149TH YEAR, NO. 95
DailyAstorian.com // TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2022
$1.50
CORONAVIRUS
State to
lift indoor
mask
mandate
Requirement to end
no later than March 31
By ETHAN MYERS
The Astorian
Photos by Lydia Ely/The Astorian
A truck’s tires cross the median strip along Westport Ferry Road.
County offers new option for
heavy truck traffic in Westport
See Mask mandate, Page A6
Earnings
growth
boosts
public
pensions
Hope is to divert traffic
from residential streets
By ERICK BENGEL
The Astorian
W
ESTPORT — A plan for a
new road designed to divert
heavy traffic away from res-
idential streets will come before the
community next week.
Residents have long voiced con-
cerns about vehicles, particularly
commercial trucks, that turn north off
U.S. Highway 30 onto Westport Ferry
Road. The traffic, they argue, makes
the road less safe and the neighbor-
hood less livable.
At a public meeting on Feb. 15
at Westport Community Church, the
Clatsop County Public Works Depart-
ment will present a new option: a pro-
posed site for a new road northwest
from Westport Ferry Road.
The Oregon Department of Trans-
portation allows only so many access
points on Highway 30. Building a
new road would close Westport Ferry
Road access to everyone but emer-
gency responders. Residents will still
be able to drive on Westport Ferry
Road, they just won’t have direct
access from the highway.
For a couple of years, Teevin Bros.
Land & Timber Co. has brought reg-
ular rock-laden truck traffic through
the community. From the company’s
Bradley Quarry west of Westport,
the trucks haul rock to a dock on the
Westport Slough, where the rock is
then barged upriver, mainly to Port-
land-area markets.
As development increases, so will
Teevin’s truck traffic. “I expect it to
get worse,” Ted McLean, the county’s
Oregon will lift a mask mandate for
indoor public places after health lead-
ers determined that hospitalizations from
COVID-19 will significantly decline by
late March.
The announcement by the Oregon Health
Authority on Monday came as the state
issued a new rule extending the indoor mask
mandate that was set to expire on Tuesday.
According to the state, the extension
will run no later than March 31. The mask
requirement at schools will be lifted on
March 31.
Unfunded liability
apparently declined
By PETER WONG
Oregon Capital Bureau
A notice for a Feb. 15 meeting about county plans for a new road is posted on a
telephone pole along Westport Ferry Road.
public works director, said.
The new road would allow Teevin
trucks to reach the barging dock and
all vehicles to reach the Westport
ferry and boat ramp.
The community has wanted to
divert traffic from residential streets
for at least a decade.
In 2011, the county finalized a
Westport Corridor and Community
Plan, which included a proposal for
a new road through Teevin-owned
property.
The wetland mitigation turned out
to be too expensive, however. Both
the Department of Transportation
and the Portland & Western Railroad
rejected the plan because they could
not build an at-grade railroad cross-
ing. And the county didn’t get a state
grant it had applied for to fund the
project.
The county has explored the idea
of diverting traffic onto Old Mill
Town Road, which runs roughly par-
allel to Westport Ferry Road.
Oregon’s projected unfunded liability
for public pensions apparently shrunk sig-
nificantly last year, mostly attributable to
healthy investment earnings that pushed
the fund past the $100 billion mark for
the first time in its 75-year history.
A final accounting will come later
this year, but preliminary numbers for
2021 peg the unfunded liability at either
$19.7 billion or $14.4 billion, depending
on whether side accounts are excluded or
included. Side accounts are amounts of
money that participating governments set
aside to cover part of their future pension
liabilities, but not all of the 900 govern-
ment employers in the Public Employ-
ees Retirement System have set up such
accounts.
See Westport, Page A6
See Pensions, Page A6
A Boy Scout looks to build membership
DeVos sees club as
community asset
By ETHAN MYERS
The Astorian
ARRENTON — Although
Mason DeVos was orig-
inally drawn to the Boy Scouts
by the “cool patches,” the orga-
nization has taken on much more
meaning to him since his rise
among the ranks.
With membership numbers
of the Boy Scouts of America
and the Girl Scouts of the USA
in steep decline, DeVos, a fresh-
W
man at Warrenton High School,
worries other kids won’t pick up
the valuable skills and lessons he
learned.
“In Boy Scouts, they teach a
lot of survival skills, but they also
teach a lot of real-life skills,” he
said. “If kids nowadays aren’t
getting those real-life skills, they
won’t be prepared for the future.”
School and other activities
may also teach life skills, DeVos
said, but the Boy Scouts are able
to go more in-depth while offering
an engaging experience.
While the downward trend of
Boy Scout membership traces
back further than the coronavirus
pandemic and a nationwide sex-
ual abuse controversy, the orga-
nization – like many other social
and civic clubs – has seen a signif-
icant drop in membership over the
past two years. The Boy Scouts
reportedly lost hundreds of thou-
sands of members just through the
first year of the pandemic.
DeVos, as a senior patrol leader
of Troop 509, is doing what he can
to build back some of the mem-
bership along the North Coast.
He convinced several of his
friends to join. A booth his troop
set up at Warrenton’s Fall Festival
brought a few more recruits in, as
well.
See DeVos, Page A6
Mason DeVos has risen through the ranks of the Boy Scouts.