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OPINION
East Oregonian
Friday, May 26, 2017
Founded October 16, 1875
KATHRYN B. BROWN
Publisher
DANIEL WATTENBURGER
Managing Editor
TIM TRAINOR
Opinion Page Editor
MARISSA WILLIAMS
Regional Advertising Director
MARCY ROSENBERG
Circulation Manager
JANNA HEIMGARTNER
Business Office Manager
MIKE JENSEN
Production Manager
OUR VIEW
Tip of the hat;
kick in the pants
A tip of the hat to the class of 2017, and particularly the hundreds of
students in our communities who will accept their diplomas in the coming
weeks.
For the last 13 years these students have been enrolled in our schools,
learning both the academic lessons of the classroom and the life lessons that
come with growing up among peers.
The diploma is a tangible token of this
accomplishment, and the pomp and circumstance
that surround the ceremony are a fitting tribute to the
students. Shaking the hand of the superintendent,
tossing your square cap in the air and getting a lot of
unsolicited advice from strangers is a rite of passage.
So here’s a bit more. (We’ll keep it short).
Expect life to get harder, more exciting and more
rewarding all at once. The training wheels are off, so to speak. Your victories
through formal education so far will pale in comparison to what is in store in the
wider world.
Don’t fear the challenges, skip out on the adventures or settle for mediocrity.
Best of luck.
A tip of the hat to the Pendleton Foundation Trust and the volunteers who
keep the charitable group running year after year.
They do critical work in the Pendleton area, pumping more than $4 million
dollars into nonprofits and goodwill projects in the past decade alone.
It takes some combination of money and manpower to make a community
work, and the Trust frees up many hours of fundraising by local groups by
wisely selecting worthy projects.
There are examples all over town of the good work funded by the Trust (see
the story on Page 3A for a few), but one way to remember what they do is the
new bench at Pioneer Park, dedicated Wednesday to 43-year board member
John McBee Sr. Next time you’re up at the park, have a seat on the bench and
think about how you can pitch in to make this community a better place.
A kick in the pants to Senate Democrats for standing against an
impeachment resolution in Oregon.
Ours is the only state that doesn’t have a
mechanism for the legislature to remove a
governor, which is an important failsafe in state
government.
At the very least voters should have choice of
whether to empower lawmakers to impeach if
worse comes to worse.
A House resolution passed this week 51-6,
earning bipartisan support, and even Gov. Kate Brown has spoken in favor of
such a measure. But the Senate has shown little interest.
Senate Majority Leader Ginny Burdick holds much of the power as the
resolution will likely come through rules committee she chairs. The Portland
Democrat has said she thinks the state’s recall procedures are strong enough.
We disagree. Voters can retain the power to remove elected leaders, but the
legislature should also be given the tools to be an effective check and balance to
the governor’s office.
Unsigned editorials are the opinion of the East Oregonian editorial board of publisher
Kathryn Brown, managing editor Daniel Wattenburger, and opinion page editor Tim Trainor.
Other columns, letters and cartoons on this page express the opinions of the authors and not
necessarily that of the East Oregonian.
YOUR VIEWS
Help Spray rent some
portable toilets for eclipse
In your article “Spray Grapples with
Predicted Influx of Eclipse Tourists”
(May 12) the article you presented
by Aaron Scott of Oregon Public
Broadcasting summarized the concerns of
Spray with three specific questions. You
presented the article with questions 1 and
2, however, the East Oregonian missed
the most important third question.
This final question regarding “port-a-
potties” is most essential and is the focal
point of our small town budget in Spray.
Port-a-potties and garbage removal are
not revenue producing services for any
town.
As the EO represents news and
concerns of all Eastern Oregon, we would
greatly appreciate you partnering with us
to advance our GoFundMe page to invite
others to invest in helping Spray offset
the anticipated expenses associated with
the Great Eclipse of 2017.
Debbie Starkey
Spray City Council member
Wheeler County commissioner, Spray
Time for a fresh look
at priorities
Available energy and water are the
keys to economic development. Both
are conspicuously absent for developers
of the industrial property on the road to
nowhere. Recently it’s been reported
that on completion, the new Yellowhawk
Clinic with an advanced heating and
cooling system and a solar carport
will “operate at least 40 percent more
efficiently than required by Oregon
efficiency code.” CTUIR should be
commended for their efforts at developing
alternate sources and conservation.
