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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 25, 2018)
WEEKEND EDITION SPORTS PARTICIPATION FALLS EXPERIENCE THE EMERALD ISLE CAR THEFT SUSPECT ARRESTED SPORTS/1B LIFESTYLES/1C REGION/3A AUGUST 25-26, 2018 142nd Year, No. 211 $1.50 WINNER OF THE 2018 ONPA GENERAL EXCELLENCE AWARD MILTON-FREEWATER New law allowed 42 gun seizures Two local protection orders filed by family, law enforcement By PHIL WRIGHT East Oregonian Staff photo by Kathy Aney Gib Olinger Elementary School is the first new school to open in Milton-Freewater since 1922. Gib Olinger is a GO New elementary school gets ready to open on Sept. 4 By ANTONIO SIERRA East Oregonian R ob Clark’s favorite room in Gib Olinger Elementary School is in the third grade section on the sec- ond floor. Clark, the superintendent of the Mil- ton-Freewater Unified School District, peered through the classroom’s window to the softball fields that now encom- pass the east end of campus. “I told the teacher that she can’t sell tickets when the weather gets yucky in March,” the self-described “sports guy” said. Clark led a tour through Friday after- noon, just hours before he would help cut the ribbon on the district’s first new school in nearly a century. During the tour, Clark took a call from representatives from the Valley Foundation, the nonprofit that offered $20 million if the district passed a bond. Voters complied, and combined with a grant from the state, the district raised $31.5 million to build Gib Olinger and renovate the rest of the district’s aging schools. That eight figure sum allowed the district to not only build the school, but Pendleton police in February learned about Oregon’s new law to take weapons from cit- izens who are a serious threat to harm them- selves or others. Sgt. Tyler Reddington used that law on March 27 to obtain a extreme risk protection order after questioning a man he arrested. “He was going to shoot his boss,” Red- dington said. “That was of course by his own admission.” Reddington and other officers responded that day to a disturbance on the 1700 block of Southwest Third Street. According to the police report, the man said he tucked his .22 caliber handgun into his waistband and was heading out to kill the boss who just fired him. His sister confronted him outside their home. He threatened to kill her if she didn’t get out of his way. She grabbed the car keys from her brother, bolted for the door and hid the keys in the house. She took off in her car for safety. The man told police the clash with his sister made him change his mind, so he hid the gun in the storage shed in the back yard. Police took the gun, which was loaded and had a round in the chamber. Reddington arrested the man for disorderly conduct, unlawful use of a weapon and men- acing. During the interview with police, the report states, the man said he only threatened to shoot his sister because he was angry, but he would not have done it. He was serious about shooting his boss. Reddington said two elements factored into his reason for seeking the protection order. First, the man told police he shot at people when he was a juvenile living in Port- land. Police were not able to verify that, per- haps due to the difficulty accessing juvenile records. See GUNS/12A Staff photo by Kathy Aney Milton-Freewater Superintendent Rob Clark looks out the expansive li- brary windows Friday at Gib Olinger Elementary School, the city’s first new school in almost 100 years. stock it with the latest technology. Clark said Gib Olinger is the first school in the Pacific Northwest that has an large interactive touchscreen in each room. Resembling a large flat screen TV, Clark said teachers can write out a problem on the touchscreen and then bring it to the students so they can solve it themselves. Clark compared it to a commentator using a telestrator on a football broadcast to map out a play. During the design process, Clark said district staff traveled to Pendleton, Hermiston and the Tri-Cities, where they could take note of schools that were built in the past decade and get a sense of what they did right and wrong. See OLINGER/12A Gib Olinger also has qualities that are hard to find elsewhere Jobs plentiful, candidates ‘scarce’ locally Regional employers have difficulty keeping lower-wage positions filled By ANTONIO SIERRA East Oregonian edies for the violation has been scheduled for Aug. 30. Oregon farm regulators had asked a judge to order Lost Val- ley to stop generating waste- water, which would effectively shut down the facility. During the court hearing, the former farm manager of Lost Valley Farm testified that he quit on moral grounds after being asked to unlawfully spread wastewater to a field. Jedediah Aylett said he On Wednesday, Wildhorse Casino and Resort sent out a press release that would have been unfathomable 10 years ago: dozens of jobs are available and Wildhorse and the rest of the Confederated Tribes of the Uma- tilla Indian Reservation was having trouble filling them. In a press releases entitled “Jobs plentiful, candidates scarce,” Wildhorse states that the low unemployment rate “translates to head- aches for recruiters and business owners in Mission, Pendleton, and across the country.” At more than 1,700 employees, the CTUIR is the second largest employer in Umatilla County, which is currently sporting a 4.5 per- cent unemployment rate. According to the press release, the CTUIR and its various enterprises had 66 job vacan- cies as of mid-August, ranging from bus driv- ers to archaeologists. In a statement, Wildhorse employment manager Dorothy Cyr said passing a back- ground check can be a barrier for some can- didates while also pointing to local housing See DAIRY/12A See JOBS/12A BOARDMAN Judge rules Lost Valley dairy can continues operating By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI EO Media Group A controversial Boardman dairy will not be shut down despite violating a settlement agreement with farm regulators over wastewater management. Multnomah County Circuit Court Judge Kelly Skye has asked attorneys for the Oregon Department of Agriculture and Lost Valley Farm to come up with less drastic remedies that will get the facility into regula- tory compliance. “I’m not inclined to order an immediate shutdown of waste- water,” Skye said at a court hearing in Portland on Friday. However, the judge did find that Greg te Velde, the dairy’s owner, had willfully violated his deal with ODA to main- tain enough wastewater storage capacity. As a “lifelong dairyman,” te Velde “should know what it takes to get his dairy into com- pliance” with regulations, Skye said. A follow-up hearing on rem-