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THE ASTORIAN • THURSDAY, APRIL 21, 2022
Commissioners: ‘I think we’re getting to critical mass’
Continued from Page A1
Commissioner
Lianne
Thompson, who is running
for a third term in South
County’s District 5, said she
has long advocated for mod-
ular housing.
Thompson pointed to
a possible collaboration
between the Oregon Restau-
rant and Lodging Asso-
ciation and the TallWood
Design Institute to provide
modular housing, made with
mass plywood panels .
“I’ve been talking about
this since 2010; I’m just
going to keep talking about
it,” Thompson said. “But, I
tell ya, I think we’re getting
to critical mass. I think it can
happen.”
Her challenger, Steve
Dillard, an innkeeper from
Seaside, said local build-
ing codes hamper hous-
ing development — a belief
shared by Pinkstaff .
Dillard said he spoke
with a county employee who
wanted to put duplexes on
his property.
“The city of Astoria, with
Lydia Ely/The Astorian
A candidates’ forum was held Tuesday night at Clatsop Community College.
all the permits, with all the
extra money, with all the
engineering that had to go on
— it was going to be too cost
prohibitive to generate the
kind of housing that he was
hoping to do,” Dillard said.
Commissioner
Mark
Kujala, the board chairman,
who is running unopposed
for a second term in Warren-
ton’s District 1, pointed out
that the county has put up
surplus property in Astoria,
Warrenton and Seaside for
expressions of interest from
cities and nonprofi ts.
Making the land avail-
able, he said, could lead to
aff ordable housing projects.
“That’s the fi rst step,” he
said.
When it comes to address-
ing the scarcity of child care
Candidates: ‘Local control is important’
Continued from Page A1
a home health nurse from
Warren and a Democrat, are
seeking to replace Johnson.
They are running unopposed
in the May primaries.
Weber’s run for Senate
left an open seat in House
District 32, which covers the
North Coast. Cyrus Javadi, a
dentist from Tillamook, and
Glenn Gaither, a retired cor-
rections offi cer in Seaside,
are competing in the Repub-
lican primary. Logan Laity,
a community organizer and
small-business owner in Til-
lamook, is unopposed in the
Democratic primary.
Weber, Busch, Javadi and
Laity appeared at the forum
Tuesday at Clatsop Commu-
nity College organized by
the American Association of
University Women Astoria
Branch.
The q uestions from Chris
Breitmeyer, the college pres-
ident, who moderated the
forum, touched on a range
of topics, including housing ,
fi shing regulations, abortion
and climate change .
When asked to address
one issue between men-
tal illness, drug addiction,
homelessness and poverty,
each candidate took diff erent
approaches in their answers .
Laity focused on home-
lessness , calling it a “human-
itarian crisis” and saying he
would funnel money to non-
profi ts that work on the issue.
Javadi eyed tackling drug
addiction, a problem which
he partially attributed to the
fallout from the 2020 vote on
Measure 110 , which decrim-
inalized the possession of
small amounts of drugs and
sought to channel money to
on the North Coast, Thomp-
son said the county’s role —
as it is with other essential
services — is to “convene
people, bring the right peo-
ple to the table, get the right
data presented, and then fi nd
ways to implement those
data into solutions that work
in the community.”
The c ounty has been
hemorrhaging child care
options, losing more than
half of licensed child care
slots since 2017, The Asto-
rian has reported.
Thompson led the coun-
ty’s child care work group
before Kujala and Commis-
sioner Courtney Bangs took
over from her.
Wev said the county is
likely to help with child
care projects such as Asto-
ria’s partnership with Bum-
ble Art Studio to preserve
day care options . Bumble is
taking over the operations of
Sprouts Learning Center, a
city-run child care program
that was set to close at the
end June.
The county has dedicated
federal American Rescue
Consult a
PROFESSIONAL
LEO FINZI
Attendees
listen to
candidates
talk during
Tuesday’s
forum at
Clatsop
Community
College.
Lydia Ely/
The Astorian
addiction treatment .
“If we deal with home-
lessness, if we deal with
mental illness, if we deal
with poverty, we’re deal-
ing with the outcomes rather
than the source … I think
if we fi x our drug addiction
problem, we’re going to see
a huge reduction in all those
other areas,” he said.
Weber, a former mayor
of Tillamook, pointed to
addressing homelessness,
similarly noting that solving
one challenge could improve
the others.
Busch did not identify
one issue, but instead sug-
gested investment in com-
prehensive health care that
would take on all four .
