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145th year, No. 12
REGONIAN
Thursday, November 12, 2020
WINNER OF THE 2020 ONPA GENERAL EXCELLENCE AWARD
$1.50
City council puts street funding plan on hold
despite tabling gas tax, Pendleton has
been able to increase road maintenance
revenue by approving new fees on utilities
By ANTONIO SIERRA
East Oregonian
PeNdLeToN — a year ago,
the Pendleton City Council had
a plan to inject $1 million into
its street repair program with the
intent of reversing decades of deg-
radation in the city’s road system.
hermiston
energy
services to
raise rates
rates will go up by
6.98% in January 2021
and another 6.9% in
october 2021
By JADE MCDOWELL
East Oregonian
hermIsToN — hermiston
energy services will raise its rates
in January and again in october in
2021.
The hermiston City Council
approved a rate increase during
their monday, Nov. 9, meeting by
a 4-2 vote.
overall, rates will go up by
6.98% in January 2021 and another
6.9% in october 2021, but the effect
to each customer’s bill will depend
on the class they fall under and how
much energy they use. The average
residential user would climb from
$111 a month now to $117 in Jan-
uary and $124 in october, accord-
ing to hermiston energy services
General manager Nate rivera.
City councilors said raising
costs on things is the least favorite
part of their job, but it’s their job
to keep the city running as its own
costs rise.
“sometimes we need to realize
we have to make these hard deci-
sions, and sometimes it’s no fun
because we’re going to raise the
electricity, but if we want to sur-
vive, we have to do that,” Coun-
cilor manuel Gutierrez said before
making the motion to accept hes’s
recommendation.
before the vote, rivera told the
council that hes has been pulling
$85,000 a month from its reserves
and has delayed maintenance in
order to put off the rate increase
for as long as possible during
the pandemic, but even with that
strategy, hes projected to have
a more than $1 million deficit for
the 2020-21 fiscal year, mostly
driven by increases in the cost of
the power that hes purchases
See Hermiston, Page A7
The Pendleton City Council
mostly talked about why all these
plans should go on hold. The coun-
cil met Tuesday, Nov. 10, to go
over its official list of goals, but
talk focused on one topic.
“The real elephant in the room
is what we’re going to do about
streets,” mayor John Turner said.
one of the centerpieces of the
plan was a 4-cent gas tax, but 62%
of voters rejected the proposal in
may.
a council-backed, pro-gas tax
political action committee ceased
campaigning once the coronavi-
rus started spreading in umatilla
County and the country went into
an economic downturn. but the oil
industry did not, distributing anti-
gas tax material throughout the
spring in an attempt to ensure the
proposal’s defeat.
save our streets, the pro-gas
tax PaC, raised $6,570 in its abbre-
viated run, but Turner said he was
disappointed the committee wasn’t
able to raise something closer to
$15,000 knowing its opponents
were well-heeled.
With many businesses and fam-
ilies still struggling through the
pandemic, there didn’t seem to be
much appetite among the coun-
cil to begin pursuing the gas tax
again.
“I’m firmly convinced that it’s
the smartest way to go, but I’m not
sure that passing a gas tax is the
way to go in the next 18 months,”
Turner said, adding that the coun-
cil could look at it again for 2022.
other parts of the plan included
a hotel room fee, a fee on tickets
to large events and an increase to
the street utility fee. but the cli-
mate created by CovId-19 seems
like it will make implementation
unlikely.
See Roads, Page A7
VETERANS DAY
‘Veterans are heroes’
Pendleton pays
tribute to its
veterans during
ceremonies
By ANTONIO SIERRA AND
BEN LONERGAN
East Oregonian
P
eNdLeToN
—
even in a pandemic
year, local groups got
together over the span
of two days to ensure
Pendleton honored its veterans on
veterans day.
more than a dozen people
braved the rain and hail on Tues-
day, Nov. 10, as members of the
Pendleton’s veteran of Foreign
Wars Let’er buck Post No. 922
and boy scout Troop 700 worked
to install the more than 120 flags
that make up the avenue of Flags
at olney Cemetery.
“These are all honorable veter-
ans that the families donated their
casket flags to fly here,” said Clif-
ford smith, a former army medic
who served in vietnam in 1971
and 1972.
one by one, members of the
vFW called out the name writ-
ten on each flag as Smith and
Tom Tangney checked the names
against a list of flags belonging
to veterans who were killed in
action or prisoners of war. The
flags belonging to those veterans
were set aside and placed along
the main drive into the cemetery.
