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INSIDE: 12 Heppner football players make all-conference team | PAGE A10
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 2021
146th Year, No. 18
$1.50
WINNER OF 16 ONPA AWARDS IN 2021
Pendleton inmates remain
constituents who can’t vote
Rick Swart/Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife
Coho salmon in Eagle Creek, a tributary of
the Columbia River, during the fall of 2009.
Redistricting council
wards not a high
priority for city
Coho salmon
run shatters
record as
steelhead
numbers fl op
By ANTONIO SIERRA
East Oregonian
PENDLETON — Nearly
2,000 of McKennon McDon-
ald’s constituents will never vote
for her.
Nor will they vote for the
other Pendleton city councilor
who represents Ward 2, Sally
Brandsen. Any candidate who
runs against them in the future
won’t have luck getting their
votes either.
These holdouts aren’t avoid-
ing the ballot because they’re
apathetic or protesting the
candidates’ politics or poli-
cies. Instead, the inmates of
Eastern Oregon Correctional
Institution and the Umatilla
County Jail are in a political
gray zone: legally prohibited
from voting in elections but
still counted toward represen-
tation in Congress, the Oregon
Legislature and the Pendleton
City Council.
While Oregon recently
concluded its redistricting
process for congressional and
legislative seats, the city council
By ALEX WITTWER
EO Media Group
Ben Lonergan/East Oregonian
The Pendleton City Council meets Tuesday, Nov. 16, 2021, at Pendleton City Hall.
hasn’t taken any steps to recon-
fi gure its three wards.
While the ship has sailed on
lobbying the Legislature from
separating prisoners from the
rest of the voting population,
one group wants the city to
amend its laws to align inmates
with where they actually live.
What is prison
gerrymandering?
According to its website,
the Prison Policy Initiative is
a nonpartisan nonprofit that
“uses research, advocacy, and
organizing to dismantle mass
incarceration.” While the group
is generally concerned with
criminal justice reform, one of
the issues it’s most focused on is
a practice it calls “prison gerry-
mandering.”
See Vote, Page A9
Ben Lonergan/East Oregonian
Inmates at Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution and the Umatilla County Jail, both in Pendleton, cannot vote in elections, but they
still count toward representation in Congress, the Oregon Legislature and the Pendleton City Council.
LOSTINE — A record shattering number
of coho salmon have made the long journey
from their home streams to the Pacifi c Ocean
and back.
Nearly 24,000 coho salmon have passed
through Lower Granite Dam on the Snake
River — the last dam between the ocean and
the Grande Ronde and Wallowa rivers.
The prior record, set in 2014, saw 18,098
coho make their way past the Lower Gran-
ite Dam. In recent years, those numbers have
fl uctuated between 1,449 and 8,178, with 2020
seeing just 7,797 coho return to the Lower
Granite Dam. The run this year marks more
than a 300% increase from the previous year.
Part of that return could be attributed to
the Nez Perce tribe’s monumental work to
reintroduce coho to the Lostine River and the
Clearwater Basin. In 2017, the tribe began the
work to return the salmon to the Lostine River
after it was bereft of the silvery fi sh for over
40 years.
Becky Johnson, production division direc-
tor for the tribe’s Fishery Resource Manage-
ment, was there when nearly 500,000 smolt
were released into the Lostine River in 2017.
She described the release as “awesome.” The
results were almost immediate — the next
year, two coho were caught in the tribe’s weir.
Then, in 2021, 88 fi sh were caught in the net.
“Salmon are a really amazing, resilient
creature, and if you just give them half a
chance, if you provide the right conditions,
the habitat and the clean water — I’ve been
impressed with what they can do,” Johnson
said.
To be sure, not every coho released into
the Lostine would return — predation and
harvesting take their toll, as do natural
diseases and parasites. Many more would
return to diff erent streams to spawn, in a
process called straying. Still, the return is
more than welcomed, and their journey was
a long one in both length and time.
See Salmon, Page A9
Pilot Rock’s new fi re chief has big goals for rural department
Community’s fi rst full-time
fi re chief sought place where
neighbors help neighbors
By BRYCE DOLE
East Oregonian
PILOT ROCK — Pilot Rock is upping
its public safety eff orts now that the fi re
board has hired its fi rst full-time paid fi re
chief.
Herschel Rostov, 53, joined the depart-
ment Oct. 1 after serving Washington fi re
departments for nearly three decades.
A lifelong public servant with extensive
training, Rostov said he’s thrilled to lead
a smaller department in a tight-knit rural
community where resources are often few
and far between.
“People that have worked in big cities and
have a high level of technical experience, or a
lot of education, those kinds of people are not
typically attracted to smaller departments,”
he said. “I feel like rural communities get
shorted on the type of protection and exper-
tise they get. I always wanted to bridge that
gap and bring something that’s not common
in the rest of rural communities.”
Pilot Rock Mayor Virginia Carnes said
Rostov already is making a positive impact
on the town. He has attended local pancake
feeds and joins city council meetings to
answer land-use and building questions.
She said she’s excited with how invested he
appears to be in improving public safety in
the roughly 1,300-person town.
“They’ve done an awesome job to start
with,” Carnes said of the fi re department.
“But this will bring us to a higher level.”
Rostov’s salary this year is $48,000 plus
benefi ts, according to Anita Willingham,
bookkeeper for the Pilot Rock Rural Fire
Protection District.
See Chief, Page A9
Ben Lonergan/East Oregonian
The Pilot Rock Fire Department’s fi rst full-time paid fi re chief,
Herschel Rostov, right, leads a training on air tanks Nov. 18, 2021,
at the fi re station in Pilot Rock.