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Thursday, November 18, 2021
East Oregonian
Airport:
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and relevant mission across
every (area of responsibility),
from Iraq to Afghanistan to
some other things we did.”
Honemann switched to
the Navy reserves when his
service ended and continued
working in aviation. He got
involved in drone work, or the
“UAS stink” as its jokingly
referred to in military circles,
and flew the MQ-8B, an
unmanned helicopter that ran
support missions in Africa.
Honemann’s naval career
took him all around the
world, but in the midst of the
COVID-19 pandemic, the
Navy kept him stateside to
help battle the virus domes-
tically. He was sent to New
York City in March 2020 to
help coordinate the 2,500
military doctors, nurses and
medical personnel that were
sent to support hospitals as
COVID-19 ravaged the coun-
try’s largest city.
“I drove into New York
City and there wasn’t a soul
on the roads,” he said. “There
was nobody on the streets
walking around. There
wasn’t a restaurant open. It
was nothing you would ever
expect New York City to be.”:
Less than a year later,
Honemann once again was
assigned to combat COVID-
19, but this time getting
involved in the coordina-
tion of a vaccination clinic
that administered more than
2,000 shots per day.
As a civilian, Honemann
continued to build a career in
aviation. He worked at a fixed
base operator at an airport in
Montrose, Colorado, provid-
ing fuel and other general
aviation services at an airport
that saw a lot of tourist traf-
fic due to its proximity to
Turkey:
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getting turkeys. Meade
said he expects to get all the
turkeys he needs — several
hundred.
“The issues that we deal
with that cause the most
problems have to do with
are just getting trucks to
get product picked up and
delivered to distribution
centers,” he said.
He said his store’s distri-
bution center is in Spokane
and the reported short-
ages may not be relevant
to Umatilla County. Other
grocers in Eastern Oregon
expressed similar takes.
“Turkeys on the table,
we’ve got turkey already
in our freezer,” said Blaine
Huffman, owner of Huff-
man’s Market in Prai-
rie City. “ I’m sure there’s
going to be items we’re
going to be short on but on
the whole we’re fine.”
Grocery stores have
had to adapt to a changing
supply landscape that has
seen shortages crop up in
unexpected places.
“We don’t know one
load from the next what
we’re going to get — it
changes every time,” Huff-
man said. “The food supply
chain is vulnerable, a lot of
stuff is still sitting out in the
ocean.”
Huffman said he had
some issues ordering
pre-made pies for Thanks-
giving, and the store was
out of stock of those items.
Supplies for homemade
pies, however, were avail-
able.
Considering that smaller
markets lack the same
buying power as larger
chains such as Safeway or
Walmart, there was a cause
for concern that residents in
frontier towns, including
John Day or Prairie City,
might have to travel further
to fill their shopping cart
for the upcoming holiday.
Grocery stores report that
while ordering has been a
challenge, the staples for
a Thanksgiving feast have
yet to cause any concerns.
“Before, I was able
to buy pallets of certain
things like condensed milk
— when it comes to those
really big staples, a lot of it
is on an allocation that you
can’t buy big amounts like
that because they wouldn’t
Ben Lonergan/East Oregonian
John Honemann, the manager of the Eastern Oregon Regional Airport in Pendleton, poses for a portrait Nov. 9, 2021, in a
World War II era hanger at the airport. Honemann, who relocated from northern Colorado to Pendleton, has served in the
position since July.
multiple ski resorts. He then
spent nine years working in
safety and compliance for the
Federal Aviation Administra-
tion in Denver.
Honemann’s
new home
By the time Pendleton
opened its newly vacant
airport manager position to
candidates, Honemann had
been to 48 states and 45 coun-
tries throughout his life. But
the job intrigued him.
Living in Boulder County,
Colorado, at the time,
Honemann said the Denver
area had grown rapidly in
be able to service every-
body,” said Mike Shaffer,
operations manager for
Chester’s Market in John
Day. “As far as staples go,
we’re sitting pretty good.”
Shaffer said he has had
to order months in advance
for key items, especially
during Thanksgiving and
similar holidays where
supplies go fast as the holi-
day approaches and the
deadline for putting the
turkey in the oven looms.
For now, the store is well
stocked for the upcoming
feast, according to Shaffer.
