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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 22, 2018)
3A THE DAILY ASTORIAN • WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 22, 2018 Former Portland teacher banned from States aim to stop teaching for public indecency in Astoria internet release of Miller also served as union president By BETSY HAMMOND and BETHANY BARNES The Oregonian A controversial former Lin- coln High School teacher and Portland teachers union presi- dent has had his right to teach permanently revoked after he was convicted of inde- cent exposure for masturbat- ing naked on a public street in Astoria, records show. Jeff Miller taught social studies at Lincoln High for several years before he retired after getting in trouble for wor- risome conduct around stu- dents. Before joining the fac- ulty at Lincoln, he taught at Cleveland High for 20 years and also taught at Wilson and Benson high schools. He was an elected leader of the Port- land Association of Teachers for 11 years, culminating in serving as its president from 2006 to 2008. The behavior that caused him to lose his license hap- pened in summer 2016. A cou- ple saw him lying naked on a towel in public and masturbat- Jeff Miller ing in Astoria, where he and his wife own a vacation home a short walk from Astoria High School. He was 60 years old at the time. According to the state teacher licensing committee, the pair captured photographic evidence of the crime. Jeffrey Scott Miller pleaded no contest to indecent expo- sure in March 2017 and was sentenced to 10 days in jail plus 18 months probation. He is still on probation, with con- ditions that include a ban on using or possessing marijuana and a requirement that he sub- mit to random searches of his Lake Oswego and Astoria homes. In August 2017, Oregon’s Teacher Standards and Prac- tices Commission notified Miller it planned to ban him from ever regaining a teaching license because of his convic- tion for public masturbation. He did not respond to or con- test the commission’s action. Miller also did not immedi- ately reply to a message left Monday at the office of the lawyer who represented him in the indecency matter. Miller retired from Lincoln under a cloud several years ago, having been put on leave by the district and publicly rep- rimanded by Oregon’s teacher licensing agency for a host of unprofessional acts deemed by the licensing board as consti- tuting “gross neglect of duty.” According to that find- ing, Miller used the N-word in class, threatened two stu- dents, failed to present bal- anced views of politics during class, used swear words while teaching and displayed post- ers “including skateboards with animated models in sex- ually suggestive positions and containing captions includ- ing ‘school sucks’ and ‘I hate school.’” Students videotaped some of his conduct and posted it on YouTube. One video showed him as he led a rowdy pro- test and, for several seconds, pressed his body against that of a female student. She later said she was not upset by his conduct. Lincoln Principal Peyton Chapman did not immedi- ately respond to requests for comment. In March, Chapman gave an in-depth interview to the school’s student news- paper, The Cardinal Times, about how she handles prob- lem teachers. Miller retired during the 2013-14 school year and is paid $44,000 a year in public employee retirement benefits. John Larson, president of the Oregon Education Associ- ation, said Monday in a state- ment that the state teachers union strongly supports get- ting bad actors banned from teaching. “There is no place in the education system for anyone who has exhibited the types of behaviors that Jeff Miller has been convicted of. That behav- ior is unacceptable. Period. I support the actions taken by the Teacher Standards and Practices Commission to keep him out of our schools. Dis- tricts and administrators need to act swiftly to address this type of behavior as soon as it is reported.” Coastal towns tackle vacation rentals Tension brews between tourism and livability By TOM BANSE Northwest News Network Hot housing markets in major cities like Seattle and Portland have pushed the cities to regulate short-term rentals like Airbnb. But small Pacific Northwest towns popular with visitors are also struggling to balance the growth of Airb- nb-type rentals with a tight housing supply. Newport is the latest to put those types of rentals in the crosshairs. Newport is a beach town on the central coast known for its working waterfront, sea lions, lighthouses and aquar- ium. Now, the town finds itself at the messy intersection of the sharing economy, the tourism business and a housing crunch. The second of two open houses for people to ask ques- tions and sound off on short- term rentals happens Wednes- day evening at Newport City Hall. Sandy Benning came to the first open house last week to support capping the number of short-term vacation rentals available in Newport. Benning said she learned firsthand how tight the housing market on the Oregon Coast is when she and her husband moved to New- port two years ago. “We literally looked for a place to rent for almost 90 days,” Benning said. “That entire time we stayed in VRDs (vacation rental dwell- ings) around the local area. It was a huge expense for us to stay here over the summer for what, three months, before we found a place to live.” Benning shares a widely held concern around the Northwest that landlords are converting long-term units for the local workforce into short-term rentals for visitors because the temporary rentals are more lucrative. Tom Banse/Northwest News Network In Newport, vacation rentals are concentrated along the bluffs above the Pacific Ocean. ‘Lots of traffic. Lots of noise. Garbage. Lots of people. This was a quiet neighborhood.