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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 1, 2022)
149TH YEAR, NO. 92 DailyAstorian.com // TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 2022 $1.50 Nonprofit steps back from deal on child care Group wanted to partner with city By NICOLE BALES The Astorian An Astoria nonprofit that formed late last year in the hopes of partnering with the city on child care is stepping back. Sprouts Learning Center, a city-run day care program, serves about 30 chil- dren and operates at an unsustainable loss of around $25,000 a month. Since it is one of Clatsop County’s larger child care facilities, the city is determined to keep it running while making operations more sustainable. The city in October requested pro- posals from organizations interested in a public-private partnership. There were no responses by the December deadline, but in the days following, an interested group approached the city and formed into the nonprofit Clatsop Promise. Trudy Van Dusen Citovic, a co-owner of Van Dusen Beverages who serves on the Clatsop Community College Board, is one of the people behind the nonprofit. She had hoped that through a partner- ship, the nonprofit could focus on rais- ing funds to operate while the city con- tinues to own and maintain the facility. “We did a bunch of digging into the financials and the shortfall we found, See Nonprofit, Page A2 New study zeros in on market squid increase A fivefold jump in recent years By KATIE FRANKOWICZ KMUN New research has found market squid populations increased fivefold off the Oregon and Washington state coasts in recent years, a population boom and an expansion north tied to several years of extremely warm ocean temperatures. It is a glimpse of the possible future. Mary Hunsicker, the co-author of the study and a research ecologist with NOAA Fisheries, said it is “what we might expect to see in Oregon waters with continued, long-term warming of ocean temperatures and more extreme warming events due to climate change.” Hunsicker and her fellow researchers used survey data that the National Oce- anic and Atmospheric Administration Photos by Lydia Ely/The Astorian Felix Tapales stands on the porch of the property he’s hoping to demolish with assistance from the city’s residential grant program. In Warrenton, a residential grant program will assist with property cleanup City hopes to improve the look and feel of downtown By ETHAN MYERS The Astorian ARRENTON — After the death of his neighbor in 2017, Felix Tapales learned he would be inheriting the man’s home and land. But the property — packed front to back with hoarded objects and chem- icals — was not a welcomed gift. Tapales has spent countless hours and dollars working to clean it up. He is grateful for the assistance he has received, particularly from Spruce Up Warrenton, a nonprofit with a mission to beautify the city, but Tapales is looking for more sup- port to address the undertaking along S. Main Avenue. Help might be on the way. Under the Urban Renewal Dis- trict, the city has provided funds to commercial properties for building façade improvements, including new windows, doors, signs and lighting. Now, the city is looking to encom- pass residential properties within the grant program. Unlike the commercial program, the residential outreach would seek to tackle nuisance properties, much like the one that landed in Tapales’ W Felix Tapales holds up a photo of the yard of his property before much of the garbage was cleared out. lap. The funds could go toward fixing broken windows, cleaning up trash or dumping hazardous materials. The goal is not only to reduce blight, but to improve the look and feel of downtown. “The main thing is we want to make it a lively and attractive down- town because you can put all the infrastructure you want to make the downtown nicer, but if there are still junk properties … you want to get that out, so to speak,” Mayor Henry Balensifer said. “You want your downtown to be vibrant and look nice, and want to be there, and this is a part of that effort.” While details of the residential grant program still have to be final- ized by the City Commission, City Manager Linda Engbretson said the city could put up to $10,000 toward a property that an owner invested $5,000 into repairing. Properties must be located within the bound- aries of the Urban Renewal District, See Cleanup, Page A6 See Squid, Page A6 ‘You gotta be prepared to be that caring, calm voice’ Hipes leads Astoria’s emergency dispatch center By ERICK BENGEL The Astorian ince Jeremy Hipes took over as the emergency communica- tions manager at the Astoria Police Department almost six months ago, one of his top priorities has been recruitment. Ideally, he would have a staff of 10 dispatchers. Instead, he has six: four fully certified telecommuni- cators and two trainees. The staffing shortage at the S Astoria emergency dispatch cen- ter has led to overtime hours and weekend work for his team, which dispatches for more than a dozen agencies, including police and fire departments in Astoria and War- renton, the Clatsop County Sher- iff’s Office and several rural fire districts. To ease the strain, Hipes’ employees are working out of the Seaside Police Department’s dis- patch center. The temporary move has resurrected talk of merging the two operations. The Astoria emergency dis- patch center, located in a dim, bun- ker-like space just beyond Hipes’ office, is empty of personnel, but the communications equipment still hums in the background. The room’s soft green light, meant to create a calming ambiance, is occasionally switched on. As Hipes attempts various out- reach efforts, such as posting the job openings to websites and on social media, he finds himself con- fronting a long-standing problem: Remarkably few people know what dispatchers do. See Hipes, Page A6 Erick Bengel/The Astorian Jeremy Hipes, the emergency communications manager at the Astoria Police Department, sits at a computer console in the Astoria emergency dispatch center.
