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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (June 19, 2019)
A6 OFF PAGE ONE East Oregonian Solar: Eastern Oregon avoids glare from panels Continued from Page A1 less than 5 percent of the proposals would go on high-value farmland. Umatilla County plan- ning director Bob Wald- her said the county has plenty of Class 1 or Class 2 soil, the stuff that quali- fies for high-quality farm- land, with large swaths around Athena and the Milton-Freewater area. But, he said, solar devel- opment does not seem much of an issue in the county. “We don’t have an application currently that we’re reviewing,” he said. Morrow County also might not have to worry much about the new rule. County planning direc- tor Carla McLane said the county has little of that rich soil. “To get to that in Mor- row County, you have to have lots of stars align,” she said, primarily due to a lack of water. But the ruling still raises concerns for her. “It felt like a really rushed process,” she said. McLane said she served on the LCDC Rules Advi- sory Committee, and the development commis- sioner and staff wanted to get the ruling in the books before the legislative ses- sion. That push, she said, ignored the bigger picture. Oregon’s list for uses on farm land runs to 30 pages, she said, with exemptions for everything from bed and breakfasts to music concerts, and this rule focuses on one use. Should the question be, she said, whether there are too many solar proj- ects on farm land or too many cumulative impacts on farm land? McLane also said the new rules are about pro- tecting prime farm land in the Willamette Valley, but Land Conservation and Development “applied a broad brush to the entire state.” Still, she said, the rules contain “one golden nug- get” — they allow coun- ties to create a program for solar facilities if the project proposes a dual use. Counties might have to go through the effort of making the program, McLane said, but it could be beneficial as long as it was put to use and not just taking up space on the shelf. Waldher also said the dual use was a good move. Agriculture activ- ities such as beekeeping or cattle grazing, he said, could work just fine under solar panels. GOP: Oregon Senate Republicans threaten second walkout Continued from Page A1 walkout were reinforced when the caucus sent out a news release con- firming that it’s under consideration. Unlike the May stunt, this one comes 12 days before the constitutional end of the legislative session. If there’s no quorum to do business, the state constitution allows leg- islators to “compel the attendance of absent members.” In 2007, on the request of Senate President Peter Courtney, then-Gov. Ted Kulongoski dispatched state troopers to bring two Republican senators from Corvallis to the Capitol for a vote. That standoff was averted before police had to bring either of them to Salem. When Republicans staged their walkout last month, Courtney opted not to call the police on them, and he and Brown negotiated with Repub- lican leaders to end the boycott. This time, with less than two weeks before the Legislature is scheduled to adjourn for the year, Brown is tak- ing a hard line. Kate Kondayen, Brown’s deputy commu- nications director, said the governor is “pre- pared to call upon those resources available to her—including autho- rizing state troopers to bring senators back to the Capitol and, if neces- sary, calling legislators back to Salem to com- plete their work over the summer.” Kondayen said when Republicans agreed to return to the building last month, they also agreed not to walk out again. Brown “expects them to honor their word,” she added. A number of major policies have yet to be considered in the Sen- ate, including HB 2005, which would create a statewide paid leave program for new par- ents and others needing time away from work to care for family, and HB 2015, which would allow undocumented immi- grants to get Oregon drivers’ licenses. Bills aimed at reliev- ing the state’ housing crisis, raising the tax on tobacco and at reform- ing Oregon’s campaign finance laws could also be left hanging if Repub- licans skip town. That’s not to mention the state budget. The only thing the constitu- tion compels lawmakers to do during their legis- lative sessions is pass a balanced state budget for the next two years. And less than two weeks before lawmakers have to adjourn, the bud- gets for major agencies, including the health and human services agen- cies that oversee pro- grams impacting more than 1 million Orego- nians, have yet to receive a vote. If they do walk out, Democrats would likely bring the gun and vac- cine bills back from the dead. When asked about the hypothetical last week, Brown quickly said she’s confident there would be enough time to get both through. With budget bills and other priority items needing to get