REGION
Friday, June 24, 2016
East Oregonian
Page 3A
HERMISTON
OSHA investigating onion
shed ire that killed worker
By ALEXA LOUGEE
East Oregonian
The cause of the fatal
June 1 onion shed ire near
Hermiston is still under inves-
tigation.
The ire claimed the life
of Columbia Basin Spreaders
Inc. employee Joseph Adams,
62, of Umatilla.
According to Columbia
Basin Spreaders project
manager Steve Williams, the
shed was going through a
renovation process in an effort
to update the air low system.
Oregon OSHA is investi-
gating the ire. According to
Gary Beck, state-
wide safety enforce-
ment
manager,
the investigation
is still at least two
months away from
concluding, though
legally OSHA has
up to six months to
inish its investiga-
tion and produce its Adams
indings. Beck said
this is a particularly compli-
cated case to igure out and
there are no witnesses.
Adams had worked for
the company for more than
10 years, according to his
brother Weslie Adams. His
death was one of 27
workplace fatalities
reported to Oregon
OSHA in 2016 as
reported on Oregon
OSHA’s website.
The
ire
consumed
an
approximately
400-by-150-foot
single-story onion
storage building,
one of 18 the company uses
to store produce, and caused
an estimated $1.2 million
in damage. Columbia Basin
plans to rebuild the facility,
though a timeline has not
been set.
EO ile photo
Fireighters battle a ire in an onion shed at the Columbia Basin Spreader facility on
June 1 on Westland Road southwest of Hermiston. Fireighters from Umatilla and
Morrow counties responded to the blaze.
Senators push ire
No summer break for facilities crew funding legislation
HERMISTON
By ALEXA LOUGEE
East Oregonian
There’s no such thing
as a summer vacation for
the 40-plus members of
Hermiston School District’s
facilities department.
Tonya Langley, custodial
supervisor for the school
district, compares it to a
house party.
“You clean what you can
while the guests are there,”
Langley said. “But after
they leave you do the deep
cleaning.”
In this case, the guests are
the 5,300 district students
and the house covers more
than 754,050 square feet of
schools and district facilities.
For the custodial crew,
that means deep cleaning
each room and hallway
from the ceiling to the loor,
starting with the lies in the
light ixtures and shampooing
carpets or applying three
coats of wax on linoleum
loors.
Grounds crews are also
busy. It takes ive full-time
employees 40 hours a week
just to mow the roughly
200 acres of grass within
the district. In addition,
employees work on irrigation
management, sprinkler repair
and other construction or
repair projects around the
district grounds.
This
summer,
three
new basketball hoops will
be installed at West Park
Elementary and a new score-
board added at Desert View
Staff photo by Alexa Lougee
Joey Williams, a custodian at Hermiston High School
works to scrape chewing gum from the bottom of a
table.
Elementary, among a long
list of projects spanning the
height of a white board in the
facilities department ofice.
Not on the list?
Sleeping in. Facilities
crew members start their
workday at 6 a.m.
“It’s a different kind of
busy,” said Martie McQuain,
facilities supervisor, about
the summertime maintenance
schedule. Grounds crews will
assist with the installation of
ive new modular classrooms
around the district.
The department also
oversees facility use during
the summer. Employees
prepare ields for sport camps
and clinics. They also clean
up after events like summer
school, Hermiston Parks and
Recreation camps, Umatilla
Electric Cooperative’s Hydro-
mania, iCanBike and more.
Mike Kay, executive
director of operations for
the district, said the facilities
department also lends out
district property. Facilities
crew members recently
delivered and took down
bleachers for OSU Herm-
iston Agricultural Research
& Extension Center’s potato
ield day.
As the district grows,
Langley, who has worked
for the Hermiston School
District facilities department
for 16 years, says the crew
and their responsibilities
have grown too.
“We do stuff that goes
unnoticed,” she said.
That includes following
increasingly strict standards
for school maintenance. It
also includes other projects,
like changing every locker
combination in the district’s
two middle schools and high
school, or scraping globs of
chewing gum off the under-
sides of tables and desks.
Joey Williams, a district
custodian, remembers one
summer when all the gum
from desks and tables was
gathered from the class-
rooms along one hallway and
collected into a sizable wad.
“It was bigger than a
baseball,” he said.
