Page 16A
OFF PAGE ONE
East Oregonian
Wednesday, November 22, 2017
ROUND-UP: Final vote was 118-106
Continued from 1A
Photo Courtesy of Oregon State University
The 1957 completion of The Dalles Dam inundated Celilo Falls.
EDMO: Appeared in an episode of ‘Portlandia’
Continued from 1A
no electricity or running water.
However, they had a rich source of
fish 200 yards from their front door.
Edmo doesn’t obsess about the
heart-wrenching loss — it took him
most of the hour to get around to the
subject as he spoke Tuesday in the
Bob Clapp Theatre at Blue Mountain
Community College. Until then, he
spoke in stories, his words ebbing and
flowing in a poetic waterfall of words.
He spoke of snakes, salmon, animal
people, fire, the Great Spirit and sparks
that changed into mosquitoes. He
spoke of a monster woman with long
hair, claws for fingers, “snot down to
here” and bad breath.
Edmo regularly brings his tradi-
tional tribal stories into mainstream
America by speaking to diverse
audiences. He collaborated with the
Eugene Ballet Company, narrating
productions based on the legends of
four Northwest tribes. He did a gig as
a television actor, appearing in “Port-
landia” in Season 3, Episode 9. During
the show, the storyteller morphs from
a coyote into a man.
On Tuesday at BMCC, he wore
his “Portlandia hat.” He has modified
the hat since then. The brim now has
beads. A hat band sports the words
“Eat, Sleep, Powwow.”
Edmo fell into storytelling natu-
rally, the stories lodged deep in his
soul after hearing them from his father
eventually coming out unbidden.
That’s the way of things in the oral
traditions of Native Americans.
Edmo told the BMCC audience
a story about two Indian men who
wanted the same woman. By the end,
he’d told the legend of the Bridge of
Gods and how Mt. Rainier, Adams and
Hood were formed.
He segued from this topic to Celilo,
directing the audience to two slides, a
before and after of the fishing area. A
series of falls in the first and a wide
expanse of smooth water in the second.
Celilo Falls became a casualty of the
construction of a new hydroelectric
dam at The Dalles. Affected tribes got
$26.8 million in compensation.
A map showed the flow of tribal
traders to Celilo before it was flooded.
Burns-area Indians brought obsidian,
roots and seeds. From the Plains came
pipestone, buffalo products, horses
and clothing. Blankets, beads and
bone shell arrived from elsewhere.
One slide showed Edmo’s father
proudly displaying a 65-pound salmon
he had speared and netted. In another,
his older brother smiles as he struggles
to lift his catch. Ed wasn’t yet big
enough to lift an average size fish from
the river. He offered himself instead as
a model to travelers who stopped to
take photos of the fisherman.
“If they had a camera or binoculars
around their neck, I knew they were
tourists,” Edmo said. “I charged them
a quarter to take my picture.”
With his take, he bought soda pop,
candy bars and Bazooka bubblegum.
After the water rose, Edmo said, his
extended family dispersed.
“We were in two states, seven
counties and three or four Indian
reservations,” he said.
Edmo channeled his memories and
stories into his storytelling perfor-
mances, poetry and a one-act play
called “Through Coyotes Eyes: A Visit
with Ed Edmo.”
we not trust them to choose our
president?” he said.
The first attempt at collecting
paper ballots was marred when
Jim Swearingen, a former
Round-Up director, told Collins
that he saw someone submit
multiple ballots. The election
was held a second time with
stockholders now required to
sign their name at the bottom to
verify their ballot.
At the request of the
audience, three non-board
stockholders joined three board
members to count the votes.
Although two votes for O’Neill
were disqualified because the
ballots weren’t signed, he ulti-
mately won the vote 118-106.
After the results were
announced, a stockholder asked
Collins if the board had learned
its lesson from the election after
it failed to follow the Round-Up
bylaws for the past two years.
The main source of conster-
nation seemed to revolve
around the 2015 and 2016 finan-
cial statements, which were
supposed to be shared during
O’Neill
Culham
their respective stockholder
meetings but were only barely
being released at Tuesday’s
meeting. Outgoing President
Bill Levy said the 2017 state-
ment would be finished by Dec.
15 and would be shared with
stockholders in February.
Levy said the late statements
was due to turnover at the
bookkeeper position and their
current accounting manager,
Beverly Thomas, was a capable
replacement.
“Our accounting issues are
behind us,” he said.
