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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • WEDNESDAY, FEbRuARY 27, 2019
OPINION
editor@dailyastorian.com
KARI BORGEN
Publisher
JIM VAN NOSTRAND
Editor
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JEREMY FELDMAN
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OUR VIEW
Community colleges deserve higher priority
COMMuNITY
COLLEGES TOO
EASILY SLIP FROM
APPROPRIATORS’
MINDS WHEN
buDGET TIME
ROLLS AROuND.
W
ith the possible excep-
tion of some high
school graduates who
can’t wait to put a few hundred
miles between themselves and
their hometowns, everyone loves
community colleges. They are the
Marine Corps of higher education
— useful, efficient, no-nonsense,
mission-oriented.
And yet community colleges
struggle to maintain an appropri-
ate level of support and enthusi-
asm from political leaders — or
sometimes even from local citi-
zens who have the highest stake
in their success. Perhaps because
they lack intercollegiate sports
teams and the other accoutrements
of universities, community col-
leges too easily slip from appro-
priators’ minds when budget time
rolls around.
This confusion — loving local
colleges while starving them of
resources — is amply apparent
this year.
As we recently reported, Clat-
sop Community College is plan-
ning for contingencies, including
potential tuition increases, if state
funding doesn’t come in signifi-
cantly higher than what Gov. Kate
Brown has proposed.
Brown’s proposed two-year
budget recommends $543 mil-
lion for community colleges, a
$27 million cut from this cycle
and the lowest funding level since
the 2015-17 budget. A secondary
proposal from the governor calls
for some meaningful help for col-
leges, but is contingent on legisla-
tors agreeing to $2 billion in addi-
tional taxes.
And while the state grapples
Edward Stratton/The Daily Astorian
Clatsop Community College’s 2018 commencement.
with funding its community col-
leges at current levels, a separate
plan is being floated to allow them
to begin developing full-fledged
bachelor’s degree programs.
This would be a welcome ave-
nue toward career advancement
for many in Clatsop County, who
otherwise find it difficult to bal-
ance jobs and families versus aspi-
rations for four-year degrees. It
would also help in Pacific County,
where Clatsop Community Col-
lege is the primary postsecondary
choice for Ilwaco and Naselle high
school grads.
In Washington state, the
Spokesman-Review reported last
week that lawmakers in session in
Olympia are actively seeking ways
to help defray the cost of col-
lege for low- to moderate-income
students.
By next year, 70 percent of jobs
in the state will require some type
of postsecondary education, but
in 2016, only 44 percent of work-
ers in Washington had received at
least an associate degree, accord-
ing to a report cited by the Spo-
kane newspaper.
The shift in the past decade
of tuition costs from state to stu-
dent has meant students of mod-
est means must spend a greater
percentage of their income on a
degree and are less likely to enroll,
the report said.
To address this need, legisla-
tors are working to provide more
money to the existing Promise
Scholarships program. Last year,
22,600 state students qualified for
this financial aid but didn’t receive
it, because funds ran out.
Gov. Jay Inslee is asking for
$103.3 million “to ensure all stu-
dents at or below 70 percent of
the state’s median family income
receive a scholarship,” the Spokes-
man-Review reported.
In the Washington House, a pro-
Water
under
the bridge
More than 1,500 people sat in a cold, miserable,
drenching drizzle Sunday in Ocean Shores, Washington.
There was supposed to be a surf race, but the lousy
tide didn’t come in strong enough. There was supposed to
be a crab race, but someone swiped the crabs.
“It was,” said promoter Bob Ward, “the most success-
ful February Fog Festival this community has ever had.”
Now in its second year, the February Fog Festival was
dreamed up by local resort owners who decided the only
way to get a little action in the offseason is to be a lit-
tle off.
What most people come to see is the annual North
American Mid Winter Wading Championships, which
sends goose-pimpled patrons dashing through waves up
to seven feet high in the Pacific surf.
Compiled by Bob Duke
From the pages of Astoria’s daily newspapers
10 years ago
this week — 2009
If there’s one thing Astoria has plenty of, it’s his-
toric buildings. Now there’s a plan afoot to turn that
valuable resource into a money-maker for the region by
organizing a Historic Preservation Economic Cluster.
A historic preservation cluster would provide a
framework for an interdependent relationship among
property owners, developers, contractors, craftspeo-
ple, suppliers, merchants, educators, government agen-
cies and tourism-related businesses throughout Clatsop
County, said Rick Gardner, director of Clatsop Eco-
nomic Development Resource (CEDR).