through over the next week, Republicans would have more leverage with a late walkout than they did the first time. During the first lock- out, Sen. Tim Knopp, R-Bend, returned to work after the first day, which still left the Sen- ate one person short of the number they needed to do business. If he played it the same way in the sec- ond go-around, it would put pressure on Ore- gon’s soon-to-be-newest senator. A replacement for the late Jackie Win- ters, who died May 29, will be named by Tues- day. Among the three nominees is Rep. Denyc Boles, R-Salem, who spoke out against HB 2020 on the House floor Monday night. House Bill 2020 had a first reading Tuesday, and could be up for a vote as early as Thursday. Wednesday, June 19, 2019 Goals: Find better way to identify, implement Continued from Page A1 and federal agencies to iden- tify another $20 million in projects. Hermiston took a differ- ent approach, Fairley said, by using the mayor to facil- itate a meeting with depart- ment heads to identify where Hermiston’s issues are. Those issues helped for- mulate goals, which Byron Smith, Hermiston city man- ager, regularly updates the council on. The approach has yielded results, he said, as evidenced by the completion of the Eastern Oregon Trade and Events Center and its down- town plan in recent years. Fairley said the coun- cil needed to consider both changing the content of its goals to include more time- lines and deliverable out- comes, and the process it uses to implement them. The workgroup suggested holding an annual meeting with key department heads to discuss a five-year outlook on the city’s challenges and opportunities. The council would then use those discussions to form goals and direct the city manager to come up with an implementation strategy before the council decides whether to adopt them or not. Fairley said another key part of the goals process would be to assign new or existing revenue to each goal. “Ultimately, what mat- ters is where you put your money,” he said. Like the cities the work- group considered exemplary, the city manager position would be evaluated on how well they were implementing the goals. But Fairley said the pres- sure would still be on the council to fund those goals, or else they wouldn’t be able to properly evaluate the city manager on his or her ability to implement them. After Fairley ended his presentation, some council- ors said they want to make sure the public is as involved Staff photo by Kathy Aney A crew from Pendleton Ready Mix pours footings Tuesday for a new house on Southwest First Street in Pendleton. in the goals making pro- cess as they did the last time the council overhauled the process. Shortly after he was elected in 2016, Mayor John Turner convened a commit- tee to draft new goals for the city. After the committee sub- mitted a variety of options, Turner and other councilors took them to various com- munity groups to figure out which ones rose to the top. The council approved the top four goals — improving infrastructure, land develop- ment, housing and economic development — in 2017 and renewed them recently. A January analysis of the goals showed that the coun- cil had a mixed bag of suc- cess, hitting many of its hous- ing objectives while falling behind on infrastructure. Councilor Becky Marks said she was concerned that the council would focus so much on goals under the new process that it could neglect sudden opportunities like the Pendleton Unmanned Aerial Systems Range. She also contrasted Pend- leton with Hermiston and John Day, saying that Herm- iston’s relatively flat topog- raphy allowed for a differ- ent type of development that wasn’t available to Pendleton while John Day was much smaller than Pendleton. “I know, Scott, you and I have butted heads over John Day quite a little bit,” she said. “However, John Day has 1,600 people. Fairley said Pendleton was different than John Day, but his point stood that John Day was successful in implement- ing its goals. He added that the new process would give the council the flexibility to change and tweak goals as circumstances change. The workgroup had sug- gested integrating the new process into the city council’s rulebook, but City Manager Robb Corbett advised that the council also put it into the goals document if they decided to do it. Renewal: Pendleton could target Byers Avenue Continued from Page A1 lay and another 36 seg- ments that need a complete reconstruction. But the biggest target is Southeast Byers Avenue from Fifth Street to 12th Street. Beyond its crumbling condition, Simons said Byers gets more traffic than its designed for. Byers is one of Pendle- ton’s older neighborhoods, meaning the street is nar- row and most houses along it don’t have driveways. Parked cars cling to the sides of Byers, further nar- rowing the roadway and spurring some cars to park on curbs and sidewalks, damaging walkways. Simons