Before the meeting ended,
the stockholders made a motion
to create a committee that
would take another look at the
Round-Up bylaws.
The heavily contested elec-
tion butted up against the direc-
tors’ reports, which were largely
positive. Most financial figures
showed growth in the Round-
Up’s various revenue streams,
which Levy said wasn’t a sure
thing after the Round-Up’s
centennial celebration in 2010.
Moments after securing a
narrow victory, O’Neill made a
joke to break up the tension.
“Well, wasn’t that fun?” he
said dryly.
In an interview after the
meeting was adjourned, O’Neill
said the election showed the
passion among the stockholders
and said the Round-Up needs to
improve transparency between
the board and its stockholders,
volunteers and other constitu-
encies.
To avoid further book-
keeping issues, O’Neill said he
would like to see a succession
plans in place for Round-Up
employees to ensure consis-
tency.
With
the
Round-Up
continuing expand its campus,
he said the Round-Up should
look for land purchase oppor-
tunities while continuing to
protect its brand.
THANKSGIVING: There is much more to share about Bill’s life
Continued from 1A
“I think he’s excited to
see you,” the clerk said with
a laugh. She was referring
to all of us, my wife, equally
loaded with luggage and
travel accessories, and our two
children, oohing and ahhing
at the lobby, pool and vending
machine.
Indeed, he was excited to
see us. Bill, who had checked
into a room adjacent to ours
the day before, wasn’t good at
sitting still. He had probably
made a dozen trips to the lobby
by then and knew the hotel staff
like family. Our arrival meant
grandchildren to tease and
people to introduce. That was
his hobby.
We finished our check-in,
met up with Bill and my
mother-in-law, Laurie, and
had a warm and joyful holiday
weekend with family that lived
in town. The food was good
and the kids got along. We
watched movies and played
poker. We shared stories and
laughed, and Bill was the best
at both. His laugh, high and
uncontrolled, infected us all.
It was the last time we saw
him. He had a heart attack
days later and we rushed to the
hospital in Bend hoping for
the best, but he never regained
consciousness. Family and
friends gathered and said
goodbye, but we wouldn’t
hear his voice again. A week
after Thanksgiving I wrote his
obituary for the newspaper.
Though the pain was
slowly numbed through the
frigid winter that followed, the
one-year anniversary of our last
holiday together is reminding
us how fresh the wound really
is. We will remember Bill in
every season, but his December
passing will always shade the
holidays.
There is much more to share
about Bill’s life, but there’s not
room here. We’re still writing
his obituary every time we
get together and talk about
his life and his love for other
people. We will add a chapter
this Thanksgiving, and another
at Christmas. We will make
each one better, forgetting the
unimportant but elaborating on
the details.
I write this fully aware of the
fresh and powerful pain in many
lives this holiday season. I read
the daily obituaries and know
that each person is mourned,
whether young or old, after a
long illness or taken suddenly.
In most cases, it seems too soon.
We become acutely aware of
who’s missing when there’s an
empty seat at the holiday dinner
table, whether it’s just for one
year or forever. We should use
the opportunity to share stories
and keep their memories alive.
I don’t know what the
coming year will hold for us
in the slow process of familial
grief. I do know that we are
fortunate and honored to carry
on the memory of Bill Tatum.
■
Daniel Wattenburger is the
managing editor of the East
Oregonian. Contact him at
541-278-2673.
RETAIL: Amazon’s first data center in Morrow County came online in 2011
Continued from 1A
said most retailers employ
30 percent of their workers
full-time and 70 percent part-
time, but Walmart flips that
statistic.
The Hermiston store
employs around 400, and the
distribution center has about
930 employees. Employees
also have access to insurance,
Heidegger said, and “the vast
majority” have 401K plans.
The associates are part
of the community, he said,
and the distribution center
and two stores in Umatilla
County have a collective
annual payroll of $63 million.
Walmart this year paid
$21,933 in local property
taxes for the Pendleton store
and $32,520 for the Herm-
iston store. The company paid
$35,575 in property taxes
in 2002 for the Distribution
Center in Hermiston.
The tab this year came to
$186,042.
Heidegger said building
new stores is not likely for
the region, but the company
remodels locations every five
to seven years. One of the
biggest upgrades at Pendleton
took place behind the scenes
— replacing the aging cooler
that housed dairy products.