——
Contact Alexa Lougee
at alougee@eastoregonian.
com or 541-564-4534.
HERMISTON
Man wins top prize in state Scratch-it drawing
By ALEXA LOUGEE
East Oregonian
Eastside Market in Herm-
iston will soon add a third
Oregon Lottery Scratch-it
winner banner to its wall of
growing recognition.
Owner Joe Thompson
said an Oregon Scratch-it
ticket sold back in April
wasn’t an instant winner,
but did eventually pay off.
Larry Storment originally
purchased the Big Money
Crossword ticket, but wasn’t
deterred when it didn’t win.
He entered the ticket’s serial
number into the Oregon
Lottery’s
2nd
Chance
website.
On June 21, his ticket was
selected to win the game’s
top prize of $50,000.
“I thought, ‘Yeah, right,
someone’s playing games
with me,’” Storment said.
The Hermiston man is the
irst Eastern Oregon winner
of the drawing since it began
in February 2013.
Storment plans to use
the winnings to replace the
sidewalk around his home
and potentially paint his
garage. Also, Storment’s
wife, Linda, plans to take a
trip back east.
Oregon Scratch-it players
For more than two years
Storment has gone to East- can enter any non-winning
side Market every weekday crossword or bingo ticket
morning for a cup of coffee. into the 2nd Chance drawing.
Once the tickets
While there he
for that game are
buys a Scratch-it
sold out statewide,
ticket or two. He
which can take one
said that despite
to three months,
the big win, he’ll
then a drawing is
continue with his
held on the third
daily routine.
Tuesday of the
As for the
month.
Eastside Market,
According to
this is the third
Patrick Johnson of
Scratch-it lottery Storment
the Oregon Lottery,
winner in as many
months, totaling $175,000. the 2016 monthly average
The market won’t receive a odds of winning in the
1 percent commission from second chance drawing are
this ticket, but that doesn’t one in 41,397. For compar-
make Thompson feel any ison, Oregon Lottery’s 5X
Crossword ticket has three
less lucky.
“There certainly seems to top prizes and the odds of
hitting the top prize are one
be a trend,” he said.
Veronica Zapata
Auto
Health
Home
Life
habla español
541/289-3300 • 800/225-2521
Veronica Zapata
Family Insurance Agent
The Stratton Agency
Hermiston / Pendleton • stratton-insurance.com
in 720,000.
——
Contact Alexa Lougee at
alougee@eastoregonian.com
or 541-564-4534.
By GEORGE PLAVEN
East Oregonian
Oregon’s congressional
leaders continue to push
toward changing the way
federal land management
agencies pay for ighting
large, costly wildires across
the West.
As it stands,
when the U.S.
Forest Service and
Bureau of Land
Management
exhaust
their
annual ireighting
budgets,
they
must dip into
other programs
to make up the Wyden
cost — a practice
known as “ire-borrowing.”
That differs from the way
the government pays for
other natural disasters, like
hurricanes and loods.
Democratic Sen. Ron
Wyden testiied Thursday
on a draft bill in the Senate
Energy
and
Natural
Resources
Committee,
urging lawmakers to put
an end to ire-borrowing.
The Wildire Budgeting,
Response
and
Forest
Management Act of 2016
would, in part, provide a
budget cap adjustment for
the Forest Service and BLM
when they run out of money
to ight ires.
According to the National
Interagency Fire Center in
Boise, ire suppression cost
more than $2.1 billion in
2015. That’s higher than
the 10-year average of
$1.6 billion. Wyden said
ireighting now eats up
more than half of the Forest
Service’s total budget, and
ire-borrowing takes money
away from much-needed
restoration projects.
In a joint statement with
Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho,
they described the practice
as a “broken, dysfunctional
system.”
“All other forest work
nationwide gets put on hold
every time there is a signii-
cant ire season in the West,”
they said. “And the wildires
are not getting any better. In
fact, they’re getting bigger,
they’re
lasting
longer and they’re
costing more each
year.
Over in the
House, Oregon’s
lone Republican
Rep. Greg Walden
has
succeeded
in getting his
bill, the Resilient
Federal Forests
Act, passed for a
fourth year in a row. That
bill proposes to end ire-bor-
rowing by creating an
account under the Disaster
Relief Fund speciically for
wildires. The Forest Service
and BLM could then request
additional funding through
the Federal Emergency
Management Agency within
30 days of exhausting their
ire suppression budgets.
