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146th year, No. 45
REGONIAN
February 5 – 6, 2022
WINNER OF 16 ONPA AWARDS IN 2021
$1.50
City preps for $7M street construction season
By ANTONIO SIERRA
East Oregonian
PeNDLeTON — The city of
Pendleton is preparing for a massive
street construction season in 2022.
at a Tuesday, Feb. 1 city coun-
cil meeting, Public Works Director
bob Patterson explained how the
city was able to raise more than $7
million to maintain and repair roads
in Pendleton this summer.
It’s a far cry from what Pendle-
ton used to spend on street preser-
vation. according to Patterson, the
city spent an average of $270,000
from 1994 to 2015. In the ensuing
years, the city instituted and then
raised the street utility fee, the state
raised its gas tax, increasing the
share it distributed to cities, and the
city continually banked its alloca-
tion from the federal gas tax.
Perhaps the most significant
development was the council,
acting as the Pendleton Develop-
ment Commission, committed $10
million from the urban renewal
district for urban renewal projects
over multiple years.
all of this activity is culminat-
ing in the 2022 street construc-
tions season, which will see the city
commit $3.2 million from street
fund and another $4 million from
the urban renewal district. Patter-
son said staff still are working on
cost estimates for the street repairs,
but city officials already are looking
at Northwest Despain avenue, the
Main Street bridge and North Main
Street for possible repairs. The latter
has long been on the city’s radar, but
the residential street’s abnormally
wide lanes have made repairs cost
prohibitive in the past.
Whether 2022’s repair season
and the city’s past work to increase
its rate of road maintenance is
paying off won’t be known until at
least 2023. The city has tradition-
ally analyzed the overall pavement
condition of its street system on a
See Streets, Page A9
KATHY
ANEY
THE REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK
Looking
back at
bloody
Sunday
F
ifty years ago, brigit Farley
learned about the death
of a teenager named John
“Jackie” Duddy.
Duddy, a 17-year-old boxer
from Northern Ireland, died Jan.
30, 1972, on what’s
become known as
bloody Sunday.
Geneva McJunkin,
brigit’s ninth
grade teacher at
Helen McCune
Jr. High in Pend-
leton, aware of
Farley
brigit’s Irish
heritage, gave her a magazine
with a story about the civil rights
march-turned-massacre in Derry,
Northern Ireland. a grainy photo
showed Catholic priest edward
Daly waving a white handkerchief
as he escorted several men carry-
ing the limp body of the teenager
away from the fray. McJunkin
noted that Duddy was close to
Farley’s age.
“you should learn about this,”
McJunkin told her.
So brigit did. She pored over
the news reports and learned the
names of the 13 boys and men
killed that day by british para-
troopers who fired upon the
crowd. She saw a photo of Jackie,
holding up his boxing gloves with
a roguish grin. One of 15 siblings,
he had attended the march with
See Sunday, Page A9
Ben Lonergan/East Oregonian
Hermiston High School senior Marcos Preciado, left, age 17, practices drawing blood from instructor Janci Sivey during an internship class
Jan. 28, 2022, at the high school. Preciado and three other members of the class recently passed the national phlebotomy certification exam.
Young blood workers
Hermiston High students pass phlebotomy exam
By ERICK PETERSON
East Oregonian
H
er M ISTON —
Marcos Preciado
said he was feeling
a little nervous on
Friday, Jan. 28, as he was draw-
ing blood from one of his teach-
ers, Janci Sivey.
This was not the first time he
had done this, though. He and
other students are taking a class
from Sivey, and they draw her
blood at least once a week, Sivey
said, for practice.
Preciado, along with Grace
Vertrees, Lilly Chase and
Karsen Graham on Jan. 21 took
the National Health Career
association exam for accredi-
tation as certified phlebotomy
technicians. all four students in
Sivey’s internship class passed
the test.
Graham, 18, is a senior who
said she wants to work for either
the american red Cross or a
phlebotomy lab. She said she
sees this as a career path because
she likes to help people. She said
she can be a helper by becoming
a phlebotomist.
In the internship class, she
and her classmates visit work-
places. They also perform
classwork and prepare for phle-
botomy and medical assistance
exams. It was in this class,
Graham said, that she discov-
ered phlebotomy.
On June 4, she will take a
test to be a medical assistant.
Though excited about the exam,
she said she already is looking
beyond it. Her plans include
going into the medical field after
graduation, she said.
Sivey said she is proud of her
students, despite the occasional
bruises she gets from them and
their needle practice. This group
of four phlebotomists were the
first students to take and pass the
exam in her class. She has other
students who are planning to
take the phlebotomy test in the
spring.
Sivey said these students
will be qualified to obtain phle-
botomy jobs — but only after
graduating from high school.
See Blood, Page A9
Moving on out
Hermiston apartment complex offers
buyouts to tenants willing to vacate
ERICK PETERSON
East Oregonian
HerMISTON — resi-
dents of a 46-unit apartment
complex in Hermiston have
to find new places to live.
When the residents of
Highland Manor apartments
got home on Wednesday,
Feb. 2, they found a letter
posted on their doors.
The letter from the new
apartment owner, Clover
Housing Group LLC,
complimented residents for
the way they have taken good
care of the apartments. but
there was more to the letter.
“We will be vacating
the apartment complex for
remodeling and updating as
soon as possible,” the letter
states. “We know moving is
difficult and we do apologize
for this inconvenience.”
The letter offers $2,000
payments to help with
moving and the expenses. If
they could vacate by March
1, one month after the letter’s
date, they would receive the
payout, plus a full refund
Ben Lonergan/East Oregonian
of their security deposits, Vehicles sit in the parking lot of the 46-unit Highland Manor apartment complex Friday,
Feb. 4, 2022, in Hermiston. Residents on Feb. 2 received notices to vacate by March 1 so
See Moving, Page A9 the new owners can renovate the complex.