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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 1, 2016)
KEVIN McCLENAHEN OF UMATILLA Enjoy a free peppermint mocha at Bloomz Coffee Bar in Hermiston SIX FILE FOR SEAT ON CTUIR BOARD HERMISTON, PENDLETON OPEN SEASON WITH WINS REGION/3A BASKETBALL/3A 46/34 THURSDAY, DECEMBER 1, 2016 141st Year, No. 33 One dollar WINNER OF THE 2016 ONPA GENERAL EXCELLENCE AWARD HERMISTON Farm Fair blossoms at EOTEC More space means more seminars, vendors By GEORGE PLAVEN East Oregonian The 43rd annual Hermiston Farm Fair debuted Wednesday at its new home at the Eastern Oregon Trade and Event Center with a series of lectures on potato research in the Columbia Basin. And despite setting out more than 200 chairs in two meeting rooms, space was still limited to standing room only. It is a testament to how much the event and trade show has grown over the decades. When the Farm Fair was created in 1974, its original location was at Thompson Hall before moving into the larger Hermiston Conference Center. Now, the agricultural showcase has moved once again to EOTEC in search of expansion. Phil Hamm, director of the Hermiston Agricultural Research and Extension Center and member of the Farm Fair Committee, said having a bigger building means they can host more vendors and presentations, which in turn draws more people to learn about Eastern Oregon’s farm industries. “This is a great place,” Hamm said of EOTEC. “We have more sessions and more opportunities for learning.” One of those additions included Wednes- day’s fi rst-ever seminar targeted specifi cally to small farmers. The lineup featured talks on beekeeping, how to apply pesticides without harming pollinators and integrating chickens onto a small farm. Colleen Sanders, who coordinates the Umatilla County Master Gardener Program for Oregon State University Extension Staff photo by E.J. Harris The 43rd annual Hermiston Farm Fair moved into its new home at the Eastern Oregon Trade and Event Center on Wednesday in Hermiston. Service, organized the session and said she was impressed by the turnout. In particular, she said there has been a growing interest in bees over the past few years, both as pollina- tors and for making honey and beeswax. Likewise, chickens can help out small farmers not only by producing eggs and meat, but by naturally tilling the ground and See FARM/8A PENDLETON Commissioners try to Utility fee paves handful of streets in fi rst year keep fair in the black By ANTONIO SIERRA East Oregonian With street repair season winding down as winter approaches, Pendleton city offi cials are already starting to look ahead. 2016 was the fi rst full year the city committed to a new approach to fi xing the city’s aging street system. Following a petition from Southwest Perkins Avenue residents requesting action on the poor quality of their street, city council and staff spent much of 2015 formulating ways to boost funding for roads. Although voters shot down a city ballot measure to institute a 5-cent gas tax, city council passed a $5 street utility fee at the end of 2015. Offi cials said it would bring in $481,000 in additional street funding per year. Staff members then compiled a two-year, rolling list of streets that needed repair and subdivided the revenue garnered from the utility fee — 70 percent went to maintaining the city’s better-kept neighborhood roads while the other 30 percent was set aside to rehab streets in poor condition. From that list, which comprised dozens of street segments across the By PHIL WRIGHT East Oregonian Staff photo by E.J. Harris A street closed sign blocks a section of Southeast Byers Avenue where work crews are replacing a water line in Pendleton. city, the council approved a $588,373 bid from Pioneer Asphalt to pave eight of them. According to the city website, six streets were prepped and paved this year, including Southwest Perkins. Although uncertain of the exact sections that did not get fi nished, public works director Bob Patterson said contractors weren’t able to fi nish all eight because of budget constraints. Patterson said Pioneer Asphalt won’t undertake any new pavement projects for the city this year but will continue See STREET/8A Umatilla County commis- sioners are looking closely at costs for the annual county fair, hoping to avoid losing money on the event when it moves to the Eastern Oregon Trade and Event Center next year. Part of that involves the entertainment budget. The fair board spent $65,000 to book Creedence Clearwater Revisited for the last night of the 2016 fair, almost half of the overall entertainment budget. County Commissioner Larry Givens at the recent meeting of the board of commis- sioners said Lucas Wagner, chairman of the fair board, considered the deal a losing proposition. Wagner, though, said Wednesday he did not know if it was possible to quantify if Creedence was a good use of fair funds. “The concert area was the fullest I’ve ever seen it,” he said. Wagner noted there was no way to determine what each person spent while at the show. Still, he said, the fair is considering if spending less on local and regional could draw similar crowds and be better for the bottom line. Those acts can costs thou- sands of dollars but don’t carry the hefty sticker price of a band like CCR. The move would not happen until 2018 at the earliest. Wagner said the fair is working with the same- sized entertainment budget for 2017 and aiming for a similar caliber of acts. Robert Pahl, the coun- ty’s chief fi nancial offi cer, advised the county board of commissioners that the fair’s entertainment budget does not look sustainable. He dug into numbers Wednesday and See FAIR/8A Marijuana testing poses regulatory quandaries By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI Capital Bureau WILSONVILLE — Marijuana testing is creating several quandaries for Oregon regulators at a time of overall uncertainty for the newly legalized crop, according to a state offi cial. Testing for pesticides poses one challenge, as the necessary instrumentation is expensive and complicated, said Jeff Rhoades, senior adviser on marijuana policy for Gov. Kate Brown. While state regulators want to protect public health, testing is a large barrier to entry into the legal recreational marijuana market, he said during the Oregon Board of Agriculture meeting in Wilsonville, Ore., on Nov. 30. An overly strict testing regime would be a disadvantage to small growers while favoring large out-of- state companies, Rhoades said. “It’s a very delicate balance with testing here,” he said. One pesticide that’s commonly used on grapes, for example, breaks down into hydrogen cyanide when set afl ame, he said. Meanwhile, marijuana is sold not just as a fl ower, but also in the form of various tinctures and extracts that require specifi c testing methods, Rhoades said. “It can’t be just a one-size-fi ts-all approach,” he said. There are also no federally approved pesticides that are specifi c to the psychoactive crop, Rhoades said. See TEST/8A EO Media Group Marijuana testing is creating several quandaries for regulators at a time of overall uncertainty for the newly legalized crop. Ore- gon is now one of just four states that has legalized marijuana for recreational use.