Both bills also address
a range of broader forestry
management, but Wyden
said he and Sen. Crapo
want to ensure the funding
piece does not get lost in the
discussion.
“The Congress cannot
in good conscience let
another ire year go by, with
lives and property at stake,
without ixing this once and
for all,” they said.
If the Senate bill passes,
then differences between
the two bills would need
to be hammered out and
approved in a conference
committee before moving to
the President’s desk.
———
Contact George Plaven
at gplaven@eastoregonian.
com or 541-966-0825.
MUNICIPAL BONDS
On or about Tuesday, June 28, 2016, D.A. Davidson & Co. expects to offer:
$ 12,500,000*
Milton-Freewater Unified School District No. 7
Umatilla County, Oregon
General Obligation Bonds, Series 2016
New Issue
|
Book-Entry Only
|
Not Bank Qualified
Maturities*: June 15,
| S&P Rating: The District: “A+”
S&P Rating: Oregon School Bond Guaranty Act: “AA+”
Tax-Exempt: In the opinion of Bond Counsel, under
existing statutes and court decisions and assuming
continuing compliance with certain tax covenants
described herein, (i) interest on the Bonds is excluded
from gross income for Federal income tax purposes
pursuant to Section 103 of the Internal Revenue
Code of 1986, as amended (the “Code”), and (ii)
interest on the Bonds is not treated as a preference
item in calculating the alternative minimum tax
imposed on individuals and corporations under the
Code; such interest, however, is included in the
adjusted current earnings of certain corporations
for purposes of calculating the alternative minimum
tax imposed on such corporations. In the opinion of
Bond Counsel, interest on the Bonds is exempt from
Oregon personal income tax under existing law.
Purpose: The Bonds, together with other legally
available funds, if any, are being issued to (i) finance
the costs of constructing a new K-3 school and
sports complex and various capital improvements
to District facilities; and (ii) pay costs related to the
issuance, sale and delivery of the Bonds.
Redemption*: The Bonds maturing on June 15,
2027* and thereafter are subject to redemption
prior to maturity on June 15, 2026* and on any date
thereafter at a price of par, plus accrued interest, if
any, to the date of redemption.
Maturities/Interest Rates*: The Bonds will mature
on June 15, 2017 through 2036. Interest rates on the
Bonds are expected to be established on or about
Tuesday, June 28, 2016.
Security: The Bonds are general obligations of
the District and, as such, the full faith, credit and
resources of the District have been irrevocably
pledged for their prompt payment. For as long as
any of the Bonds are outstanding, the District will levy
taxes annually without limitation as to rate or amount
on all taxable property in the District in an amount
sufficient, together with other money legally available
therefor, to pay when due the principal of and interest
on the Bonds. Payment of principal of and interest
on the Bonds when due, is guaranteed by the full
faith and credit of the State of Oregon under the
provisions of the Oregon School Bond Guaranty Act.
*Preliminary: subject to change.
SUBMIT
COMMUNITY NEWS
Submit information to:
community@eastorego-
nian.com or drop off to
the attention of Tammy
Malgesini at 333 E. Main
St., Hermiston or Renee
Struthers at 211 S.E.
Byers Ave., Pendleton. Call
541-564-4539 or 541-966-
0818 with questions.
Music
on the
Lawn
FRIDAY, JUNE 24
Scott Wilson
SATURDAY, JUNE 25
6:00-9:00 pm Carter Freeman
H AMLEY S TEAK H ouse & S aloon
COURT & MAIN, PENDLETON • 541.278.1100
Please contact D.A. Davidson & Co. in advance for expected yield information.
The Bonds are subject to availability and to the acceptance
of an offer to purchase. This is neither an offer to sell nor
a solicitation of an offer to buy any of these securities.
The offering of these securities is made only by the
Official Statement, copies of which are available from
D.A. Davidson & Co.
WALLA WALLA BRANCH
PENDLETON BRANCH
(877) 526-5755
102 W. Main Street, Suite 200
Walla Walla, WA 99362
(866) 868-4759
111 South Main Street
Pendleton, OR 97801
D.A. Davidson & Co. member SIPC | www.davidsoncompanies.com/ficm