“If you say Napa Valley, people think wine,” Gardner
said. “We want Astoria to mean historic preservation.”
The local housing market is showing signs
of distress as the national housing crisis
continues.
In the past year, home foreclosures in Clat-
sop County doubled while sales on the North
Coast dropped by one-third.
Local real estate agents say with prices and
interest rates falling, it’s a buyer’s market. But
some buyers have been scared off by the eco-
nomic recession, while others have struggled
to secure home loans as banks rein in lending.
Even though the North Coast has a rela-
tively stable housing market compared with
the rest of the country, many suspect local
home prices will fall further before the bal-
ance of buyers to sellers evens out.
Local businesses are tightening their belts and
changing strategies to stay afloat as consumers trim
spending.
They’re reducing staff hours, switching inventory
and cutting deals. And, for the most part, they’re hang-
ing on.
Several notable business have closed recently as the
economy has slowed, including Cafe Uniontown and
the Windsor House of Tea in Astoria, Panaderia Fiesta
Bakery and Sound Waves Car Stereo in Warrenton and
the Day Spa on Broadway and KB Toys in Seaside.
posal would start ramping up free
community and technical college
for all low- to moderate-income
students.
It is good to see leadership of
the Pacific Northwest states grap-
ple with how to support students
and the community colleges upon
which so many of them rely. It is
less good to see such a scatter-
gun approach, with too little sign
of connections between goals
and realistic long-term funding
streams.
Speaking for our region’s rural
areas, the importance of commu-
nity colleges can’t be overstated.
They are one of society’s best
investments. They provide a path
to higher education for many who
might otherwise find it difficult to
build on a high school diploma.
In a world that requires computer,
math and language competency, an
associate’s degree can play a large
role in personal success.
If our states truly care about
bridging the urban-rural divide, a
great place to start is guarantee-
ing appropriate levels of funding
for community colleges and the
students who attend them. This
would help many more citizens
than the largess showered on uni-
versities in the form of athletic
coaches’ salaries and other frills.
75 years ago — 1944
Movie poster from 1944.
50 years ago — 1969
After seeing the site first-hand, a group of state offi-
cials said the proposal for an earth-filled dam on the
North Fork of the Klaskanine River is probably worth
investigating.
Seven men from various state agencies, a private engi-
neer and Larry Snyder, chairman of the Clatsop Water
Resources Board, descended a steep hillside Friday to
look at the site of the dam, which is being proposed to
increase production at the State Fish Commission’s Klas-
kanine Fish Hatchery.
A device to prevent valve parts from falling
into an engine cylinder in case of breakage or
damage to a valve spring has been patented by
an Astoria man, Victor Erickson.
A description in the letter of patent calls the
device a “valve safety cap securable over a valve
circular spring retainer plant to prevent valve
components from dropping down into engine
cylinders in case of breakage or damage to the
valve spring.”
Planting of roadside strips on the Wolf Creek highway
from Sunset camp to the Nehalem bridge will be under-
taken immediately by the West Coast Lumbermen’s
Association as a contribution to the state of Oregon. This
project, conceived several years ago by the officials of the
lumber association, became assured Wednesday when
the state highway commission gave its approval.
This section of the Wolf Creek highway is an ugly
stretch of the great thoroughfare, traversing as it does
an area that has been denuded of timber and which has
become a waste of unsightly stumps, burned and fallen
timber. It is to cover these scars with evergreens that the
timbermen have decided to reforest strips between 500
and 600 feet in depth on each side of the highway.
The Westport and Wauna lumber companies
Wednesday became the first mills in Clatsop
County to fly the red, white and blue “Army-
Navy E” pennant over their operations, after
awards and praise were delivered to them at
special ceremonies before the massed working
personnel, their families and many big-name
lumbermen from the Northwest.
The ceremony at Westport was held on the
open dock from a bunting-draped platform and
with several hundred people sitting on gigan-
tic timbers hewn by the mill from the big sticks
of Oregon forests. At Wauna, the program was
presented in one of the big Wauna mill’s sheds,
where a shaft of sunlight knifed through one of
the dormer windows, and played directly on a
big “V” that marked the speakers’ platform.
“All to the good” is the way shop keepers locally refer
to the new blue and red ration tokens in circulation today.
There is just a bit of confusion attached to the cashing of
the K, L and M processed food stamps at various values,
say merchants, but generally speaking the token system
appears to be just what the situation requires.