ANDREW CUTLER
Publisher/Editor
KATHRYN B. BROWN
Owner
WYATT HAUPT JR.
News Editor
JADE McDOWELL
Hermiston Editor
SATURDAy, NOVEMBER 21, 2020
A4
Founded October 16, 1875
OUR VIEW
Tip of
the hat,
kick in
the pants
A
tip of the hat to COPES Cri-
sis Center and Health Clinic
in Pendleton, and other orga-
nizations that are working to fight drug
and alcohol addiction.
Addiction is a plague on our society.
It kills people, breaks apart families,
increases crime, destroys mental health
and exacerbates problems like home-
lessness. We aren’t doing enough to
make sure everyone who wants help is
able to access it.
The new COPES clinic, featured in
the Nov. 19 East Oregonian, has a cri-
sis unit that can handle up to three
people at once. It approaches fighting
addiction holistically, with counseling
and primary care in one location.
We’re happy to see such a resource
come to Umatilla County, and hope to
see an expansion of such efforts in the
future.
A tip of the hat to all our health
care workers, as well. Despite some
tokens of appreciation this spring, on
the whole this country has badly mis-
treated nurses, doctors and other health
care providers this year.
Across the country, we’ve heard tales
from hospital employees who were sent
in to face a contagious disease with-
out proper protective gear and had to
live in fear they might accidentally
bring the virus home to their families.
They’ve described the most grueling
year of their career, as they worked past
the point of exhaustion while patients
dying of COVID-19 inside the hospital
and community members outside the
hospital have called them liars.
Our hospitals haven’t been over-
whelmed here the same way they have
been in big cities and in hard-hit states
like South Dakota, but employees
here have still had faced difficult chal-
lenges in treating a disease with many
unknowns, while many members of
our community have publicly attacked
their integrity. Dozens of them have
gotten sick themselves in the process.
Thank you to all of you work-
ing to provide medical care to our
communities.
EDITORIALS
Unsigned editorials are the opinion of the East
Oregonian editorial board. Other columns,
letters and cartoons on this page express the
opinions of the authors and not necessarily
that of the East Oregonian.
LETTERS
The East Oregonian welcomes original letters
of 400 words or less on public issues and public
policies for publication in the newspaper and
on our website. The newspaper reserves the
right to withhold letters that address concerns
about individual services and products or
letters that infringe on the rights of private
citizens. Letters must be signed by the author
and include the city of residence and a
daytime phone number. The phone number
will not be published. Unsigned letters will not
be published.
SEND LETTERS TO:
editor@eastoregonian.com,
or via mail to Andrew Cutler,
211 S.E. Byers Ave. Pendleton, OR 97801
YOUR VIEWS
Streets or plaza should be
residents’ choice
The city manager’s assistant, com-
manding the Pendleton Development
Commission and its committee, has
been given free reign to direct its Urban
Renewal program. The poorly con-
ceived River Quarter Plan left prop-
erty owners without a voice in how
to develop their own property if they
wished to do so.
The plan to build a community
kitchen of sorts was purposed for the
old Webb’s Cold Storage area on Main
Street, the justification for that idea
being that the city of Portland has one,
and we have so much in common with
those folks. There was the plan to relo-
cate the old Eighth Street Bridge to
Main Street on property owned by
Union Pacific Railroad without first
getting their permission. The latest idea
backed by the city manager is to spend
$85,000 on consultants for a study on
breaching the levee to build a plaza
with steps into the river in the area kind
of behind U.S. Bank, with an estimated
budget of some $2.3 million.
For some reason, perhaps because
of his close relationship with Ander-
son Perry & Associates and his seem-
ingly uncanny ability to sell ice cubes
to Eskimos, Bob Patterson was selected
to pitch this latest proposal to city
councilors, fully expecting a rubber
stamp approving the initial phase and
the $85,000 consulting fee. Mr. Patter-
son appeared shocked when the coun-
cil wisely questioned and ultimately
tabled consideration of the project, per-
haps since neither U.S. Bank nor the
Army Corps of Engineers had been
fully apprised of the city’s intentions. If
climate change, as many are claiming,
means a continuation of the unusual
flooding we experienced this year,
would it really be wise to put the entire
downtown area in jeopardy by breach-
ing the levee in anyway?
Most recently, the mayor announced
that street repair plans were going
into a holding pattern because of the
COVID-19 pandemic effects on city
resources and the Pendleton Devel-
opment Commission made the deci-
sion to use Urban Renewal funds for
public projects. With the repair of our
streets repeatedly claimed as City
Hall’s number one priority, and the
development commission’s decision to
shift resources away from projects that
increase our tax base and ultimately
revenue into the city’s general fund,
wouldn’t it be more prudent to spend
that $2.3 million on streets than on a
plaza we just don’t need?
Rick Rohde
Pendleton
Confederate stamps glorify
the antagonists
With respect to preserving old street
names in the Byers neighborhood: Evi-
dently, at some point in our city’s past,
residents chose to name a group of
streets after Confederate Army officers.
The street names were later changed,
but the city chose to memorialize these
names by establishing permanent curb
markers.
I must respectfully disagree with
my friends June Whitten and John
Turner about whether it is appropri-
ate to reset in concrete these old street
names. These were officers of an army
that took up arms against the U.S., cost-
ing 600-750,000 lives. We have battle-
fields, history books, and museums that
help us learn about the tragedy of this
war, and to honor those who fought to
maintain the unity of our republic and
against slavery. We do not need to fur-
ther glorify these men, who led soldiers
into battle against our country.
Do we see streets in the U.S. named
for Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, or
Osama bin Laden? No, we find a way to
remember the lessons of the past with-
out glorifying the antagonists.
As hard as I try, I cannot see the
value in perpetuating this setting in
stone of the names of Confederate offi-
cers thousands of miles away from the
battlefields. Like the Confederate flag,
it feels sympathetic to a mindset that
believes that all people are not created
equal, and that the South would have
been better off if slavery were never
abolished. That’s not who we are, and
not how we should present ourselves to
the future.
Bill Aney
Pendleton
Follow the money for
salmon recovery
Another letter blaming the dams
on the Snake River for the demise of
the salmon. I have to call B.S. on that.
The Army Corps of Engineers has run
tests on the Snake and Columbia riv-
ers. They know what to do to make the
dams fish friendly, they do not want to
spend the money.
Let’s take a real look at the true rea-
sons salmon are going toward extinc-
tion. Native Americans are guaranteed
50% of the run. They have done more
for reestablishing runs of salmon where
they were nonexistent. So, what are the
others doing wrong? Those fish have to
go over the same dams. Then we have
commercial nets in the rivers, sports-
men, and predators, many of which are
protected themselves. Now, let’s add in
the foreign ocean fishery, and we must
not forget all the pollution that drains
into the rivers from streets, sewers and
industry.
Wolves, eagles, sea lions, seals — all
have fines and jail time if one is found
killing or harming one. The salmon
is on the same list, so why are we still
killing and eating them? Maybe we
need to follow the money. Millions
would be lost if salmon fishing was
stopped or more curtailed. Think of the
tackle, boats, motel rooms, food and
gas that would not bought.
Phil Jarmer
Hermiston