A6
Coast Guard rescues fi shing boats
during fi rst week of crab season
The Astorian
During the fi rst week
of crab season, U.S. Coast
Guard Station Cape Disap-
pointment rescued three com-
mercial fi shing vessels off
the n orth Oregon and s outh
Washington state coasts.
The fi rst was a 40-foot
vessel that experienced a
transmission failure 3 nau-
tical miles off the Gearhart
coast on the evening of Dec.
1. The Coast Guard towed the
boat, with its crew of four and
9,000 pounds of crab, back
to land, mooring them in the
Warrenton area.
The second rescue, on Sat-
urday, involved a 58-footer
carrying four crew members
and 10,000 pounds of crab.
The vessel had stalled 1 nau-
tical mile off Seaside and
was towed to the Skipanon
Marina.
On Monday morning, 7
nautical miles off Cape Dis-
appointment, a 38-foot ves-
sel, with three people and
between 4,000 and 5,000
pounds of crab aboard,
became entangled in gear and
lost the ability to maneuver.
The Coast Guard towed them
to a Warrenton site, as well.
No one was injured in the
rescues.
Four Coast Guard crews
in the Pacifi c Northwest have
been involved in 10 such
tows and several escorts since
crab season began on Dec. 1.
“The Coast Guard encour-
ages all mariners, espe-
cially at the beginning of
the Dungeness crab season,
before going out, be sure to
double-check, triple-check
all of your safety gear, (the)
mechanical functioning of
your vessel, go over safety
briefs with crew members,
and be sure to communicate
with the Coast Guard at the
fi rst sign of any trouble or dis-
tress,” Petty Offi cer Michael
Clark, of District 13 in Seat-
tle, said.
Food tax: City will begin to collect the tax in July
Continued from Page A1
box. They also noted that at
least one ballot turned in at a
drop box in Seaside was not
counted in the election.
Seaside’s drop box was
not considered an offi -
cial drop-off location. The
only two measures on the
November ballot were the
food tax in Cannon Beach
and a school bond measure
in Knappa. Voters could
drop off ballots at only three
locations: drop boxes in
Knappa and Cannon Beach
and a drop box in front of
c ounty offi ces in Astoria.
Krevanko picked up the
ballots dropped at Seaside
after the election. She found
two ballots for the Novem-
ber election in the box.
Such ballots are given
credit as being cast in an
election, but they are con-
sidered too late to count and
are never opened, Krevanko
said.
Cannon Beach’s food tax
will now move forward. The
5% tax applies to prepared
food sold at restaurants and
similar businesses. The city
will begin to collect the tax
in July.
The city will split the tax
revenue — an estimated $1.7
million annually — with the
Cannon Beach Rural Fire
Protection District. The city
will use its portion to help
fund the building of a new
City Hall and police station,
while the fi re district plans
to use its cut to help fund
operations as calls for emer-
gency service rise.
Proponents of the tax
championed it as a way
to get visitors to pay their
share, raising revenue for
services and infrastructure
that have suff ered because
of the city’s popularity as a
tourist destination. Oppo-
nents worried about how the
tax could hit businesses still
recovering from the corona-
virus pandemic. While they
supported the fi re district,
they did not trust the city,
they said.
Schools: ‘We’re having some escalated student behavior’
Continued from Page A1
dead and several others
injured. A 15-year-old stu-
dent has been charged as an
adult with murder and terror-
ism in the shooting. His par-
ents, who bought their son the
gun involved in the crimes as
a gift, have been accused of
involuntary manslaughter.
In Seaside, a student
received screenshots of a
conversation and a possible
threat to Seaside High School
at about 8:40 p.m. on Mon-
day in a message via Insta-
gram, Seaside police said.
Police confi rmed an
account was created one hour
prior to the messages being
sent and immediately deleted
following the incident.
With the assistance of
the FBI, Justin Gagnon, the
school resource offi cer, deter-
mined the source of the mes-
sages had no local affi liation
to Seaside.
“We would like to thank
the student who brought this
to our immediate attention,
and we continue to encour-
age others to speak up when
they see something out of
the ordinary or of immedi-
ate concern,” police said in a
statement.