I wonder how the energy efficiency of
those new Pendleton Heights duplexes,
backed by the city and lacking gas and a
central heat and air conditioning system,
compare to the standard. Expected high
electric bills kinda kill the whole concept
of affordable housing when you consider
$1,000 for rent.
Umatilla Electric Co-op continues
to make the news leading the way in
solar farms. Meanwhile, the city of
Pendleton, though claiming to lead in per
capita solar participation, has chosen the
most inefficient means of generation by
selecting individual home owner systems
verses the solar farm approach. An
independent business has been attempting
to construct a solar farm on city property
that is essentially unusable for other
development. This project as well as any
significant development along the road to
nowhere has been stymied, I believe, by
our friends at PP&L. Perhaps it’s time to
follow the example set by Hermiston and
consider dumping PP&L altogether.
The mayor and city council have
finally completed their blueprint for
the city’s goals and a rating system to
measure their progress. Looks like it’s
up to the city manager to implement the
programs despite the distractions that
have currently limited any progress.
Though the Pendleton Fire
Department has been pleading for
replacement of worn out emergency
equipment, grant requests to local
foundations for funding has been
conspicuously absent. Evidently, grant
writing skills are lacking, so an outside
agency has been paid $50,000 to write
those grant requests with an expected
10 to 1 return on the investment. With
those expected returns, it looks like the
fire station bond request could have been
considerably less. I often wonder if the
funds spent on outside grant writers,
consultants, and PDA projects would
have covered the cost of their new
equipment. I guess we’ll never know.
Rick Rohde
Pendleton
OTHER VIEWS
A road trip through
rusting and rising America
left along with the jobs and poverty
AK RIDGE, Tenn. — In his
crept up among those who stayed.”
dystopian Inaugural Address,
Austin, Cooke explained to me,
President Donald Trump
got caught in the vortex of declining
painted a picture of America as a
blue-collar jobs, leading to a loss of
nation gripped by vast “carnage” — a
dignity for breadwinners, depression
landscape of “rusted-out factories
and family breakdown, coinciding
scattered like tombstones” that cried
with doctors’ and drug companies’
out for a strongman to put “America
first” and stop the world from stealing
Thomas pushing painkillers, and with too many
our jobs. It was a shocking speech in
Friedman people in the community failing to
many ways and reportedly prompted
realize that to be in the middle class
Comment
former President George W. Bush to
now required lifelong learning — not
say to those around him on the dais,
just to get a job but to hold one.
“That was some really weird (stuff).”
“Thirty percent of students were not
It was weird, but was it all wrong?
even graduating from high school,” said
I just took a four-day car trip through the
Cooke. “Then you take high unemployment,
heart of that landscape — driving from Austin, generational poverty, homelessness, childhood
Indiana, down through Louisville, Kentucky,
abuse and neglect, and cloak that within a
winding through Appalachia and ending up
closed-off culture inherited from Appalachia,
at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in
and you begin to have the ingredients that
Tennessee to try to answer that question.
contributed to the HIV outbreak.”
Trump is half right in his diagnosis, but
Austin’s insularity proved deadly for both
his prescription is 100
jobs and families. “The close-
percent wrong. We do
knit, insular nature of the
have an epidemic of failing
community worked against it,
communities. But we also
with the CDC later finding up
have a bounty of thriving
to six people shared needles
ones — not because of a
at one sitting, and two or three
strongman in Washington but
generations — young adults,
because of strong leaders at
parents and grandparents —
the local level.
sometimes shot up together,”
Indeed, this notion that
The Courier-Journal reported.
Lately, though, Cooke told
America is a nation divided
me, the town’s prospects have
between two coasts that
started to improve, precisely
are supposedly thriving,
because the community has
pluralizing and globalizing
come together, not to shoot
and a vast flyover interior,
up but to start up and learn up
where jobs have disappeared,
and give a hand up.
drug addiction is rife and
“The local high school has
everyone is hoping Trump
can bring back the 1950s, is highly inaccurate. introduced college-credit classes and trade
programs so people are graduating with a
The big divide in America is not between
the coasts and the interior. It’s between strong
head start,” said Cooke. Faith-based and civic
communities and weak communities. You can groups have mobilized, celebrating social and
find weak ones along the coast and thriving
economic recovery, providing community
ones in Appalachia, and vice versa. It’s
dinners called “Food 4R Soul” and even
community, stupid — not geography.
installing community showers for people
The communities that are making it share a without running water.
key attribute: They’ve created diverse adaptive
Addiction is often a byproduct of social
coalitions, where local businesses get deeply
breakdown leading to a sense of isolation.
involved in the school system, translating in
Cooke feels hopeful because he sees the tide
real time the skills being demanded by the
slowly shifting as “social isolation gives way
global economy.
to community.”