…’ Newport resident Carla Perry lives in an oceanfront neighborhood where vacation rentals have proliferated “This was something we found repeatedly,” Benning said. “In fact, we ended up having to purchase a home. And the availability of homes for us to purchase was very, very limited.” Newport resident Carla Perry was also on hand at City Hall to share her opin- ion. She lives in an oceanfront neighborhood where vacation rentals have proliferated and created what Perry calls “a critical situation.” “Lots of traffic. Lots of noise. Garbage. Lots of peo- ple,” Perry said. “This was a quiet neighborhood. It’s changed that. There are no neighbors. It’s not like you can know who is staying anywhere.” Perry is part of a citizen advisory committee that came up with options for how New- port could regulate short- term rentals. The alternatives include limits on the num- ber of vacation rentals, their location or density, as well as establishing a complaint hotline. Newport Community Development Director Der- rick Tokos said the commit- tee borrowed ideas from other Northwest places that took a run at this issue recently. Hood River doesn’t restrict home shares or bed-and- breakfasts where the owner or a manager lives on the prem- ises. Gearhart and Yachats have caps on short-term rent- als, and Durango has a den- sity limit that only allows one short-term vacation rental per block. “It’s kind of a potpourri,” Tokos said. “They looked at best management practices that a lot of jurisdictions are using. These are all kinda liv- ing codes that get updated periodically as jurisdictions try something. Then, ‘Hey, maybe that wasn’t working like we wanted.’ So they make adjustments.” Newport has a permanent population just over 10,000. Tokos said about 200 proper- ties are licensed as vacation rentals. The push to clamp down comes just as more prop- erty owners are looking to list their beach homes with rental management companies. Pete Even, who lives outside of Springfield, is in the process of a buying a second home in Newport with hopes of gener- ating some retirement income. “There’s already enough rules and regulations on the books. They just need to be enforced,” Even said on his way out of City Hall. “We want to do it the right way, but we don’t want to be micro- managed if we’re doing it properly.” Jon Tesar of Kennewick, Washington, owns a second home in Newport that he’d like to turn into a vacation rental. He’s concerned a cap that’s too restrictive might mess up his plans, not to mention the city’s greater economic prospects. “If you start to estab- lish yourself as a place that is unfriendly to tourists, it’s a slippery slope,” Tesar said. “You don’t know where it’s going. So if you start restrict- ing the number of tourists that can come in, it just doesn’t seem like it’s good for our economy. You’re wasting the space.” The Newport City Council will have the final say on what to do after the citizens commit- tee and the planning commis- sion first try to reach consen- sus where they can. Newport has a fairly basic licensing requirement for vacation rentals that permits them in all zones of the city if adequate parking is available. Nearby Lincoln City last year joined several other coastal cities in limiting the number of vacation rentals allowed in residential neighborhoods. Astoria only allows vacation rentals in commercial zones, although an Airbnb search this week showed that restriction is being flouted. 3D-printed gun plans By MARTHA BELLISLE Associated Press SEATTLE — A federal judge in Seattle hearing arguments over a settlement that allows a Texas com- pany to post online plans for printing 3D guns said Tues- day the overall issue of such untraceable plastic weapons should be decided by the president or Congress. U.S. District Judge Rob- ert Lasnik said he’ll rule by Monday on the legal issues involving the settlement between the company and the Trump administration. He added, however, that “a solution to the greater prob- lem is so much better suited to the other two branches of government.” Nineteen states and the District of Columbia sued the federal govern- ment, alleging it reached a “covert” settlement with the company, Defense Dis- tributed, without notifying Congress or the Department of Defense about changes it made to an export act that prohibited 3D gun plans from being posted online. The Austin-based com- pany is owned by Cody Wilson, a self-described “crypto-anarchist” who opposes restrictions on gun ownership. Lasnik granted a restraining order in July that blocked the immediate release of the plans online. The states want him to make it permanent. Washington state Assis- tant Attorney General Jeff Rupert argued that the gov- ernment’s decision to allow the posting threatens pub- lic safety and should be reversed. Any felon or terror- ist with a laptop and a 3D printer could start making firearms that can’t be seen by a metal detector, leav- ing airports, courthouses, jails and many government buildings and schools — vulnerable, he said. Lasnik made it clear that he was frustrated that he only had a few days to make decisions on “probably the most significant case that I’ve handled as a United States District Court judge.” He added, “I really hope and wish that the executive branch and Congress would face up to this.” More than a dozen mem- bers of the Washington Chapter of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America filled half the courtroom during the hear- ing wearing red T-shirts. They later said they agreed that the answer lies in Wash- ington, D.C. “We do believe in the right to own a gun, but we also believe in this country our rights rest of a founda- tion of shared responsibil- ity to keep all members of society safe,” group spokes- woman Sue Whitecomb said. “And we believe that is the job of Congress.” Consult a PROFESSIONAL Q: What is Intel’s “Optane” memory? LEO FINZI Astoria’s Best.com is memory for your A: Optane hard drive. Traditional hard drives (HDs), with moving parts, have been the slow point in computer speed. Solid State Drives (SSDs) have improved speed dramatically, but they are expensive. Most computers using SSDs typically have 75% LESS W indoWs 10 storage space than computers with desktop computers , traditional HDs. Optane memory starting at increases the speed of traditional $99.99 HDs to approach the speed of SSDs. 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