A6
THE ASTORIAN • TuESdAy, JuNE 7, 2022
Kyllo: ‘When you get to
compete, you get to really
test yourself against others’
Continued from Page A1
Lydia Ely/The Astorian
Local agencies often struggle to fill potholes.
Potholes: ‘You go through our downtown
and can see potholes everywhere’
Continued from Page A1
“I can tell you that it’s
difficult here to repair pot-
holes based on my expe-
rience of actually doing it
myself,” Mark Buffington,
the district manager on the
North Coast for the Ore-
gon Department of Trans-
portation, said. “Working in
the valley and the Portland
area, the difference between
fixing a pothole there ver-
sus here – it’s definitely
tougher on the coast, and it’s
weather-related.”
Cities, Clatsop County
and the Department of
Transportation will look
toward the warmer months
of summer to tackle road
work and fill potholes.
“Most street mainte-
nance is most efficient, most
cost-effective when you’ve
got prolonged periods of
dry weather, where you can
address things on a larger
scale,” Crater said. “When
you have basically three to
four months of pretty decent
weather, your maintenance
schedule is compacted into
that.”
Temporary fix
In the colder months,
when asphalt plants shut
down, local agencies will
often patch potholes with a
cold mix asphalt, a tempo-
rary fix that doesn’t require
heating. However, cold mix
is less effective and not
durable enough for keep-
ing roads intact under heavy
traffic.
“Cold mix is not a great
tool. Often we’re out in the
rain trying to fix potholes
and they’re full of water and
you get as much water out of
the hole as you can and slap
the cold mix in,” Buffington
said. “After traffic has it for
a while, you’ve got a pothole
again. It’s a constant battle.”
With cities seeking to
tackle street maintenance
around the same time, com-
‘I HAVEN’T REALLy NOTICEd A
CHANGE (WITH THE PROBLEM
OF POTHOLES). I WOuLd SAy
THAT THE CHANGE THAT I’VE
SEEN IS THAT THE OdOT ROAdS,
ESPECIALLy dOWNTOWN, ARE
GETTING OLdER’
Collin Stelzig | public works director in Warrenton
petition in hiring contractors
for paving work becomes an
issue.
Agencies also point to
a shortage of funding and
resources in dealing with
street maintenance.
“Potholes are a symptom
of bad asphalt and ODOT
doesn’t have enough money
to keep bad asphalt out of
there and new asphalt in
its place all the time. This
is why we call it mainte-
nance,” said Buffington said,
who added that his district is
also short on staff.
The funding the city
receives from fuel taxes typ-
ically does not come close
to financing an ideal street
maintenance program, Cra-
ter said.
Agencies in the region
primarily track potholes
through a logging system,
which grows as they receive
complaints or locate them
during travel. Potholes are
typically prioritized based
on hazard level and location.
Some cities are trying
phone applications to make
the system for reporting pot-
holes quicker and more con-
venient for drivers.
“I think that’s a process
we could work on, but again
I would tell anybody, even if
you do see those things, give
us a call, send us an email,
do a Facebook post,” Col-
lin Stelzig, the public works
director in Warrenton, said.
“We definitely try to get to
them as soon as we know
about them.”
While the Department
of Transportation’s regional
district prioritizes major
highways for filling pot-
holes, such as U.S. Highway
101, U.S. Highway 26 and
U.S. Highway 30, a num-
ber of streets are also state-
owned, meaning mainte-
nance and repair is up to
Buffington and his crew.
“You go through our
downtown and can see pot-
holes everywhere,” Stelzig
said, noting that the state
just recently went through
and filled some of them.
Frustrations among locals
and city leaders about the
quality of state-owned roads
have bubbled up in the past.
Earlier this year, the Warren-
ton City Commission sent
a letter to Buffington con-
cerning the pavement condi-
tions on the roads in the city,
including S. Main Avenue
and state Highway 104.
“The hole out here,” City
Commissioner Rick New-
ton said at a March meeting,
gesturing to the intersection
near S. Main Avenue, “that
hole will break tires.”
“There are multiple holes
that will break tires,” Mayor
Henry Balensifer added.
Buffington
responded
by saying that while patch-
ing the road was a priority,
permanent repairs could not
be done at the time in worn
areas near curbs and side-
walks due to the extensive
costs.
“I haven’t really noticed a
change (with the problem of
potholes). I would say that
the change that I’ve seen is
that the ODOT roads, espe-
cially downtown, are getting
older,” Stelzig said. “They
appear to have more pot-
holes than they have in the
past.”
With Warrenton eyeing
improvements downtown,
there have been talks of the
city taking ownership of
some roads in the city, but
it has been a few years since
that conversation took place,
Stelzig said.
“We tend to have a bet-
ter line of communication
now than we have had in
the past, but I would say that
they have their concerns and
they have their own issues
going on,” Stelzig said. “Just
because we make a com-
plaint, doesn’t mean that it’s
a huge priority to ODOT.”
Basic maintenance
Amid the challenges for
local agencies, Crater sees
an opportunity for the more
basic maintenance to be
done more efficiently.
“The surface mainte-
nance items that we handle
aren’t necessarily the eas-
iest, but they’re probably
the things that have the least
risk associated with running
into unknown conditions
and things like that which
could drive up costs,” he
said. “That would be some-
thing we are starting to look
into – maybe some differ-
ent administrative frame-
work to procure services
from locals … rather than
potentially having to go
through a more lengthy pro-
curement process if we were
going to go down that route.