“Those are the ones that we
honor the most. The ones that sac-
rificed the most,” Smith said.
That sacrifice is one that Tang-
ney understands deeply. The for-
mer marine lost his brother on
Nov. 3, 1952, while the pair was
Ben Lonergan/East Oregonian
Chuck Hemphill carries a flag through a hailstorm while assisting members of the VFW Let’er Buck Post 922 in
setting up the Avenue of Flags at Olney Cemetery on Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2020.
stationed in Korea together, a date
that Tangney remembers to this
day.
Tangney has been a member of
the vFW since 1951 and has been
participating in avenue of Flags
since its inception.
Tangney, a former vFW post
commander, echoed the impor-
tance of the day and honoring vet-
erans who have died and those
who are currently serving.
“I tell my family it’s important
to honor their veterans,” he said.
“When the younger people see
that they’re given something and
it’s up to them to protect it. It plays
a part in them coming up right.”
Tangney added that he was
happy to have the boy scouts out
helping and learning from the
veterans, but said he hoped more
younger veterans would join in in
future years.
since memorial day, the vFW
has been working to replace
the wooden poles on all of the
flags with upgraded metal ones
that are better suited for inclem-
ent weather. Following memo-
rial day, many of the wooden
flag poles swelled with water and
some had to be broken off to get
them out of the ground, leading to
issues placing some this year.
alexander Krokosz, 14, and
marley blanchet, 12, were among
the boy scouts out helping to
clear space for flag poles and raise
flags.
“It means that we’re helping
the community the best way that
we can,” Krokosz said.
scoutmaster Karl Farber said
he feels it is important for the boy
scouts to take part in events like
the avenue of Flags as a way of
connecting them to the veterans
and teaching them to support the
armed forces.
“This is what the boy scouts is
about, it’s all about teaching lead-
ership and teaching young men to
be young men,” he said.
Farber added that many boy
scouts go on to serve in the mili-
tary and events like the avenue of
Flags help them to understand the
sacrifices made by many, includ-
ing former scouts.
“a lot of scouts go into the mil-
See Heroes, Page A7
air Force vet shares story with echo students
Colleen r. shaw Piercy
saw military service
as a way to see the
world, learn a trade
By JADE MCDOWELL
East Oregonian
e
Cho
—
echo
school’s annual vet-
erans day parade may
have been canceled,
but the school kept its
tradition of making sure students
heard firsthand from a local vet-
eran about what it’s like to serve
in the armed forces.
This year’s keynote speaker
— whose words were broadcast
live during a virtual assembly
— was Colleen r. shaw Piercy,
ssgt. e-5, united states air
Force, who served from 1995 to
2001. she talked about the “why”
of her service to her country.
It started when she was 17, and
saw military service as a way to
get out of “sandy, windy” eastern
oregon, see the world and learn
Ben Lonergan/East Oregonian
Colleen R. Shaw Piercy, SSgt. E-5, United States Air Force, who served
from 1995 to 2001, speaks to a virtual crowd during a Veterans Day as-
sembly in the Echo High School gymnasium on Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2020.
a trade.
“after I learned more about
my job and I defended my coun-
try, my ‘why’ for joining the
armed forces evolved and became
much more. The ultimate goal at
the end of the day was to support
and defend our country. being
a part of the team to protect the
rights of speech, press, petition,
religion and assembly gave me
satisfaction,” she said.
Piercy described the rigors of
boot camp, where she and other
recruits were “broken down”
and rebuilt physically and men-
tally. To prepare them for a job
where inattention to detail could
result in lives lost, they learned to
treat everything in their life with
exactness.
“every stray string on your
clothes needed to be clipped off.
every T-shirt needed to be folded
just right,” she said. “I remember
taking tweezers and pulling each
little edge of the T-shirt so it was
all flush.”
after boot camp, Piercy
worked in space system oper-
ations. at schriever air Force
base in Colorado springs, Col-
orado, she worked to launch
and operate GPs satellites that
the military uses in combat and
planning, and the defense satel-
lites used to monitor for missile
launches and other threats.
her next tour was in australia,
See Echo, Page A7