Seaside school facilities
will have an increased police
presence over the next few
days as a precaution.
Across the Columbia
River in Washington state,
a message sent out via the
Ilwaco High School Face-
book page cited the trag-
edy in Oxford, as well as a
“recent escalation of student
violence and misbehavior
locally,” and said staff would
spend Wednesday “focus-
ing on some needed changes
to ensure staff and student
safety at the high school.”
Ocean Beach School Dis-
trict Superintendent Amy
Huntley stressed that there
are no immediate safety con-
cerns facing the high school
or other schools in the district.
“We’re just seeing an
escalation of some of the
things we’re seeing in soci-
ety — uncivil behavior, lack
of empathy for others — and
it’s leading to, I’d say, more
egregious bullying,” Hunt-
ley said, adding that some
of these issues are also being
witnessed at other schools
but that it’s the most preva-
lent and concerning at Ilwaco
High School.
“Of course we’re hav-
ing some escalated student
behavior and some of those
things (at the district’s other
schools), but when you walk
into classes and you walk
through the halls, it feels
like school and it feels like
a nice place to be,” Huntley
said. “And at the high school,
we’re getting to the point
where it doesn’t feel like
school and it doesn’t feel like
a nice place to be — and we
want to get back to that.”
While Huntley acknowl-
edged that bullying is always
present in school and has
been around for generations,
she said the level of bullying
staff is witnessing on campus
this school year is more fre-
quent than in past years, and
that the number of instances
where a student is “unapolo-
getically mean” is also grow-
ing compared to pre-pan-
demic times.
“(Pre-pandemic),
you
could deescalate situations
and you could build bridges
between groups. That’s just
not happening right now,”
Huntley said.
Infi ll: ‘This stain really makes me mad. It is a huge insult to me’
Continued from Page A1
After the activity on his
property, the city reached out
to Newton with a stop-work
order and requests for storm-
water and erosion control
plans, but received neither,
said Hazelton, who added that
a lack of communication from
Newton was at the core of the
issue.
Newton claims he spoke
with the building offi cial and
the P ublic W orks D epart-
ment several times throughout
the situation. He feels he was
given the wrong direction.
A public hearing on the
violation was held in early
November before the Plan-
ning Commission, where it
was decided that Newton
would get 60 days to fi x the
violation before he could be
fi ned.
Shortly after that decision,
heavy rains caused fl ooding
on adjacent properties, which
city planning staff attribute to
the infi ll activity.
With fi xing the fl ooding
problem is the main concern,
Hazelton appealed the Plan-
ning Commission’s ruling. It
will go before the City Com-
mission on Tuesday .
Hazelton acknowledged
that Newton has made an
extensive eff ort to pump water
off the property when it rains,
but said, “At that point, it’s a
reaction to the problem and
not a proactive solution.”
Newton believes he is not
at fault for the fl ooding. He
plans to present evidence to
the City Commission that the
removal — by the city — of
a drainage ditch in front of his
property was the reason for the
signifi cant fl ooding. He added
that his lot was always higher
than adjacent properties, not
because of the infi ll.
A developer is planning to
haul the fi ll off his property, he
said, and he no longer wants to
build housing units there.
Since he received the infi ll
as a gift, Newton is also under
scrutiny for accepting it as
an elected offi cial. When the
City C ommission voted on the
road reconstruction project,
Newton abstained because he
owned property along the
street and said it would bene-
fi t him.
Newton originally said he
planned to ask the Oregon
Government Ethics Commis-
sion to investigate him in order
to exonerate himself, but he is
now weighing legal advice .
“There are two ways to
look at this now,” he said.
“One, that I got the benefi t of
however-many thousands of
dollars worth of fi ll. Or, the
other one is, I gave Big River a
gift and saved them that much
from the cost of hauling it off .”
Newton has not been shy
about his frustration with the
situation and the prospect of
a fi ne .
“If they fi ne me, then we
go to litigation, I can tell you
that’s clear-cut … This stain
really makes me mad. It is a
huge insult to me,” he said.
THE ASTORIAN • THURSDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2021
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5. Practice gratitude for surviving the
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