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SPORTS/1B
TUESDAY, JULY 25, 2017
141st Year, No. 201
One dollar
WINNER OF THE 2017 ONPA GENERAL EXCELLENCE AWARD
HERMISTON
Mooney selected as interim superintendent
the board Monday to serve in
the temporary role while Super-
intendent Fred Maiocco takes a
leave of absence to serve a tour
of duty in Europe for the U.S.
Army Reserves. She assumed
the role immediately, stepping
in as superintendent for the
rest of that evening’s board
meeting.
“I’m humbled and honored
By JAYATI RAMAKRISHNAN
East Oregonian
The Hermiston school board
selected Tricia Mooney to lead
the district for the next year and
a half.
Mooney, who is currently
the district’s assistant superin-
tendent of human resources,
was unanimously elected by
to head the district during Dr.
Maiocco’s absence,” Mooney
said. “We’re going to be ready
for over 5,600 kids on August
28.”
Mooney was one of three
fi nalists for the position. The
others were Philip “Buzz”
Brazeau and Richard Rund-
haug. The board spent nearly
four hours interviewing candi-
dates on Monday before delib-
erating in executive session.
During the open session, the
board conducted all three
interviews before a crowd of 30
to 40 administrators, teachers
and community members.
Audience members could turn
in sheets grading the candidates
on their capability and their
perceived fi t for the district.
Mooney has spent most
of her education career in the
Hermiston School District,
beginning in 1995 as a teacher
at Sunset Elementary School.
She has also spent time as the
principal of Rocky Heights
Elementary
School
and
Armand Larive Middle School.
See MOONEY/9A
PENDLETON
Mooney
Task force
scrutinizes
state assets
to reduce
PERS costs
By CLAIRE WITHYCOMBE
Capital Bureau
of his vest declared, “For some
there’s therapy, for the rest of
there’s motorcycles.”
This was a biker wedding,
smack dab in the middle of Pend-
leton Bike Week. A few dozen
fellow bikers, friends and family
watched the short ceremony from
chairs in the Pendleton Conven-
tion Center’s main room on
PORTLAND — From the state’s liquor
control commission to its approximately
4,600 parking spaces, a group appointed
by the governor is starting to scrutinize
ways to make the most of state assets to
reduce its pension obligations.
In April, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown, a
Democrat, announced she was appointing
a “task force” to
address the unfunded
actuarial liability in
the Public Employee
Retirement System,
which now stands at
about $21.8 billion.
The
seven-
member
group,
tasked with fi nding
a way to reduce that
amount by $5 billion,
had its fi rst meeting
Monday.
The unfunded actuarial liability of the
system is the amount of money that the
state’s obligations exceed the system’s
assets currently will be able to pay.
And the $21.8 billion amount may
grow, though it’s not yet clear by how
much. On Friday, the PERS board is
expected to adopt rules reducing the rate
it assumes investments of the Public
Employees Retirement Fund will earn
annually.
You can think about PERS like an
algebra equation: Since a certain amount
of benefi ts are guaranteed to employees,
reducing the assumed earnings rate will
increase the amount of money that public
employers — such as school districts, cities
and counties — will have to contribute to
the system to pay those benefi ts.
Membership in the task force draws on
the public and private sector, and ranges
from the CFO of Oregon Health and
Sciences University to the CEO of the
Portland tech company Zapproved.
See WEDDING/9A
See PERS/9A
Staff photo by Kathy Aney
Lori Abell exults as offi ciant Sandy Smith announces that Abell and Skip Cripe are now husband and wife. The “biker
wedding” was part of Pendleton Bike Week.
Love during Bike Week
By KATHY ANEY
East Oregonian
This wasn’t your typical
wedding.
The groom didn’t enter quietly
from a side door, nor did the
bride fl oat demurely up the aisle
wearing a white, lacy dress.
Instead, groom Skip Cripe
hopped aboard his Harley
Davidson motorcycle, gave the
throttle a twist and roared into the
room. In place of a tuxedo, Cripe
wore a black leather vest, jeans
and HOG gloves. He parked his
glossy red Road Glide bike and
stood waiting.
Bride Lori Abell, in a
shimmery, sleeveless top, rhine-
stone-encrusted skinny jeans and
black biker boots walked to her
groom with a smile of certainty
that this ponytailed biker would
More inside
New events provide summer
boon for local businesses
Page 9A
forever be her man.
Cripe reached out his hands
to Abell, his tattooed sleeve
extending from his right wrist to
his shoulder. A patch on the front
BOARDMAN
Food science fi nds young
fans at OMSI exhibit
By ANTONIO SIERRA
East Oregonian
Photo by Antonio Sierra
OMSI food science educator Rebecca Reilly helps Abbigail Burleson of
Hermiston with one the museum’s agriculture themed exhibits at the
SAGE Center Saturday.
The Oregon Museum of Science
and Industry turned the second fl oor
of the SAGE Center into an experi-
ment lab.
OMSI took over the space at the
Boardman museum Saturday for its
Celebrate Oregon Agriculture event,
a chance to share some of their
popular exhibits and further hone
the food science exhibits they use in
their outreach program.
As a part of an Oregon Depart-
ment of Agriculture program, OMSI
developed several ag exhibits that
local children eagerly engaged,
“It’s a missed opportu-
nity in Eastern Oregon
for kids not to learn
about agriculture.”
— Jane Waldher, of Athena
poked, prodded and played with.
On one table, kids could clip
a microscope to their cell phones
and check out the surface of a piece
of fruit. Across the fl oor, children
could use baking soda or vinegar to
make paper coated in blackberry or
See OMSI/9A