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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 29, 2019)
TURKEY TROT MORE HEPPNER PRIMED FOR THAN JUST A FUN RUN SHOWDOWN WITH KENNEDY REGION, A3 SPORTS, B1 FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 2019 143rd Year, No. 290 $1.50 WINNER OF THE 2019 ONPA GENERAL EXCELLENCE AWARD THANKSGIVING Your Weekend The chance to serve • CHRISTMAS BAZAAR, Hermiston Community Center • WILDHORSE HOLIDAY BAZAAR, Wildhorse Resort & Casino Rivers Event Cen- ter and Cayuse Hall Staff photo by Kathy Aney Kohen Kreuger, 7, serves as a waiter during Thursday’s Community Thanks- giving Dinner at Hermiston High School. • CRAFTS FOR ALL AGES, Pendleton Center for the Arts and Hermiston Public Library Delivered with love FOR TIMES AND LOCATIONS CHECK COMING EVENTS, A5 Weekend Weather FRI SAT SUN By JESSICA POLLARD East Oregonian 29/16 34/20 32/20 Industrial development feeds UEC growth By JADE MCDOWELL East Oregonian HERMISTON — As industrial development drives growth around Hermiston and Boardman, Uma- tilla Electric Cooperative is experi- encing rapid growth of its own. It took the Hermiston-based, consumer-owned cooperative 77 years to sell its fi rst billion kilowatt hours. This year alone it expects to provide customers just shy of 3 bil- lion KWH. “Our average growth has been close to 20% per year in the last eight years,” Umatilla Electric CEO Robert Echenrode said, not- ing that the increased volume comes despite advances in energy effi ciency causing individual cus- tomers to decrease their usage. UEC has a policy against dis- cussing specifi c customers. But anyone paying attention to Hermis- ton, Umatilla and the Port of Mor- row can guess that much of UEC’s As the dinner got roll- ing, guests fl owed in over two hours. About half- way in, 31 diners sat at eight round tables eating their meals. Among the volunteers serving them were fi ve members of the See Chance, Page A8 See Delivered, Page A8 See UEC, Page A8 Head cook Sheena Willingham pours gravy into a crock pot insert during Thursday’s Thanks- giving dinner at the Salvation Army in Pendleton. Raymond Bushelly assists. By KATHY ANEY East Oregonian P ENDLETON — Thanksgiving din- ners don’t prepare themselves. Volunteers gathered early at the Salvation Army in Pendleton to help put together the annual meal. A cadre of potato peelers circled up in the hallway, peeling over 70 pounds before they were done. In the kitchen, head cook Sheena Willingham over- saw preparation of fourteen 12-pound turkey roasts, 5 gallons of gravy, 200 din- ner rolls, cranberry sauce and green beans. Twen- ty-fi ve pies sat on a table ready for slicing. Willingham’s fi rst day as Salvation Army cook was only Monday, four days before the biggest meal of the year. The cook didn’t seemed fazed. The former food truck owner is an experienced cook who specializes in barbecue and Staff photo by Kathy Aney A cadre of potato peelers works to prepare for Thursday’s Thanksgiving dinner at the Salvation Army in Pendleton. who has won the the annual Pendleton Cattle Barons’ Buckaroo BBQ Challenge. “Cooking is my pas- sion,” Willingham said. As for Thursday’s Thanksgiving dinner, “it was a guessing game,” she said. “I cooked for 200 people.” H ERMISTON — Each year, between 100 and 150 people vol- unteer at the Community Fel- lowship Dinner Thanksgiving meal. Some of them cook and some wait on tables, but Terri-Lynn and Robert Gard- ner have been hand-delivering Thanks- giving to the front doors of local resi- dents for nearly a decade. “Our family is scattered all over the place,” Terri-Lynn said. “So we have the day to ourselves. We get to visit peo- ple and maybe cheer them up. Without something like this, people could be for- gotten on holidays.” The Gardners estimate that each year, they deliver anywhere from 15 to 45 meals to people in Irrigon, Stanfi eld and everywhere in between the two towns. The action starts just after 10:30 a.m. each Thanksgiving, when pairs of vol- unteers haul a fi rst round of insulated delivery bags to their cars, brimming with slices of pies and mashed potatoes. Each bag comes equipped with a half-sheet of paper explaining how many meals each household ordered, when and where. “Moving in pairs is good,” Ter- ri-Lynn said. “That way, one person can drive and the other person can run out and knock on doors.” This Thanksgiving, Terri-Lynn is driving. And maybe that’s because, as a retired truck driver, Robert’s put in more than a million miles across the Staff photo by Kathy Aney Most Measure 49 properties remain undeveloped By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI EO Media Group SALEM — Most of the farm and forest properties made available for development in Oregon under a decade-old ballot initiative haven’t yet been subdivided, according to state land use regulators. Meanwhile, county govern- ments and affected landowners don’t appear eager to take advan- tage of a program that would steer home-building away from more valuable natural resource lands. Of the properties that have been subdivided under Measure 49, a property right law passed in 2007, about 62% are in agricultural zones, 16% are in forest zones and 11% are in mixed farm and forest zones, according to the Department of Land Conservation and Devel- opment. The remainder are in rural residential zones. “The farmland seems to be get- ting developed at a faster rate than the other categories,” said Sarah Marvin, a senior planner with DLCD, during a Nov. 20 hearing before the House Agriculture and Land Use Committee. Oregon voters passed Measure 49 to amend another ballot initiative approved three years earlier, Mea- sure 37, which allowed landowners to seek waivers of land use regula- tions imposed on their properties. Landowners could also seek compensation for lost property val- ues under Measure 37, but most counties could not afford to pay those claims and instead opted to waive restrictions on development — stoking fears of major new sub- divisions that would interfere with agriculture and forestry. Under Measure 49, those devel- opment rights were scaled back so that most landowners could only build three homes per property, or up to 10 homes if they could suf- fi ciently prove that regulations reduced their property values. Roughly 4,200 new parcels were approved by Oregon land use reg- ulators under Measure 49, but only 1,700 parcels were actually created — leaving about 2,500 new parcels that could be created in the future, according to DLCD. In areas such as Southern Ore- gon, the possibility of develop- ment occurring outside urban growth boundaries may raise the chances that newly built homes will be prone to wildfi re hazards, said Marvin. “A lot of Measure 49 homes sites are going into extreme fi re risk areas.” See Measure 49, Page A8 Saturday DECEMBER 7 th , 2019 Friday DECEMBER 6 th , 2019 Evening Gala | 6:00 pm Family Day | 10am-2pm LOCATED AT THE Pendleton Convention Center For more information or to purchase tickets: sahpendleton.org/winterfest or 541-278-2627
