Trash transformed into art
COAST WEEKEND • INSIDE
DailyAstorian.com // THURSDAY, MAY 23, 2019
146TH YEAR, NO. 227
$1.50
McClaine ousts Hunsinger in Port race
Commissioner was critical
of agency management
ELECTION RESULTS
See full election results for Clatsop County
online at: results.oregonvotes.gov
By EDWARD STRATTON
The Astorian
Commissioner Bill Hunsinger, who
emerged as the primary critic of the Port of
Astoria’s leadership and fi nancial manage-
ment , lost his reelection bid on Tuesday to
challenger Scott McClaine, a self-described
set of fresh eyes.
McClaine received 63 % of the vote to
Hunsinger’s 37%.
McClaine, a 28-year Coast Guard vet-
eran who retired to Astoria and ran Clatsop
Coin, quit his job as a security guard at the
Port to run against Hunsinger.
MORE INSIDE
College, school board, transit and
park and rec district races
Pages A2-A3
Scott McClaine
Bill Hunsinger
He stressed the need for increased civil-
ity on the Port Commission, which has often
been beset by infi ghting and drama — with
Hunsinger usually at the center.
“The general public through property
taxes and stuff, generates like 4 percent
of the Port’s budget,” McClaine said. “We
need to show them what we do so we can
get more non-negative press and get more
trust from the county. I’m not saying more
tax dollars. I’m saying more trust.”
The Port needs to do more public out-
reach, including a booth at the Clatsop
County Fair to inform residents of what it
does, he said.
Hunsinger, a commercial fi sherman
and former longshoreman, congratulated
McClaine and thanked the public for his 12
years on the Port Commission.
He was consistently critical of Jim
Knight, the Port’s executive director, repeat-
edly calling for his ouster.
“All the commissioners should be
recalled, except for Scott, because we’re
not doing our job,” Hunsinger said. “I can’t
fi nd anything the Port manager has done to
help the Port of Astoria over the last 4 1/2
years.”
Hunsinger’s defeat in Position 3 leaves
Commissioner Dirk Rohne as the commis-
sioner most critical of Knight’s performance.
See Port, Page A6
Prosecution,
defense close
arguments in
murder trial
Jurors hear woman helped
her boyfriend with crime
By EDWARD STRATTON
The Astorian
Prosecutors trying to convict Adeena
Copell in the murder of a Newport man
in 2016 closed their arguments Tuesday,
describing her actions in tandem with
her boyfriend, Christian Wilkins, who
pleaded guilty to the murder earlier this
month .
Copell’s
defense
painted her as subser-
vient to a domineer-
ing partner and guilty of
bad judg ment, but not
murder.
Howard Vinge, 71,
Adeena
was beaten to death
Copell
inside his RV in Sep-
tember 2016. H is body
was dumped several days later down an
embankment along U.S. Highway 30 east
of Astoria.
Wilkins and Copell, who had lived
with Vinge for about two months before
his death, allegedly took his RV and
sedan. They dumped the RV on U.S.
Highway 26 in Hamlet after it broke
down and drove the sedan to Arizona,
where they were arrested.
See Trial, Page A5
Jewell strips
Superintendent
Hunsaker
of duties
Decision comes
after investigation
EAGLE
COUNTRY
Nick Myatt
A bald eagle sits perched on a tree branch.
Ranchers blame
eagles for their
livestock deaths
By KATIE FRANKOWICZ
The Astorian
ROWNSMEAD — The large
bald eagle fl ew so low over
Ben Parker’s head, he felt the
wind from its wings.
“She comes right down overhead,”
he said.
The Brownsmead rancher suspects
it is the same eagle that has been been
hunting his lambs this spring. He has
lost four so far.
Longtime Clatsop County resi-
dents can still remember a time when
it was rare to see a bald eagle. The
raptors were once considered on the
brink of extinction and were only
removed from the federal Endangered
Species Act list in Oregon in 2007.
Now? “It’s basically almost an
explosion,” said Neal Maine, a Gear-
B
Katie Frankowicz/The Astorian
A lamb on Ben Parker’s farm stays close
to its mother.
hart-based wildlife photographer.
Bald eagles are found in nearly
every county in Oregon and their
numbers continue to rise across
the country. With this eagle explo-
sion comes a new challenge: How to
co exist?
Predation of livestock by eagles is
rare on the North C oast, according to
state and federal reports. But the num-
bers are hard to tease out. Many peo-
ple don’t report predation, and even
when they do, it’s not always possi-
Katie Frankowicz/The Astorian
Ben Parker displays a lamb that he
believes fell victim to a bird of prey.
ble to be certain an eagle is to blame.
“It gets a little murky,” said Rus-
sell Hunter, a veterinarian who runs
his practice out of Knappa and has
helped investigate livestock deaths.
“The predation is real and it’s emo-
tional and it’s a little bit hard to deter-
mine how much of it is going on.”
See Eagles, Page A5
By EDWARD STRATTON
The Astorian
JEWELL — The Jewell School Board
on Monday stripped Superintendent
Alice Hunsaker of the right to represent
the school district after
an investigation found
she served without an
administrator’s license
and failed to ensure com-
pletion of employee
evaluations.
Bryan Swearingen, the
Alice
school board’s chairman,
Hunsaker
declined to comment on
the specifi cs of the inves-
tigation until Hunsaker is issued a letter
of discipline in her permanent fi le.
Show goes on, but Astoria Music Festival pares down
Liberty Theatre
likely not a venue
By KATIE FRANKOWICZ
The Astorian
See Hunsaker, Page A5
Dwight Caswell/For The Astorian
Keith Clark conducts the Astoria Music Festival Orchestra in 2017.
Amid missed booking dead-
lines, fundraising woes and
concerns that the 17-year-old
Astoria Music Festival was in
jeopardy, the show will go on.
This week, the Liberty The-
atre, historically the festival’s
largest venue, decided to fi ll
slots at the end of June that had
been kept open for the festival .
The festival had already missed
booking deadlines earlier this
year and lost out on other slots in
mid-June. W hen Jennifer Crock-
ett, the Liberty’s executive direc-
tor, met with festival organizers
last week, there was still no pro-
gram or plan, she said. The the-
ater had to move on.
But Deac Guidi, the festival
board president, said a pared-
down version of the classi-
cal music series is still being
planned for mid-June. The festi-
val will focus more on its young
artists’ program this year. Con-
certs and performances will
be held around Astoria, but at
smaller venues, such as Peace
See Festival, Page A6