“Only a healthy individual can contribute
They also tap local colleges for talent and
innovations that can diversify their economies to a healthy family, and only a healthy family
and nurture unique local assets that won’t go
can contribute to a healthy community — and
away. Local foundations and civic groups step all of that requires a foundation of trust,” said
in to fund supplemental learning opportunities Cooke. “That kind of change can’t come from
and internships, and local governments help to the outside, it has to be homegrown.”
catalyze it all.
Just 40 minutes down the highway from
The success stories are all bottom-up; the
Austin, I interviewed Greg Fischer, the mayor
failures are all where the bottom has fallen out. of Louisville, a city bustling with energy and
I started in one of the bottomless places:
new buildings. “That ‘Intifada’ you wrote
Austin, Indiana, a tiny town of 4,000 off
about in the Middle East is happening in
Interstate 65, which was described in a
parts of rural and urban America — people
brilliant series in The Louisville Courier-
saying, ‘I feel disconnected and hopeless
Journal “as the epicenter of a medical
about participating in a rapidly changing
disaster,” where citizens of all ages are getting global economy.’ Drug-related violence and
hooked on liquefied painkillers and shooting
addiction is one result — including in a few
up with dirty needles.
neighborhoods of Louisville.”
The federal Centers for Disease Control
But Louisville also has another story to
and Prevention confirmed that Austin
tell: “We have 30,000 job openings,” said
“contains the largest drug-fueled HIV
Fischer, and for the best of reasons: Louisville
outbreak to hit rural America in recent
has “a vision for how a city can be a platform
history.” Its 5 percent infection rate “is
for human potential to flourish.” It combines
comparable to some African nations.”
“strategies of the heart,” like asking everyone
Austin, the newspaper noted, doesn’t just
to regularly give a day of service to the city;
sit at the intersection between Indianapolis
strategies of science, like “citizen scientists”
and Louisville but at the “intersection of
bearing GPS-enabled inhalers that the city
uses to track air pollution, mitigate it and warn
hopelessness and economic ruin.”
asthma suffers; and strategies for job creation
I chose to go there to meet the town’s
that leverage Louisville’s unique assets.
only doctor, Will Cooke, whose heroic work
One job-creation strategy led to creation of a
I learned of from the Courier-Journal series.
Cooke’s clinic, Foundations Family Medicine, slew of businesses that make “end of runway”
products for rapid delivery by leveraging the
sits at 25 West Main St. — opposite Marko’s
fact that Louisville is UPS’ worldwide air
Pizza & Sub, a liquor store and a drugstore.
hub; “bourbon tourism” that leverages the fact
Down the street was a business combination
that Kentucky is the Napa Valley of bourbon;
I’d never seen before: Eagle’s Nest Tanning
and a partnership with Lexington, home of
and Storage. It’s the Kissed by the Sun
the University of Kentucky, has created an
Tanning Salon and a warehouse — both of
advanced manufacturing corridor.
which seemed to be shuttered, with the space
Show me a community that understands
available for rent.
today’s world and is working together to thrive
For generations Austin’s economy was
within it, and I’ll show you a community on
anchored by the Morgan Foods canning plant,
the rise — coastal or interior, urban or rural.
but, as The Courier-Journal noted, “then
■
came a series of economic blows familiar to
Thomas Friedman, a New York Times
many manufacturing-based communities. The
American Can plant next to Morgan Foods shut columnist, was awarded two Pulitzer Prizes
for international reporting in Beirut and Israel
its doors in 1986 after more than 50 years in
business. A local supermarket closed. Workers
and one for commentary.
O
The big divide
in America is
not between
the coasts and
the interior. It’s
between strong
communities
and weak
commiunites.
LETTERS POLICY
The East Oregonian welcomes original letters of 400 words or less on public issues and public policies for publication in the newspaper and on our website. The newspaper
reserves the right to withhold letters that address concerns about individual services and products or letters that infringe on the rights of private citizens. Submitted letters must
be signed by the author and include the city of residence and a daytime phone number. The phone number will not be published. Unsigned letters will not be published. Send
letters to managing editor Daniel Wattenburger, 211 S.E. Byers Ave. Pendleton, OR 97801 or email editor@eastoregonian.com.