HERMISTON
WATERMELONS
ON THEIR WAY
TRAVEL
BAN TAKES
EFFECT
Whisky Fest
passes 2016
ticket sales
REGION/3A
NATION/7A
REGION/3A
FRIDAY, JUNE 30, 2017
141st Year, No. 184
WINNER OF THE 2016 ONPA GENERAL EXCELLENCE AWARD
Your Weekend
•
•
•
One dollar
BOARDMAN
Wildhorse Pow Wow all
weekend at the casino
Murder mystery dinner
theater in Hermiston
Ultimate Youth Smash
at Bard Park, Stanfi eld
For times and places
see Coming Events, 5A
Catch a movie
Wilson Webb/Sony/TriStar via AP
A young getaway driver
takes one last job to make a
clean break from crime, but
things don’t go exactly as
planned in “Baby Driver.”
For showtime, Page 5A
For review, Weekend EO
Weekend Weather
Fri
Sat
Sun
Staff photo by E.J. Harris
A whirlpool feature and a waterslide are two of the main attractions of the indoor pool at the new Boardman Pool and Recreation Center.
90/63
88/58
90/61
Oregon
Legislature
passes worker
scheduling bill
By ANDREW SELSKY
Associated Press
SALEM — Workers in
Oregon for large companies
will know their schedules in
advance, saving them from
scrambling to arrange child
care and enabling them to
have more orderly lives,
under a bill the state Legisla-
ture passed on Thursday.
The bill was described
as being a fi rst among U.S.
states. Rep. Ann Lininger,
D-Lake Oswego, one of
its sponsors, said it could
become a national model.
Under the bill, passed
by the House on Thursday
and previously approved by
the Senate, retailers, food
services establishments and
hospitals that have 500 or
more employees worldwide
must give notice of schedules
at least seven days in advance
as of July 2018, and at least
14 days in advance as of July
2020.
Get ready to recreate
“I think it’s not just the
local community (that
will use it). We’ve had
a lot of questions from
Hermiston and even
Pendleton.”
Pool and Recreation
Center grand opening
this weekend
By JADE MCDOWELL
East Oregonian
A project dreamed up more than
30 years ago will begin drawing
people to Boardman this weekend.
The Boardman Pool and Recre-
ation Center’s grand opening is
Saturday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.
The center features an indoor pool,
gyms, exercise equipment and a
climbing wall.
Parks and Recreation board
member Ray Michael said the fi rst
plans for the center were drawn up
in the 1980s.
“Everyone wanted to have it,” he
said.
“But no one knew how to pay for
it,” chimed in parks and recreation
secretary Lynn Prag.
Building the 43,000-square-foot
center would require a bond, but the
— Ray Michael, Parks and
Recreation board member
Staff photo by E.J. Harris
The Boardman recreation center’s multi-court gymnasium features
a fl oating hardwood fl oor and numerous basketball hoops.
hard part was fi guring out how to
pay for the center’s yearly operating
costs once it was built. In 2013 the
parks district commissioned a feasi-
bility study and began working with
consultants on a plan. In November
2014 the community approved a
$12.39 million bond, and the district
created a fund using money from
sponsors and memberships to pay
the center’s operating costs.
Boardman only has about 3,400
residents, but booming businesses
at the Port of Morrow bring in
thousands more commuters during
the workweek.
Many of the new recreation
center’s rooms bear the names of
those businesses, and the port itself
donated most of the exercise equip-
ment. But Prag said there are still
naming rights left for some rooms
and smaller items.
“Our goal was to raise $300,000
and we’re approaching that,” she
said.
See POOL/8A
Don’t let your Fourth go up in fl ames State has
struggled
to profi t off
rangeland
By PHIL WRIGHT
East Oregonian
See SCHEDULE/2A
Fire marshal Tom Bohm said he
suspects illegal fi reworks sparked
the brush fi re Monday in Hermiston
that led to the destruction of a
duplex.
Witnesses reported hearing what
sounded like loud popping or fi re
crackers before the blaze, he said,
and that would mean they were
illegal in Oregon.
The Oregon Offi ce of State
Fire Marshal in conjunction with
the June 23 opening of fi reworks
sales in Oregon warned state law
“prohibits possession, use, or sale
of any fi rework that fl ies into the
air, explodes, or travels more than
12 feet horizontally on the ground”
without a permit from the state fi re
agency.
That covers bottle rockets,
Roman Candles, and fi recrackers.
Cami Satterwhite of Pendleton
sells fi reworks and put it this way:
“Nothing in Oregon can fl y or go
‘boom.’”
Satterwhite operates the fi re-
works tent in the parking lot of the
By CLAIRE WITHYCOMBE
Capital Bureau
doesn’t have bottle rockets or the
like, she said she explains to them its
the law. They understand, she said,
but often ask if she knows where
they can buy the illegal fi reworks.
SALEM — The nearly 600,000
acres of state rangeland leased to
ranchers to graze livestock have
struggled quietly to generate a
profi t for decades, even as similar
management issues involving the
Elliott State Forest are a higher
priority and have erupted in public
controversy.
But state lands offi cials say
they continue to explore strategies
to yield larger returns on eastern
grazing lands.
In the 2016 fi scal year, it cost
the state $1.2 million more to
manage its rangeland — a term
that can denote grasslands as
well as Eastern Oregon’s iconic
stretches of sagebrush — than it
See SAFETY/8A
See LAND/8A
Staff photo by E.J. Harris
Alaina Mildenberger of Athena hands a fi rework to her daughter,
Sydney Carey, 7, as her other daughter, Addison Carey, 10, shops
at the fi reworks stand in the Walmart parking lot Thursday in
Pendleton.
Pendleton Walmart for the Pend-
leton Lighthouse Church. She said
the church gets all of the fi reworks
it sells from two distributors in the
Portland area and that helps ensure
the pyrotechnics are legal.
When customers ask why she