GRADUATION
INSIDE
SPECIAL SECTION
WEDNESDAY, MAY 29, 2019
143rd Year, No. 160
$1.50
WINNER OF THE 2018 ONPA GENERAL EXCELLENCE AWARD
Urban renewal
funds for
Pendleton
streets remains
issue
By PHIL WRIGHT
East Oregonian
Staff photo by Kathy Aney
Mark Mulvihill stands on a gravel bar formed by McKay Creek. When Mulvihill grew up in the neighborhood, he
would have been standing in the creek instead of on a bar with vegetation growing on it.
By ANTONIO SIERRA
East Oregonian
W
hen Mark Mulvihill
returned to Pendle-
ton’s McKay Creek
neighborhood three
years ago, he con-
sulted with the Federal Emergency
Management Agency while building
his house.
After keeping his house and work-
shop away from the creek and decid-
ing against building a basement at
his Southwest Kirk Avenue property,
he was assured that nothing like the
1991 McKay Creek fl ood would hap-
pen again.
The line of dead grass where the
creek nipped at his backyard more
than a month ago acts as evidence that
those assurances weren’t enough.
The April fl ooding along McKay
Creek that put Community Park
underwater and fl ooded area base-
ments and yards has long ago dried,
but it’s still on the minds of some of
its residents.
See Water, Page A7
The Pendleton Development Com-
mission faces a decision over injecting
urban renewal funds into repairing the
city’s deteriorating streets.
The commission, which consists of
the members of the city council, met
Tuesday evening to hash out the mat-
ter in a work session. Pendleton Mayor
John Turner stepped into chair the
meeting, starting with city attorney
Nancy Kerns’ legal opinion the com-
mission could spend money on street
repair and maintenance but not on
rebuilding.
Just what constitutes a street rebuild,
however, was another question. No one
from the city’s public works depart-
ment was present to give input, and
councilors did not settle on an answer.
Turner asked City Manager Robb Cor-
bett, who doubles as the commission’s
executive director, if he had an opinion.
Corbett’s response: “No.”
Corbett has proposed a 10-year plan
to get all city streets to good condition.
The project comes with a $41 million
price tag. Part of his plan includes using
$3 million in urban renewal funds. The
one-time expenditure would go into
the upcoming 2019-20 fi scal year and
leave the city with the need to raise a
total of $21.4 million over the decade.
Throw out the $3 million, Corbett
said, and the city has to make up that
much more.
That also would step the city even
deeper into the political minefi eld of
raising fees or passing new taxes to
cover the project cost, all of which
could be part of the city’s big picture
for the funding.
Councilor Becky Marks urged the
rest of the council to read the origi-
nal 2003 urban renewal plan. She said
one objective of the urban renewal dis-
trict was to make Pendleton pedestrian
friendly, yet she agreed the plan does
not outright prohibit street repairs.
Turner pointed out the plan indeed
includes street repairs.
“But,” Marks countered, “it doesn’t
say we can pave all of Byers.”
Councilor Paul Chalmers said prop-
erties on better streets can have higher
tax value, so there is an incentive to
invest the funds in the road work.
Turner said this comes down to the
development commission answering
two questions at its next public meet-
ing: Does it agree or not it can spend
urban renewal money on street repair,
and, if so, how much?
Graduation quilt pieces together memories of basketball career
By JADE MCDOWELL
East Oregonian
Cole Smith’s graduation present
tells a story.
Each square of the king-sized
quilt made by his grandmother is
made of a different T-shirt or jersey
from a different basketball tourna-
ment or team.
A black square with the Las
Vegas logo represents a trip in
fourth grade to a tournament in Sin
City. Purple squares show off dif-
ferent Bulldogs mottos through-
out the years. A blue square reads
“Best of the West” — a hometown
tournament, and one of Smith’s
favorites.
Now instead of a box of old,
too-small T-shirts he has an easy
way to take those memories with
him wherever he heads off to next.
“I liked the idea,” he said. “I
thought it would be good to look
back on.”
The quilt was his mom Cheri
Smith’s idea. She got his grand-
mother Erin Chowning to do the
sewing, and Chowning enlisted
the help of longtime friend Shawn
Lockwood to help with the quilting
part.
It was Lockwood who taught
Chowning how to quilt. Neither of
them had ever tried to do a T-shirt
quilt before, but with the skills they
already had and some hints from
YouTube tutorials they fi gured it
out.
“It was so much easier than I
thought it would be,” Chowning
said.
The project, with 40 different
squares, took about three weeks to
complete.
Lockwood said she has been
quilting her whole life, but this was
See Graduation, Page A7
Staff photo by Jade McDowell
Shawn Lockwood, left, and Erin Chowning, center, made a quilt for
Chowning’s grandson Cole Smith, right, for graduation using his old bas-
ketball T-shirts.