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.