suggested not only reconstructing Byers, but widening it to bet- ter accommodate on-street parking. He added that the city had been saving a source of street funding to recon- struct Byers, but if the urban renewal district paid for it, the money could go toward other important street proj- ects, like repairing North- west Despain Avenue. The project has an esti- mated cost of $1.7 million, and with the complete list of repair projects totaling $6 million, Simons said staff made a priority list of streets that could fit inside a $3 mil- lion budget. Those streets include parts of Southwest Fifth Street, Southwest First Street, Southeast Third Street, Southeast Eighth Street, Southwest Fourth Street and Southeast Good- win Avenue. But Simons warned that the money might not stretch that far because, excluding Byers, the city hadn’t calcu- lated the costs of new side- walk ramps, curb repairs and drainage issues. Although the devel- opment commission has mostly used urban renewal money for private proj- ects, there are a few notable exceptions. In 2010, the commission agreed to spend $400,000 to build the Riverfront Plaza, a park that connects the 400 block of Southwest Court Avenue with the Pendleton River Parkway. And in 2016, the com- mission contributed nearly three-quarters of the $91,915 cost to repave two public parking lots in the down- town area. The one-time boost in urban renewal funds is meant to bolster an annual street maintenance budget that’s struggled to stop the bleeding. In its 2019-20 budget, the city allocated $1.2 million toward street maintenance, a figure the city’s consul- tants say will maintain the status quo. Although the coun- cil didn’t take any action on Tuesday, City Manager Robb Corbett said members would need to take action soon if it wanted to move forward with the projects. Councilor Paul Chalm- ers, the chairman of the commission, said members would vote on the proposal at its July 16 meeting. Firefighter: Janice Arsenault remembered as a dynamic and outgoing personality Continued from Page A1 said Williams did not pop up on local police databases, and the investigation will look into why he was here as well as the relationships between the three. “We should be able to get to more answers today and possibly tomorrow,” Rowan said. He also expressed his admiration to members of the Umatilla Rural Fire Pro- tection District, which lost one of is own with Arse- nault’s death. She was a volunteer firefighter for the local department. “That was pretty hum- bling to watch them stand- ing at attention on the dock waiting for the boats to come in, and then the procession from Hat Rock to Burns (the mortuary in Hermiston),” Rowan said. The fire district posted this message about Arse- nault on its Facebook page: “It is difficult to write this through the tears and heartache, as we continue to process this sudden and tragic loss for us all. Janice’s positive outlook on life, con- tagious laugh, and her desire to live life to its fullest will be missed. We are glad that she was part of our family too. “Words alone cannot express the appreciation and gratitude we have to all of those individuals and groups who stepped forward to help up our agency, our family, in our efforts to bring home our sister. You stood stead- fast by our side in our great- est moment of need. Thank you. “May we all find solace in knowing that Janice is in a better place and will for- ever be watching over us.” On Tuesday afternoon an impromptu memorial started as people began leaving flowers and other items outside the Umatilla fire station. Arsenault was a stu- dent and employee at Blue Mountain Community Col- lege. Jacelyn Keys, director of BMCC’s Hermiston Cen- ter, was Arsenault’s supervi- sor. She recalled Arsenault as a dynamic and outgoing personalty. One of Arsenault’s joys outside studying was riding her Harley Davidson motor- cycle. She recently returned from a rally with family and friends, Keys said, but Arse- nault did not let blood lines draw the boundaries of who she called family. “I don’t know if that woman actually knew a stranger,” Keys said. Arsenault’s definition of relaxing left folks in the dust. She earned her GED at the college, took classes to become a volunteer fire- fighter and this spring earned her national EMT credentials. She also worked full time as an office assis- tant and was a mother of four. “Janice did everything big,” Keys said. “She loved big. She laughed big.” But something small from her friend was really sticking with Keys. Keys said she is not a morning person. While she arrived at work at 8 a.m., she would be content not to engage with anyone until 10. Arsenault told her she needed to hear Key’s tell her, “Good morning.” Arse- nault pushed for her work day to begin on a positive note. Keys said over time she gave in. “I think the last two mornings,” Keys said, “I miss that the most.”