The
remodels
are
two-fold, he said: They
keep stores fresh and
updated for customers and
make them more efficient
and sustainable. Tiffany
Wilson, Walmart’s director
of communications, said as
the world’s largest retailer
it is important for Walmart
to “use our strengths to not
only further work in our own
operations, but to also help
create a more sustainable
value chain.”
Staff photo by E.J. Harris
Walmart CEO Doug McMillon has been pushing the
company to grow their online market share since
taking over four years ago.
Walmart has a goal of
zero waste. Wilson said the
company’s U.S. operations
by the end of fiscal year 2017
diverted 82 percent of mate-
rials previously considered
waste from going into land-
fills. In Oregon, that reached
86 percent.
Since Doug McMillon
became Walmart CEO four
years ago, the company’ has
pushed into online retain.
Walmart is testing a lot of
technologies and strategies,
Heidegger said, including
6-foot tall robots that scan an
entire aisle in one minute to
determine the inventory. The
information from the robot
goes to an associate’s tablet,
and that employee stocks the
shelves.
“We’re playing offense,”
he said. “We’re getting out in
front of this and anticipating
what next big thing is going
to be.”
Clicks and bytes
E-commerce, meanwhile,
has long been the name of the
game at Amazon, which has
grown into the largest online
retailer in the world based on
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revenue and second-largest in
total sales.
Every order placed at
Amazon.com is stored in
one of the company’s large,
nondescript computer server
warehouses known as data
centers. The concrete struc-
tures are the physical mani-
festation of what techies refer
to as “The Cloud,” storing
everything from Tweets
to downloads to Internet
purchase information.
Data centers require an
abundance of water and
cheap electricity, which is
what drew the industry to
the ports of Umatilla and
Morrow along the Columbia
River. The first data center in
Morrow County came online
in 2011 and construction
hasn’t slowed since.
Amazon is notoriously
tight-lipped about its business
in the region, operating under
the subsidiary Vadata Inc.
and requiring partners to sign
nondisclosure agreements.
Corporate communications
for Amazon did not return
a request for comment
Monday.
A look around the two
counties, however, shows
the company is becoming
an economic force with the
rapid construction of multiple
data centers. Though each
facility only hires around
20-30 full-time employees,
they are well-paying jobs.
Experienced technicians earn
between $30-35 per hour.
Mike Gorman, assessor
and tax collector for Morrow
County,
said
Amazon
has two main sites at the
Port of Morrow’s East
Beach Industrial Park near
Boardman, including one on
Rippee Road and another on
Lewis and Clark Drive. The
company also purchased a
third site east of Lewis and
Clark Drive for $2.9 million
earlier this year.
The Rippee Road site has
three data centers, Gorman
said, with a total market value
exceeding $703 million. Of
that total, $641 million is
exempt under agreements
inked with the Columbia
River Enterprise Zone, which
provide three to five years of
tax exemption as an incentive
for companies to build in the
region.
The nearby Lewis and
Clark Drive site also has
three completed data centers
and a fourth under construc-
tion. Gorman said the total
market value is more than
$926 million, with $836
million currently exempt
from taxation.
In Umatilla County,
assessor Paul Chalmers said
Amazon has four completed
data center buildings at the
McNary Industrial Park east
of Umatilla, and a fifth is now
under construction. Amazon
also plans to build four new
data centers at a site west of
Hermiston, at Westland and
Cottonwood Bend roads.
Like in Morrow County,
the Umatilla County data
centers are subject to tax
exemptions through the
Greater Umatilla Enterprise
Zone and Oregon Strategic
Investment Program, or SIP.
But once those values come
on the books, Chalmers said
the tax base will receive a
substantial boost.
“Everyone reaps a benefit
from this investment, from
a tax standpoint,” Chalmers
said. “There is a direct benefit
to having these folks develop
here in Umatilla County.”
Chalmers said the added
value will help offset the
recent devaluation of the
Hermiston
Generating
Station, a change that caused
some sticker shock among
taxpayers earlier this year.
The data center boom
has also resulted in a rising
demand for local workforce.
Blue Mountain Community
College is in the third year of
offering a data center techni-
cian certificate program, and
instructor Pete Hernberg said
a “very large percentage” of
students who complete the
program go directly to work
in the field.
This year, Hernberg said
he will have 17 students
finishing the program, and all
17 already have jobs lined up
at a data center.
“There’s a great deal
of demand for those skills
locally,” Hernberg said. “I
don’t have a crystal ball, but
from everything I’ve heard
and everything I know this is
something that will continue
to grow for the immediate
future.”