A6
THE ASTORIAN • SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 2021
Windows: ‘Program provides a good opportunity’ Economy: Infl ation
Continued from Page A1
eating into some gains
He got in touch with
McGrath and Lucien Swerd-
loff , the coordinator and one
of the founders of the col-
lege program, who were
thrilled to move forward .
“We wouldn’t really have
known about this without
Ed,” McGrath said. “ …
We want to get that build-
ing back to its original shape
because it has good bones to
it, it has just been neglected
for a lot of years. We want
to get that back up to good
shape so that it looks really
good, and gives a good face
to Ed.”
During two weekend
workshops with one more
to go, the students have
removed several windows
to work on them. After dust-
ing off the 40 years of saw-
dust, Swerdloff said, the
students began restoring
sashes, cleaning up and oil-
ing the jambs, replacing bro-
ken glass and repairing rot-
ten wood, among several
other tasks.
Many of the windows,
Swerdloff said, have not
been operable for a long
time.
McGrath estimates there
are around 48 windows on
the building, and since the
students will only get around
to restoring six of them,
Swerdloff thought it would
be a good idea for some of
the Port’s employees to sit in
on the workshop.
“The idea was to train our
students, but also to train
some of their employees
so they can take the project
Continued from Page A1
Clatsop Community College
The historic preservation program at Clatsop Community College has helped prepare students
to enter the industry.
over and continue working
on the windows afterwards,”
Swerdloff said.
McGrath, along with
another Port employee,
attended the workshop last
weekend. He believes the
complete restoration of all
the windows will take sev-
eral years.
“It’s a really labor-inten-
sive process to bring these
wood windows back to orig-
inal glory,” McGrath said.
On top of being advan-
tageous for the community,
Overbay and Swerdloff view
the college program as bene-
fi tting the next generation of
workers.
“The program provides
a good opportunity for stu-
dents and gives them a lot
of chances to go on for fur-
ther education or look for
jobs,” Swerdloff said. “We
are really community-fo-
cused. O bviously, we are
a community college, but
really that is part of our mis-
sion — to be out in the com-
munity, engage people and
help the community and
just be involved with build-
ing owners, people and local
contractors.”
Among those who have
completed the program and
moved on into the indus-
try is Chris Gustafson, the
owner of Vintage Window
Restoration in Albany.
Gustafson, who Swerdl-
off considers one of the main
window restoration experts
in the state, is the instruc-
tor of the workshops and the
wood restoration course .
He remains grateful for
a program that redirected
his career during the Great
Recession in 2008.
“In the sense of taking
what I learned and actu-
ally practicing it as a busi-
ness and being dedicated to
it, and then taking what I’ve
learned and sharing it with
others,” Gustafson said. “ …
I don’t see it as a job, but as
community service.
“To be born and raised
in that town, go through the
program and start a career in
it then come back and teach
— it’s just fantastic.”
Sture: ‘I’m not going to fall anymore’
Continued from Page A1
A psychologist who
evaluated Sture before this
week’s hearing diagnosed
him with antisocial person-
ality traits and a host of sub-
stance use disorders involv-
ing alcohol, stimulants,
cannabis and heroin.
John Bailey, the parole
board member who led the
hearing, read from the psy-
chologist’s report, which
concluded that Sture’s risk
of violent behavior was low,
but that the risk goes up if
he starts drinking or using
drugs.
Sture told the other board
members present — Greta
Lowry and James Taylor —
that he has been clean for
almost two years.
This time frame, Bailey
pointed out, isn’t that long;
the board often interviews
inmates with many more
years of sobriety behind
them.
Given how often Sture
has relapsed while incar-
cerated, Bailey said he has
to decide how likely Sture
is to relapse once he is back
in the community. “I want to
be transparent with you and
tell you that I’m concerned
about that,” he told Sture.
“I’m not going down
that road anymore,” Sture
responded. “I am not going
to hurt anybody the way I
hurt Sgt. Shepherd. I can’t
do that. I won’t do that.”
Taylor pointed out that
drugs are easier to obtain
outside of prison than they
are inside — and marijuana
is now legal in Oregon.
“What do you think it
will take to keep you sober?”
Taylor asked Sture.
“Conviction,”
Sture
replied. “Conviction and
work. I’m not going to fall
anymore.”
Sture said he planned to
fi nd a job, take advantage
of mental health programs
and join Marion Coun-
ty’s Narcotics Anonymous
community.
His
close
relatives
attended the hearing. His sis-
ter, Cindy Wiggins, said that
her family will help Sture if
the board grants him parole.
“If any of us thought
that Mike would be danger-
ous to be released into soci-
ety, we would most certainly
not be making this statement
today,” Wiggins said.
The religious studies
group that Sture has been
involved with in prison also
said they would support him.
“We live in a society that
believes in the rule of law,
the importance of the rule
of law, and for that reason,
we incarcerate people who
make serious errors,” said
Douglas Parker, a volun-
teer with the religious stud-
ies group. “But we also look
at the rehabilitation and
the reentry, the reclama-
tion of these lives that (is)
possible.”
‘Incomprehensible’
Sandra Bierschied, Shep-
herd’s daughter, was 14
when her dad was mur-
dered. She said she “heard
the shots in the distance that
took his life.”
“I had reoccurring night-
mares that (Sture) is outside
my house with a gun shoot-
ing at my family,” she said.
“And these nightmares are
part of who I am now.”
When she wakes up, she
at least has “the security of
knowing that this man is
in prison and this helps me
move forward every day.
“The thought of this
man being paroled is
incomprehensible.”
