FROM MUTTON BUSTIN’ TO CHUTE 8,
YOUR GUIDE TO THE FARM-CITY PRO RODEO
INSIDE TODAY
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 1, 2018
142nd Year, No. 193
One dollar
WINNER OF THE 2018 ONPA GENERAL EXCELLENCE AWARD
BPA pulls back on 14-hour blackout plan
Substation in Wheeler County needs upgrade, requires outages
By PHIL WRIGHT
East Oregonian
Wheeler County residents pushed the
Bonneville Power Administration to unplug
its plan to temporarily cut their power this
summer.
More than 1,300 people live in the East-
ern Oregon county, most in the towns of
Fossil, Mitchell and Spray. The federal
power marketing agency provides electricity
to two local co-operatives: Columbia Basin
Electric, which sells power to Fossil area
customers, and Columbia Power, which has
customers in Spray and Mitchell. The BPA
planned to shut off the juice to the county on
Fridays from 7 p.m. to Saturdays at 9 a.m.
starting July 27 so it could make upgrades to
is electrical substation near Fossil.
Roberta Vandehey of Fossil led the effort
to get BPA to back off that plan. She said
most residents there found out about the
outages when their power bills arrived July
20.
“On Monday, everybody had to start
really, really putting on pressure to get that
one on Friday stopped,” she said.
Vandehey said she sent letters to six news-
papers, including the East Oregonian, about
the BPA’s plan. She said she spent an hour-
and-a-half on the phone with BPA spokes-
person John Tyler and sent him the letter. She
asked business owners in Wheeler County to
call the BPA to explain how damaging the
blackouts would be and urged them to bill
Smoke and sunlight
the agency for any loss of income.
Joe McNeill owns and operates the Fossil
Mercantile Company, the lone grocery store
in Fossil. He said he made one of those calls.
“I’ve got four freezers and I don’t have a
generator,” he said. “And 14-hour blackouts
— that’s going to be hard. And the next call
I made was to my insurance to see what kind
of coverage I had.”
McNeill said his plan was to pack every-
thing in as much dry ice as a possible to pre-
See BPA/8A
PENDLETON
Cooling station
opens during
scorching heat
Homeless vulnerable to heat
exhaustion and dehydration
By KATHY ANEY
East Oregonian
maintenance on publicly owned city assets
including roads, buildings, and parks,” he
wrote. “This means that as a community,
we are not paying the full cost for the ser-
vices we use — we are enjoying public
assets paid for by previous generations but
passing the cost of maintaining and replac-
ing those assets on to future generations.”
In an interview after the meeting, Fair-
ley said the plan revolves around the ser-
vices paid for with the general fund —
police, fire, parks and recreation, and
others. The second part of the plan includes
streets, which had been paid for in the past
The Pendleton Warming Station changed
its middle name this week, at least informally.
The warming station operates as an oasis
to the homeless on frosty winter nights. But as
triple-digit temperatures arrived this week, the
shelter doubled as a cooling station.
Heat waves are particularly dangerous for
homeless people. They often lack water, sun-
screen and shade and already may suffer from
health problems that are exacerbated by the
scorching heat. Dehydration and heat exhaus-
tion are a risk to those who often don’t have
access to air conditioning.
Back in the early days of Neighbor 2 Neigh-
bor, the nonprofit that oversees the warm-
ing station, a day center operated in the base-
ment of the United Methodist Church on the
most frigid nights of winter and hottest days
of summer. Rev. Sandra Kimbrow, pastor at
the Methodist church at the time, started the
day center and monitored it. When Kimbrow
moved away from Pendleton, the day center
fizzled because of a shortage of volunteers.
Recently, the organization’s board toyed
with the idea of re-starting a daytime cooling
station, now that the organization has matured
and refined its purpose. The mission, Neigh-
bor 2 Neighbor Executive Director Dwight
Johnson said, is basically to get people off the
streets in dangerous weather.
“Since we had a heat advisory, we thought
this would be a good time for a trial run,”
Johnson said.
It was a last-minute decision, he said, made
the day before after securing enough volun-
teers. The word went out on the organization’s
website and by word of mouth. Open from 1-5
p.m., it would provide a respite during some
of the hottest hours of the day. By 2 p.m.,
seven people had wandered into the building
at 715 S.E. Court Ave. Outside the tempera-
ture neared the day’s high of 103 degrees.
Zachary Chase sat in the air conditioning,
See BUDGET/8A
See COOLING/8A
Staff photo by E.J. Harris
The sun drops below some clouds as it casts a red hue on the evening sky Tuesday in Pendleton. Smoke particles in the
air from area wildfires causes the sunset to be red by allowing sunlight’s longer wavelength colors like red and orange to
get through while blocking the shorter wavelength colors of yellow, blue and green.
PENDLETON
Councilor proposes fix to unsustainable budget
Fairley’s plan to stop
‘kicking can down the road’
on maintenance
By ANTONIO SIERRA
East Oregonian
Frustrated by a lack of action on grow-
ing maintenance costs in the past two city
budgets, Pendleton City Councilor Scott
Fairley is proposing his own plan.
Presented at a city council workshop
Monday, Fairley’s plan includes a timeline
that would put Pendleton on a path toward
addressing its $30 million maintenance
backlog and balancing
the gap between rev-
enue and expenses by
2020.
At the heart of the
problem, according to
Fairley’s report, is that
property tax increases
are capped at 3 percent
while the cost of oper-
Fairley
ating the city rises by 4
to 6 percent each year.
“Rather than cut services to address this
gap, the city has been funding services the
community desires, such as public safety
and parks and recreation, by deferring
OHA reports widespread sales
of tobacco to under-age buyers
By CLAIRE WITHYCOMBE
Capital Bureau
Staff photo by E.J. Harris
Hailey Loiland, 11, of Weston models a poncho she made in
the junior creativity category at the Stars of Fashion 4-H fash-
ion revue on Tuesday at the Pendleton Convention Center.
SALEM — State public health offi-
cials say that the rate of tobacco sales
to underage consumers has increased
slightly since the state raised the mini-
mum age to buy tobacco from 18 to 21.
The Oregon Legislature passed
the new minimum age law, known
as Tobacco 21, last year. It went into
effect Jan. 1, making Oregon the fifth
state in the nation to do so.
The Oregon Health Authority says
that in the first six months of 2018,
18 percent of attempts to buy tobacco
products by minors — coordinated
by the agency as inspections — were
successful, according to findings pub-
lished by OHA on Tuesday.
In Umatilla County the retailer vio-
lation rate was 24 percent and in Mor-
row County it was 50 percent, with the
Circle K in Heppner and Ione Market
selling cigarettes to a minor during a
November 25, 2017 sting.
The Umatilla County stores that
sold tobacco to a minor during stings
were the 11th Street Market, Chev-
ron Station at 1580 W. Highland and
Circle K Store at 1430 N. First St. in
Hermiston; the Jalisco Market in Mil-
ton-Freewater; and the Southgate Mini
Mart and Walmart in Pendleton, which
sold an e-cigarette.
The rate of underage sales in Ore-
gon during similar inspections last
year was 16 percent, when the mini-
See TOBACCO/8A