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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 14, 2018)
DailyAstorian.com // TUESDAY, AUGUST 14, 2018 146TH YEAR, NO. 32 Buehler announces plan to end homelessness ONE DOLLAR CUTTING DOWN Republican candidate sets goal for 2023 By PARIS ACHEN Capital Bureau State Rep. Knute Buehler, the Republican nominee for governor, has announced a sev- en-point plan to end unsheltered homeless- ness by 2023. Nearly 14,000 people are considered homeless in Oregon, an increase of 6 per- cent between 2015 and 2017, according to a survey in January 2017 by Oregon Housing and Com- munity Services. Clatsop County was among the top five counties in the state for homelessness. “Under Kate Brown, our Knute homeless crisis is getting Buehler worse,” Buehler said Mon- day. “It’s become a human- itarian, public health and public safety crisis that needs bolder and more creative leader- ship from a new governor,” One proposal in the plan calls for build- ing 4,000 temporary shelter beds and 4,000 long-term supportive housing beds. He has proposed paying for the project with a com- bination of $10 million in state funds and fed- eral, local, nonprofit and private resources. State grants would be made to local gov- ernments and nonprofit and private partners to build and manage the beds and programs. See BUEHLER, Page 3A Astoria City Forester Ben Hayes speaks during a tour of a logging operation at the Bear Creek watershed. Photos by Colin Murphey/The Daily Astorian Astoria’s timber harvests expected to be more complex By KATIE FRANKOWICZ | The Daily Astorian A timber harvest underway in Astoria’s Bear Creek watershed this summer is among the last of the city’s easy- to-access thinning projects. ¶ Timber prices fluctuate from year to year and timber revenue is never some- thing the city banks on. But going forward, operations in the watershed are expected to only become more complex, more involved and potentially more costly. ¶ It’s been a good year for prices, said Jeff Harrington, the city’s public works director. But, as he told the budget committee in April, the city is vulnerable to market swings. Harrington and City Manager Brett Estes anticipate less revenue from harvests down the road. At Hipcamp, a link to the outdoors Like Airbnb, but for cool campgrounds By EDWARD STRATTON The Daily Astorian Heavy logging equipment sits at the site. ALTOONA, Wash. — On a steep hillside between two former canning towns on the Washington side of the Columbia River, Sol Mertz and his partners are busy creating an idyllic, edible garden for campers at the Rose Creek Retreat. Most of the campground’s visitors come from Hipcamp, a nationwide online reser- vation network for private campgrounds launched in 2013 in San Francisco. Hipcamp recently expanded into Oregon, including two sites listed in the southeastern corner of Clatsop County. “We got started early in Hipcamp,” Mertz said. “They believed in our concept, and we believed in their concept.” Campers can rent three separate areas at the Rose Creek Retreat. The most pop- ular is the Rose Garden, a landing above Altoona-Pillar Rock Road surrounded by edible plants. The site overlooks wildlife and passing ship traffic on the Columbia and comes with a yurt-like sleeping room and a fire pit. A stack of logs sits ready to be loaded on trucks. Hampton Tree Farms is thinning a dense, spruce-dominated stand on approximately 50 acres of the Bear Creek watershed. The har- vest is expected to result in gross revenue of $259,400. After paying for expenses like road improvements and replanting, the city estimates $199,500 will land in the capital improvement fund. In the future, though, “some of the cuts we’ll need to do are in tougher areas,” Harrington said. And, the costs of doing business in the water- shed — road improvements, maintenance, rock and labor expenses — are expected to go up. The Bear Creek watershed, the source of Astoria’s water, is a protected area now but was logged heavily by commercial companies in the distant past. The city conducts small-scale har- vests, though the trees are not cut to the full extent allowed. Recent harvests have targeted clumped stands like the spruce Hampton is cutting now — a monoculture of trees that lacks the eco- logical diversity found in good wildlife habi- “We never really truly know until we get the bids.” Susan Brooks Astoria’s finance director tat — or sites thick with Douglas fir introduced by timber companies in the past that have since been impacted by Swiss needle cast. The fungus attacks a tree’s crown and stunts the tree. Astoria also agreed not to aggressively har- vest timber for the next decade in exchange for carbon credits. The city partnered with The Cli- mate Trust, a Portland nonprofit, to purchase the carbon credits, an arrangement that has gener- ated hundreds of thousands of dollars for the city. The money generated by carbon credits has had a substantial fiscal impact, said Susan Brooks, the city’s finance director. The sale of timber, less so. Although it is a nice, if hard to predict, revenue source to have available. “We usually try to get a pretty good estimate from our forester during the end of the budget cycle, right before we bring it forward and that’s probably the best we can do,” Brooks said. But, she added, “We never really truly know until we get the bids.” See TIMBER, Page 5A See HIPCAMP, Page 5A Adventurer embarks on a 50-state trek A stop in Long Beach By PATRICK WEBB Chinook Observer LONG BEACH, Wash. — Rachael Jera- hian has a plan, but admits she is making it up as she goes along. The 34-year-old New York native was in Long Beach, Washington, this month on an ambitious trip. The TV executive’s goal is to set foot in all 50 states before embarking on the second phase of her adventure — visiting all 195 countries. Along the way, she plans to climb the highest peak on each of the seven continents and ski at the North and South poles. She calls it the “Global Grand Slam Expedition.” Jerahian grew up in New York and earned a degree in international broadcast journal- ism at Kean University of New Jersey. Her early dream of becoming a reporter took a different turn when she discovered that she enjoyed behind the scenes for a produc- tion company in Manhattan. Since then, she has produced everything from documen- tary series to commercials, plus TV shows including “The Hunt with John Walsh,” “Duck Dynasty” and the “The Great Amer- ican Read.” Her jobs with networks like CNN, Food, A&E, Discovery, Netflix and Travel have focused on logistics and budgets while help- ing creative artists achieve their visions. A few years ago, after both her parents died of cancer, Jerahian re-evaluated her life. “I never got a passport until I was 30,” she said. “I grew up in New York, trying to Patrick Webb/Chinook Observer See TREK, Page 5A Rachael Jerahian visited downtown Long Beach this month as part of a 50-state trek.