So something a little more
immediate.
“Basically utilizing third
party assistance more effec-
tively — more efficiently —
is the way I would look at
that.”
Child care: $120M
investment comes from
the federal Bipartisan
Infrastructure Law
Continued from Page A1
is interested to see whether
other families can partici-
pate if the Coast Guard child
development center has
excess capacity.
Kelly Smitherman, the
Coast Guard’s child devel-
opment services specialist in
Astoria, said there has histori-
cally been opportunities, if not
all slots are filled, for children
from the community to enroll.
“It’s not completely exclu-
sive; it’s based on the need,”
she said.
Capt. Scott Jackson, the
commander of Coast Guard
Sector Columbia River, said
the child development center
is part of “building resilience
for our family members,” and
will provide “a little more
peace of mind, as they’re
moving into new locations,
that there’s something there
for them to care for their chil-
dren when they go to work.”
The Coast Guard’s pres-
ence is set to expand on
the North Coast. New fast
response cutters have been
approved for Astoria.
“So that footprint’s gonna
get a little bit bigger here,”
Jackson said.
The $120 million invest-
ment in child care for the
Coast Guard comes from the
federal Bipartisan Infrastruc-
ture Law approved by Con-
gress and signed by President
Joe Biden last year.
When the dojo in War-
renton closed, she joined a
mixed martial arts gym in
Astoria.
That’s where she met
Adamson. “I was just doing
kickboxing, although they
did have jiujitsu and grap-
pling,” she said. “But at the
time, it was mostly just big,
burly shirtless guys doing
it. I was 16 and watching,
thinking, ‘I will never grap-
ple, I will never do jujitsu,
I’m just going to stand up,
punch and kick, and that’s
going to be great.’”
Fast forward to college.
She attended South-
ern Utah University, where
she studied sociology and
psychology with the goal
of becoming a counselor
or a therapist. It was also
there that she trained in
the mixed martial arts pro-
gram. “I just fell in love
with the grappling part, the
wrestling aspect — more
so than getting punched in
the face,” she said.
Kyllo was so good in
the ring that she drew the
eye of show promoters in
Las Vegas and Cedar City,
on the border of Utah and
Nevada, but ultimately
decided against it — to the
relief of her parents, who
while supporting the jiu-
jitsu aspect, didn’t want to
see her get hurt.
After college, her career
direction was still unset-
tled and she moved back to
Seaside.
When she saw Nate and
Zach Adamson had opened
a studio in Seaside, she
saw an opportunity to con-
tinue on the mat. “I’m like,
I gotta try it out,” she said.
“And so I came in here,
and I was obsessed.”
As she entered tourna-
ments, she found that being
from the North Coast can
be “like being a big fish
in a little pond.” She had
a wake-up call at the Inter-
national Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu
Federation world champi-
onship in Long Beach, Cal-
ifornia, in 2019.
“In Oregon and Wash-
ington, I compete very
well,” she said. “I usually
get gold. And then going to
California spending $1,000
and losing in the first round
— done. That was my big-
gest disappointment as a
competitor.”
She learned from the
experience.
“When you get to com-
pete, you get to really test
yourself against others,”
she said. “I just kept pro-
gressing and progressing
on that.”
Kyllo has been com-
peting for more than seven
years now.
She works at Bank of
the Pacific in Seaside as a
customer service represen-
tative. Eventually, she may
work toward a counsel-
ing career, “possibly after I
have children.”
She met her husband,
Grant, when he took a class
from her at Adamson Bros.
“He was my student, so
I waited till he graduated
from my class,” she said.
“When he leveled out of
the introduction class, we
started coaching together,
and that’s how we fell in
love. He’s still my favorite
training partner.”
Grant Kyllo is now a
purple belt.
A Minnesota native, his
real passion is farming.
The Kyllos own land in
Elsie with goats, chickens,
pigs — “the whole every-
thing. That’s what we kind
of do.”
She continues classes
two days a week with
the Adamson Bros. and
teaches private and group
classes.
“People should come in
and give it a try,” she said.
“Most fights do go to the
ground and you can defend
yourself. If you’re looking
to lose weight, give jiujitsu
a try. I lost like 40 pounds.
Just come and check it
out.”
Hailey Hoffman/The Astorian
A study has projected job growth in the fermentation sector.
Brewery jobs: ‘Decisive shift
in industrial capacity for the city’
Continued from Page A1
Erick Bengel/The Astorian
Jonah Dart-McLean, Astoria’s parks and recreation director,
took U.S. Rep. Suzanne Bonamici on a tour of Sprouts Learning
Center on Thursday.
She said the business
model allows the cluster to
remain nimble during eco-
nomic downturns.
“We definitely saw that
in our county these past few
years,” Ivanovic said. “And
we believe that the fermen-
tation industry, because
of this adeptness, enabled
Clatsop County to recover
more quickly than the rest
of the Northwest region in
their job recuperates, their
manufacturing capacity and
even more so to continue
making capital investments
throughout an economic
downturn.”
The study found that in
the past five years, the fer-
mentation sector brought
over $30 million of local
spending and investments to
the county. More than $21
million in local visitor spend-
ing was generated in 2019
through festivals and events.
The nonprofit expects that
annual spending to be fully
recovered by 2025.
Ivanovic noted that Fort
George’s and Buoy Beer’s
acquisition of former man-
ufacturing properties along
the waterfront “points to a
decisive shift in industrial
capacity for the city, from
seafood canning to beer
canning.”