Page 7A Astoria grocer fights SNAP decision Turned down over a drug conviction By DERRICK DePLEDGE The Daily Astorian Samuel McDaniel has tried to put the past behind him. Eleven years ago, he was convicted of felony delivery of marijuana and psychedelic mushrooms in Lane County. After he untangled his legal troubles, he moved to the North Coast and took over the Asto- ria Downtown Market, a small grocery on Commercial Street. McDaniel knows his crim- inal record will always fol- low him, but he did not expect it would disqualify him from honoring food stamps for low-income customers at the grocery. The U.S. Department of Agriculture ruled that McDan- iel lacks business integrity because of the drug convic- tion and permanently denied his application to participate in the food stamp program. He lost an administrative review of the decision, so he filed a law- suit against the USDA in fed- eral court in Portland in July to try to reverse the ruling. “It has nothing to do with the business,” McDaniel said. “It has something to do with what happened to me 11 years ago when I was 22, and I’m 33 now.” Safeguards to prevent abuse of the nation’s $63 billion food stamp program empower the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service to deny applications for retailers convicted of crimes like fraud, embezzlement, theft or forgery, as well as violations of consumer protection or busi- ness licensing laws. The Food and Nutrition Ser- vice found in McDaniel’s case that a crime committed during a private transaction, like a drug deal, reflects on his busi- ness integrity. The distinction See GROCER, Page 7A Colin Murphey/The Daily Astorian Samuel McDaniel, the owner of the Astoria Downtown Market, has sued the U.S. Department of Agriculture after being excluded from the food stamp program.