Brown said that Sture
should remain locked up
because of “the enormity of
the crime.”
“This
was
not
a
drunk-driving crash or
something
like
that,”
Brown said. “This was
monumental.”
Brown
said
Sture
allegedly told one of his
friends who was inter-
viewed about the original
crime that “it would be easy
to kill someone on a motor-
cycle.” Brown maintains
that Shepherd’s murder was
“arguably a ‘thrill kill.’”
And that’s very concerning
because that could reoccur.
“He was executed, Jim
Shepherd was, in cold
blood,” Brown continued.
“We only have Mr. Sture
to tell us whether he ever
suff ered much after he was
shot the fi rst time until he
was executed by two shots
to the head.”
Calling Sture a “poten-
tial time bomb waiting to go
off with his drug and alco-
hol issues,” Brown asked
the board to push back his
parole for at least two more
years, “to give him time to
build a better track record.”
Sarah Shepherd, Shep-
herd’s grandniece, is a dep-
uty district attorney in Clat-
sop County. She wasn’t yet
born when her uncle died.
But she became a prosecu-
tor, she said, “defi nitely in
part because of what hap-
pened to my family, and
the generational trauma
that our family has gone
through because of what
happened to my uncle.
“Everything about this
process is why I became a
prosecutor, because I don’t
want other families to suf-
fer as mine has suff ered,”
she said.
She noted that, after
more than four decades in
prison, Sture was still at
step No. 4 of the 12-step
Narcotics Anonymous and
isn’t active in the program
at the moment.
“From the work that
I’ve done in drug treatment
programs, Mr. Sture is not
someone we would even
consider for graduation,”
let alone “released from
prison,” she said.
If the parole board
releases Sture, she said, it
will put him in the same
position he was in in 1980.
“He knows that when
he relapses and when he
fails, when he commits a
new crime, he’ll be facing
coming back to prison. And
he now knows more about
prison than he did when he
was 24. He knows how ter-
rible it is.
“So what’ll happen to
the next person who catches
‘I HAD REOCCURRING NIGHTMARES
THAT (STURE) IS OUTSIDE MY HOUSE WITH
A GUN SHOOTING AT MY FAMILY. AND THESE
NIGHTMARES ARE PART OF WHO I AM NOW.’
Sandra Bierschied | daughter of Sgt. James D. Shepherd
him?” she continued. “If
it’s his P O (parole offi cer)
walking up to his residence
and he has drugs there, if
it’s a police offi cer doing a
traffi c stop when he’s cho-
sen to abscond, what’s
going to happen? I know
what’s going to happen.”
McMullen said tax col-
lections so far are exceed-
ing the close-of-session
forecasts set when lawmak-
ers put together the 2021-
23 state budget in June.
Under Oregon’s kicker law,
amounts that exceed the
forecast by 2% or more go
back to taxpayers, or in the
case of businesses, into the
school fund.
Taxpayers will see cred-
its amounting to a record
$1.9 billion when they fi le
2021 tax returns in 2022.
The $847 million in excess
corporate income taxes was
added to the two-year $9.3
billion school fund.
McMullen and senior
economist
Josh
Leh-
ner spoke as the Oregon
Employment Department
released the state’s October
unemployment rate, which
dipped to 4.4% from 4.7%
in September. Oregon’s
economy continued to add
jobs, but the agency also
reported that growth has
slowed since summer.
Oregon is still 70,000
jobs below its pre-pan-
demic peak — the state’s
unemployment rate shot up
from a record-low 3.5% in
March 2020 to an adjusted
13.2% the following month
after businesses closed or
curtailed operations — and
the Employment Depart-
ment said 30,000 of those
still-unrecovered jobs were
in restaurants, bars and
hotels, known as the leisure
and hospitality sector.
But many workers moved
into higher-paying jobs in
other sectors, such as trans-
portation and warehousing
— and employers are pay-
ing higher wages. “As a
result, we are seeing income
tax collections refl ecting it,”
McMullen said.
Infl ation is eating into
some of those gains, though
Lehner said workers earn-
ing less than $20 per hour
are still seeing real growth
in wages, but those earning
more are feeling the pinch.
“We are in this sup-
ply-constrained economy
where there are infl ationary
pressures much higher than
we have seen in 30 years,”
he said.
While some infl ation-
ary pressures are short
term, such as the produc-
tion of goods that has not
yet caught up with con-
sumer demand, Lehner said
Oregon still faces long-term
issues such as the lack of
lower-cost housing. Hous-
ing sales prices and rents
have continued to go up.
McMullen and Leh-
ner did reinforce Employ-
ment Department reports
that Oregon’s rural coun-
ties, not its big cities, have
led the recovery from the
pandemic. During 2020,
median income growth in
the 18 counties east of the
Cascades was around 15%
— double the U.S. median
of 7.6% — while it was
lowest in Benton County
and Washington County,
which have the state’s high-
est per-capita incomes.
Lehner said all Orego-
nians benefi ted from federal
transfer payments such as
stimulus checks, enhanced
unemployment
benefi ts
and an expanded child tax
credit. The fi rst two have
ended, and President Joe
Biden’s Build Back Better
plan proposes to extend the
third for another year.
“A lot of these coun-
ties started with a low-in-
come base. When you add
these transfer payments …
it led to large percentage
increases,” Lehner said.
“But our tradition-
ally highest-income, low-
est-unemployment coun-
ties lagged behind the U.S.
median because it is a much
smaller share in high-in-
come areas.”
The Oregon Capital
Bureau is a collaboration
between EO Media Group
and Pamplin Media Group.
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