“It was really easy to
get what you needed before
all this stuff happened and
before — I call it a logis-
tical nightmare, but you
know all the logistic issues
that everyone is experienc-
ing — before that we’d have
pretty big item counts, big
ads so people could come
in and get a good deal on
whatever they need for
dinner and stuff like that,
so it has changed,” Shaf-
fer said. “If you commit
to something like we did
this year — if you have
to reorder it, that’s where
you may run into an issue
because everybody else is
reordering, especially for
the season.”
Supply chain issues have
cropped up from a myriad
of pandemic-related minu-
tiae, such as labor and
raw material shortages
— including dock work-
ers and truck drivers — to
low production yields and
increased costs of goods as
shipping costs skyrocket
due to increases in fuel and
container prices.
That means when orders
finally arrive at grocery
stores, the contents might
be less than what was
ordered, or the order itself
would be delayed.
“It’s hard to plan around,
I’ll put it to you that way,”
Shaffer said.
Those issues exacer-
bated an already vulnerable
system. Still, the grocery
stores remain optimistic
about the upcoming holi-
day.
“It’s not like it was last
year,” Huffman said. “I
think it will be good, I think
everything will be good.”
— Hermiston Herald
editor/senior reporter
Erick Peterson and East
Oregonian news editor Phil
Wright contributed to this
article.
recent years and he and his
wife were looking for a small
town environment. His son
had moved out of the house
to join the Marines, but his
daughter had just completed
her freshman year of high
school.
He thought proposing a
move would be “the mean-
est thing to do to a teenager,”
but she also signed off on
it, liking the idea of a fresh
start after a year of taking
classes from home due to the
pandemic.
Back in Pendleton, Pend-
leton Economic Devel-
opment Director Steve
Chrisman liked what he saw
in Honemann. Chrisman
added airport management
to his duties in 2013 as the
city attempted to establish
the UAS range, even though
he had no prior aviation expe-
rience. With the success of
the range and the growth at
the airport, the city reestab-
lished airport manager as its
position under the idea that
the new hire would be more
involved with the day-to-day
operations of the airport.
With Chrisman still
overseeing the airport as
economic development
director, he had a chance to
help select his own succes-
sor. Chrisman said he liked
that Honemann had mili-
tary, government and private
sector experience in aviation
and made the hire.
Since starting in July,
Honemann said he’s tried to
immerse himself in airport
operations while he wants to
clean up the industrial park
so that it looks better and
wants to see passenger traf-
fic on Boutique Air return to
pre-pandemic levels.
He will also be involved
with the Pendleton UAS
Range, although range
manager Darryl Abling will
A7
still directly supervise drone
operations att the airport.
While Chrisman supervised
Abling as airport manager,
he said Honemann and
Abling will work as part-
ners. Honemann used a mili-
tary analogy, saying he would
act as the base commander,
overseeing all the facilities,
while Abling acts as wing
commander, managing the
airport’s assets.
Honemann said he’s
excited about working with
UAS again, adding that it’s
one of the few aspects of the
aviation industry that’s grow-
ing and will likely overtake
manned flight in the future.
UAS operations have
shown no signs of slowing
down: The 4,882 operations
the range has hosted this year
is almost double the amount
it did for the entirety of 2020.
Chrisman said he’s confi-
dent the range can surpass
$1 million in revenue by the
time the fiscal year ends in
June 2022 and thanks to a
large injection of funds from
federal COVID-19 relief
stimulus, the airport has a
number of renovation proj-
ects covered financially.
But beyond his work at
the airport, Honemann said
he likes Pendleton as a place
to live.
“This town’s got so much
going for it,” he said. “It is a
good town with good people,
good restaurants, It’s pretty
fun outside the airport stuff.
And we’re going to the
symphony on Sunday. Can
you complain about that? I
get to go to a rodeo and go to
a rock concert. It’s got every-
thing.”
I nclud i ng a mou n-
tain biking trail just down
the road in the form of the
Pendleton Adventure Trails
Recreational Area, which
Honemann plans to patron-
ize often.
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Dorran at the meeting said
he supported the idea, but he
needed to see the agreement
in writing.
Af ter the meeting,
Murdock said the county
still couldn’t share the writ-
ten agreement because Olsen
still was out of the office and
he didn’t know the exact date
of his return. He also added
the commissioners have yet
to sign the agreement to final-
ize it.
