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East Oregonian
UMATILLA: Taking applications for open positions
Continued from 1A
about that, it wasn’t reflected in
their 5-0 vote.
On Tuesday the council
was missing David Lougee,
who resigned in April citing
“personal and health reasons.”
Council president Mary Dedrick
also stepped down at the end of
the meeting.
Dedrick said the top thing
that people always tell her the
city needs is downtown revital-
ization, but she had seen “a lot
of things I really had to think
about.”
“I find it hard to represent
the community with so many
questions going unanswered
and things taking so long,” she
said. “I just felt the thing the
community elected me to do
was out of my control. It wasn’t
getting done.”
She said after a lot of thought
she felt it was best to resign
and focus on helping revitalize
Umatilla through other channels.
The city is taking applica-
tions for both open positions,
and will hold public interviews
and fill both seats during their
June 6 meeting.
During staff reports, city
manager Russ Pelleberg said
graduate students from Portland
State University continue to
work on a downtown revitaliza-
tion plan for the city, and held a
“very successful” mixer to get
to know local business owners,
and were also making efforts
to reach out to the city’s Latino
community.
He gave an update on the
Downtown Discovery project
he and councilor Mark Ribich
have undertaken, and said
they have met with several
downtown business owners
so far and received completed
surveys from others. The project
is focused on what downtown
stakeholders’ plans are for their
businesses and properties, and
how the city can help.
HAWTHORNE: Moved to the tech and trade center in January
Continued from 1A
students would only know of
the alternative program inside
PHS.
Greenough also expressed
concern of how a move out of
the tech and trade center would
be perceived by the public,
especially after it’s only been
a few months since Hawthorne
moved in.
The recent history of the
alternative school, a program
meant to help credit deficient
students, includes several site
relocations. The Hawthorne
name is a vestige from the time
when the alternative program
was housed in the former
Hawthorne Elementary School
building, which closed as a K-5
school in 2002.
A few years after the Pend-
leton School District gained
control of the alternative
program in 2011, the district
decided to renovate the 455
S.W. 13th St. into the Pend-
leton Early Learning Center,
requiring Hawthorne move
across the street to the old
district offices in 2014.
Hawthorne moved to the
tech and trade center in January,
sharing space with the culinary
program and other career tech-
nical education programs.
When the Pendleton School
District used a part of a $55
million bond to renovate West
Hills Intermediate School into
the tech and trades center, board
chair Debbie McBee said most
of the funding was meant to go
toward improving the district’s
CTE offerings.
Moving the alternative
program to Pendleton High
School will also affect the
latter’s statistics — Yoshioka
estimated that PHS would see
a 5 to 10 percent drop in its
graduation rate.
Hawthorne has long strug-
gled to keep up with state grad-
uate rates, although Greenough
said the 14 students who are
graduating this year represent
a “huge number” in the school
with an enrollment of 45.
Despite
the
progress,
Greenough said attendance
remains an issue for the school.
When asked the top reason the
district should make the move,
Yoshioka said it would better
integrate Hawthorne students
into the main high school situ-
ation and offer a truer reflection
of Pendleton’s academic perfor-
mance.
“My feeling is that a Pend-
leton School District student
is a Pendleton School District
student regardless of the insti-
tution they’re attending,” he
said. “All of those kids at the
alt school are all at one time a
Pendleton High School student.
Whether they have separate IDs
or separate report card or not,
they are our responsibility.”
The board is currently sched-
uled to vote on the reconfigured
alt school program at a meeting
Monday.
Wednesday, May 3, 2017
SMITH: Lost to Merkley in 2008 Senate race
Continued from 1A
Feb. 17 listed CNN and NBC, along
with The New York Times, as “fake
news media” that constitute the enemy.
Later, a revised tweet added ABC and
CBS.
Smith also quoted Leslie Moonves,
the CBS chairman, as saying Trump has
been good for television despite Trump’s
attacks. Trump’s new chairman of the
Federal Communications Commission
is expected to pursue more deregulation.
In his current role, Smith said he has
come to appreciate the constitutional
guarantees of freedom of speech and the
press contained in the First Amendment.
Despite technological challenges
posed by the proliferation of new
platforms and information sources,
Smith said, “broadcast journalism
becomes more important as our friends
in the newspaper business continue to
struggle in the digital age.”
Unlike his early years out of the
Senate, Smith said, “I am never asked
any more: Do I miss it? I am asked only
one question: Are you glad you are not
there?” as the audience laughed.
As leader of an influential interest
group on Capitol Hill who must deal
with people from both parties, Smith
was cautious about his observations of
the current Washington, D.C., scene.
For the first time since Smith was still
a senator, there is a Republican in the
White House and GOP majorities in
Congress.
“You can distill it down to its essence:
This was a ‘change’ election, and the
demand for change was greater than the
risk of electing Donald Trump,” he said.
But he said Trump, like all pres-
idents, face institutional constraints
such as Congress and the courts — and
economic and international develop-
ments that presidents have little control
over.
“They run as though they are running
for king,” said Smith, whose father was
an assistant agriculture secretary under
President Dwight Eisenhower in the
1950s.
“They promise things they do not
have the power to do. While presidents
change, our constitutional architecture
does not. So the presidency is an office
that is always designed to disappoint.
“Our fathers blessed us with a
government that was designed to be
inefficient — and by the way, they are
succeeding at it.”
Smith also said partisan gridlock in
Congress has worsened since he was in
the Senate from 1996 through 2008.
In February 2006, a National Journal
analysis placed Smith dead center in
ideology among senators. Today, by
most measures, the most conservative
Democrat is still to the left of the most
liberal Republican.
Smith said Congress now acts only in
a national emergency, when both polit-
ical parties feel pressured to do so, “or
when the essentials have to be done to
avert a government shutdown — but the
big issues seem incapable of resolution.”
Smith won the open Senate seat
vacated by Republican Mark Hatfield
in 1996.
He won re-election in 2002 but lost
a close race in 2008 to Democrat Jeff
Merkley, who still holds the seat.
“I certainly miss the people, I miss
all of you, and I miss the importance of
the issues that were before us,” he said.
“But I don’t miss much of the dysfunc-
tion that was beginning to grip the city.”
He became president of the broad-
casters’ group in 2009.
Smith was introduced by his former
state director, Kerry Tymchuk, now
executive director of the Oregon Histor-
ical Society.
Smith, who turns 65 later in May,
stopped in Pendleton the previous day
to visit Smith Frozen Foods, which
remains a family company in nearby
Weston.
He and his wife, Sharon, will soon
observe their 43rd wedding anniver-
sary. They have six grandchildren split
among two daughters and a foster child
they raised.
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