“These are all intertwined
issues. I think if we are look-
ing (at) them in separate
silos then we will not solve
the problem,” she said. “We
need … (to) address them
simultaneously so that we
can actually get real solu-
tions that are sustainable,
not just for an immediate
Band-Aid, but a long-term
solution.”
As communities across
the North Coast struggle
with the lack of housing
options, Javadi said tack-
ling the problem should start
with the adjustment of out-
dated land use laws.
Laity pointed to several
potential solutions.
“We’re losing our work-
ers, and as your next state
legislator, I will work to
rework our zoning codes to
allow for multifamily hous-
ing, expand down payment
assistance and make zoning
more effi cient by providing
incentives to our local plan-
ning departments to make
permitting more effi cient
and eff ective,” he said.
Weber and Javadi fre-
quently pointed to govern-
ment regulations as obsta-
cles , citing what they see as
the need for local control in
areas like logging, fi shing
and schools.
“Local control is import-
ant. I think this was pointed
out to us very poignantly
during the pandemic because
children were at home and
parents fi nally saw what
children were learning and
they weren’t happy,” said
Weber, a former elementary
school teacher.
Busch said the conversa-
tion around education has
become too politicized. H er
concern is not with govern-
ment overreach, she said,
but with a lack of funding.
With the U.S. Supreme
Court about to weigh in
again on Roe v. Wade,
the landmark 1973 rul-
ing on abortion, abortion
rights could be an issue
in the November elec-
tion. Busch and Laity indi-
cated their strong support
for abortion rights. Weber
described herself as “pro-
choice from conception
to natural death,” while
Javadi described himself as
“pro-life.”
Astoria’s Best
The U.S. Attorney’s Offi ce
in Portland said that from
about 2006 to 2010 Cazee
posed online as, alternately,
a young man and a teenage
boy to get teenage girls to
trust him and send him sexual
images of themselves.
“In at least one instance,
Cazee mailed a webcam and
a teddy bear to a minor victim
and convinced her to produce
sexually explicit videos for
him using the webcam,” the
agency said in a statement .
The victims spoke at the
sentencing hearing. One
was 15 when Cazee manip-
ulated her into believing she
had developed an online rela-
tionship with a young man.
Cazee later led her to believe
that the boy had died of can-
cer. Only when federal inves-
tigators contacted her did she
learn what Cazee had put her
through.
Kevin Sonoff , the public
aff airs offi cer with the U.S.
Attorney’s Offi ce, District of
Oregon, said of the victims’
statements, “I think all of
us were very impressed and
moved by their composure
and courage that they demon-
strated today.”
The sentencing comes
more than a year after the
Oregon Court of Appeals
overturned Cazee’s Circuit
Court convictions for “peep-
ing Tom” crimes that he com-
mitted from about 2014 to
2017.
Cazee had been caught
lurking around homes in his
neighborhood, peeking into
windows, and recording vic-
tims in states of undress and
engaged in private, some-
times sexual behavior.
A jury found Cazee guilty
of more than 20 counts that
involved invading personal
privacy, criminal trespass,
stalking and using a child in a
display of sexual conduct. He
was sentenced to 35 years.
The appeals court found
that Cazee’s cellphone, which
contained pornographic vid-
eos of underage girls, had
been seized without probable
cause. Once the incriminating
cellphone evidence, and the
evidence that stemmed from
it, was deemed off -limits, the
victims’ testimony could not
be substantiated. The case
was dismissed.
Clatsop County District
Attorney Ron Brown praised
federal prosecutors for pursu-
ing a case against Cazee. “I
was glad to see him get what
he got,” Brown said.
Some of Cazee’s Clatsop
County victims were present
at his sentencing on Monday,
Brown said.
With credit for time
served, Cazee will be in his
mid-70s when he is released.
“The world will be a better
place for that length of time,”
Brown said.
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Cazee: Posed online as a young man, teenage boy
Continued from Page A1
Plan Act money to expand-
ing child care, Kujala said.
Pinkstaff said child care
has been over-regulated.
When his grandmother ran a
day care, he said, “the regu-
lations weren’t there that are
there today.”
“I think we took away
the parent’s right to know
what’s best for their chil-
dren,” he said.
Wev responded that she
doesn’t think regulation is a
bad thing.
“If I’ve learned anything
in my career, it is that there
are a lot of people … who
have expertise in diff erent
areas that I don’t have, and
therefore I think that those
regulations are often very
good,” she said.
Dillard said the county
needs to, “when possible,
incentivize private child
care.”
The candidates’ forum
was organized by the Amer-
ican Association of Univer-
sity Women Astoria Branch
in partnership with the col-
lege, KMUN and The
Astorian.
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