Murdock said he’s been in
discussions with Pendleton for
months on its housing short-
age and what the county could
do to help. He felt comfort-
able enough with his knowl-
edge of the agreement to push
it forward.
“It’s not just an outright
gift,” he said. “It’s a revolving
fund that has sideboards on it.”
Murdock said economic
growth on the west side of
Umatilla County led to new
revenue to the county through
tax incentive agreements. As
that revenue comes into the
general fund, Murdock said
the county has looked into
reinvesting it.
Murdock said the revolving
fund only can be used for new
development rather than main-
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disclose the report’s findings
in full. The public event is
planned Friday, Nov. 19, from
8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at Wild-
horse Resort & Casino.
The event will showcase
a variety of researchers and
community leaders who
will speak about how sexual
violence impacts tribal land.
It will also include time for
community members to come
forward and speak about
what solutions they would
like to see, Coyote said.
Survey underscores
epidemic
The survey findings
underscore a national trend
that some Indigenous advo-
cates have come to call an
epidemic — Native Amer-
ican women are dispropor-
tionately victims of violence.
The Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention says
Ben Lonergan/East Oregonian
A clearing marks the site Oct. 6, 2021, of a future intersection along Goad Road in Pendleton.
tenance and repairs. And the
city can’t simply deplete the
fund and leave it empty; the
city must find ways to replen-
ish it over time.
Pendleton Public Works
Director Bob Patterson said
the city could pair the revolv-
ing fund with a reimburse-
ment district, a new funding
mechanism the city created
in may. As developers start
building along the new road,
they would pay back the city
for the infrastructure costs.
That money would then be
forwarded back to the fund.
But there’s still a lot of work
to be done before the city can
begin drawing down funds.
While the Pendleton City
Council already has autho-
rized city staff to begin iden-
tifying the right of way to
build the road and other util-
ities, Patterson said the city
would need council approval
to designate the revolving
fund for the construction of
the street.
Patterson added that $2
million wouldn’t cover the
entire cost of the project, which
also includes new drinking
water infrastructure. Staff is
working on compiling esti-
mates for the total cost of the
project, he said, and intends
to provide a number in the
coming months.
— Reporter Bryce Dole
contributed to this article.
nearly half of all Native
American women have
suffered physical or sexual
violence. A separate Justice
Department report found
that 1 in 3 Native American
women have been raped or
experienced an attempted
rape — more than twice the
national average.
But that data is limited,
as layers of bureaucratic
and jurisdictional problems
have made it nearly impossi-
ble to track the full extent of
violence on tribal land.
For years, those chal-
lenges included disagree-
ments among local or federal
agencies concerning who
should investigate, allow-
ing countless victims and
perpetrators to slip through
the cracks. And for years,
Coyote said, those problems
have been prevalent on the
Umatilla Indian Reservation.
The Umatilla tribal court
was one of the first tribes to
participate in a pilot program
to prosecute non-Indians for
domestic violence against
Native Americans on the
reservation. Before then,
many non-Native perpetra-
tors could commit acts of
violence on the reservation
and get away with it, Coyote
said.
In 2013, the Violence
Against Women Act was
reauthorized, bringing forth
new provisions that address
violence against Native
women by restoring tribal
jurisdiction over non-Na-
tive perpetrators of domes-
tic violence on tribal land.
A year later, the CTUIR
was one of only three tribes
initially allowed to partic-
ipate in the program in the
U.S.
The survey states a vari-
ety of services are in need of
improvement to help survi-
vors: mental health services,
housing, drug and alco-
hol treatment, sex offender
accountability and a nurse
examiner for sexual assault
survivors. It also advocates
for a wide array of training
and technical assistance.
Coyote said improvements
have been made, but much
is yet to be done to ensure
survivors receive ample help.
Coyote, who has dedicated
her life to helping Indige-
nous survivors of violence,
said she hopes the survey and
the upcoming event will spur
new solutions in the commu-
nity.
“I’m hoping people will
remove the blinders, speak
up and be active,” Coyote
said. “Not just community
members, but systems.”
Recalling the focus groups
she attended, Coyote said one
survivor’s statement sticks in
her mind:
“The silent are screaming.”
Survey pushes for
improvements
The latest survey from
Family Violence Services is
part of Coyote and the tribes’
broader effort to raise aware-
ness and encourage survivors
to have their voices heard in
order to improve services on
the reservation.