VIEWPOINTS
Saturday, February 19, 2022
East Oregonian
A5
BETTE
HUSTED
FROM HERE TO ANY WHERE
Our
stories
are time
capsules
O
ur stories are time capsules.
They hold scenes that stay
with us, moments when time
has slowed long enough to let us see
and better understand. This is why I
love learning about the events of other
people’s lives and letting their stories
become part of my own memory.
I once heard the poet Naomi Shihab
Nye describe traveling to her home in
San Antonio just after 9/11, when planes
weren’t flying and the Greyhound bus
had become her alternative. The young
man who took the seat next to hers was
heading home, too. He had just been
released from prison, and because he’d
been segregated to make sure noth-
ing interfered with his release, he was
perhaps the only person in the country
who had not yet heard the news.
For him, the twin towers were still
standing. And he was full of hope. This
time, he said, he was not going to blame
anyone or seek revenge for anything,
ever.
Each of us remembers images from
that September day, but for me it’s this
one — two people on a bus just talking,
or not talking (how could I tell him?
Nye asked) — that resonates.
And I know I’ll remember the
story Brigit Farley shared in her recent
column Past and Prologue, where she
condemned the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrec-
tion that tried to prevent the certifica-
tion of our last election and violated our
country’s long-held tradition of peaceful
transfer of power.
“You get some sense of how rare and
precious the American electoral experi-
ence is,” Brigit wrote, “when you inter-
act with people from abroad. A friend
of my parents, newly arrived in the U.S.
from Germany, was terrified when she
learned of the assassination of President
John F. Kennedy.”
Recalling her turbulent child-
hood, she prepared to batten down the
hatches, anticipating political turmoil,
maybe tanks in the streets.
“She watched in astonishment as
President Lyndon Johnson stepped off
Air Force One to calm a shocked and
grieving nation,” she wrote.
Later, Brigit said, other European
friends were surprised when, after Pres-
ident Richard Nixon resigned, the next
headline was simply “Ford Takes the
Reins.”
I suppose I have been thinking about
the connection between stories and
memory because in the past two years I
have lost both a sister and a brother. Last
week my niece, who has been sorting
her father’s belongings, called to ask,
“Why did Dad have Uncle Fred’s army
jacket?” and I found myself on the verge
of answering, “I’ll ask Jill; she’ll know.”
My brother was a wonderful story-
teller, but when I think of the stories he
told me in his last year I realize there
were so many more that I would never
hear. When we lost John we lost his
memories of our family’s past, too. John
was the one who knew the land we grew
up on most intimately, the one who had
been taught how to shingle the log cabin
and make the Christmas mincemeat
from the neck of the deer he hunted on
the Upper 40, the one who knew the
history of the ancient tools in the home-
stead outbuildings.
Jill and I, closest in age, often gave
each other the gift of shared memo-
ries. “Help me, will you?” she asked
once. “People don’t believe me. Do you
remember the winter of pink snow?”
Immediately the scene returned,
a memory I had long forgotten. It
happened in the years when above-
ground atomic testing was taking
place; perhaps dust of Utah’s red rock
was what colored our Idaho snow. We
ate some, enthralled, and took hand-
fuls in to ask Mom to make pink snow
ice cream. I remembered her shock,
the cups of cocoa she made for us as
we warmed our stocking feet on the
wood-burning cook stove door, the way
she finally let us go outside again after
we promised not to eat any more snow.
Now two dear friends are going into
what we call memory care. I’m grateful
they will receive the help they need, but
I wish “memory care” meant a way to
care for and preserve their memories.
Maybe there is: Those of us who love
them can try to pass on their stories.
———
Bette Husted is a writer and a student
of tai chi and the natural world. She lives
in Pendleton.
Urban renewal. What does it mean?
KEVIN
MARTIN
OTHER VIEWS
U
rban renewal. What does it mean,
especially when you live in what
is considered rural Oregon? Urban
renewal describes programs that receive
property taxes to pay for a special project or
special purpose. In the case of Pendleton’s
urban renewal program, which got started in
2003, the special focus has been to promote
the cultural and tourism heart of Pendleton
— economic development.
During the past 17 years Pendleton’s
urban renewal program, guided by the Pend-
leton Development Commission, the same
individuals who make up our city council,
has invested in nearly five dozen downtown
commercial buildings, using urban renewal
funds to make them more desirable as a place
to do business. The PDC also has helped
businesses start. The list of who has received
a jump start from urban renewal funding is
beginning to read like a who’s who of down-
town businesses.
But after a great start for the first six
to eight years, after a lot of buildings had
been improved on the outside, the program
slowed. Fewer buildings were needing the
improvement. So, the PDC began new grants
for building improvements inside upstairs
and downstairs, and even for constructing
new buildings.
Today, the Pendleton Development
Commission has more than overcome its
“dry period.” In the past four years, several
large building grant projects and a program
to reconstruct streets within Pendleton’s
urban renewal district have added new
housing and newly smooth streets. So much
demand for urban renewal funding support
has meant the PDC has begun to take a
sharper pencil to its budget and to the proj-
ects it funds.
New programs
In the last 10 years, the PDC added an
upper story grant to encourage the owners
of downtown historical buildings to restore
their empty upper stories and make them
economically useful. Multiple upper story
housing restorations took advantage. Then
it added a grant to encourage new building
construction, and three building projects
followed. More recently it added a grant to
restore entire historical buildings, plus a
program to repair blighted housing in the
urban renewal district. All of these programs
have funded projects.
COVID-19 relief for businesses
The pandemic did toss Pendleton and
our businesses on its commercial ear. But it
did not completely knock us down, in part
thanks to urban renewal funding, the city
was able to create special, COVID-19 relief
grants. These were carefully guided to down-
town businesses in need, using the partner-
ship of business organizations, including the
Pendleton Chamber of Commerce and the
Pendleton Downtown Association.
In fact, urban renewal staff also took
responsibility for guiding Pendleton busi-
nesses to COVID-19-relief grants from
Umatilla County and the state’s Business
Oregon department. Restaurants especially
felt the COVID-19 impacts. But contrary
to what you’ve seen in the state’s urban
areas, Pendleton has lost virtually none of
its fine restaurants to the pandemic’s pres-
sures. Urban renewal funded a special grant
program just for those businesses.
Street reconstruction
Finally, in the past two years, the PDC
began to use its funds to reconstruct
badly deteriorated streets. Urban renewal
programs, by state law, must confine their
spending to an urban renewal district, desig-
nated in Pendleton’s case when the program
was approved by the city council in 2003.
We’ve been reconstructing as many
streets as will qualify, but we can only tackle
projects within the urban renewal district.
Nonetheless, by spending urban renewal
funds to reconstruct those streets in the
district, the city has freed up more of avail-
able street funding to be spent outside the
district.
For streets the PDC spent $1.4 million
in 2020 and another $1.2 million in 2021.
The plan had been to spend $4.6 million in
summer, 2022, but that will now be reduced
to about $3.4 million to continue providing
funding to a variety of economic develop-
ment projects. The remaining street projects
planned for this summer will be postponed
to 2023.
In the meantime, the PDC has sufficient
funds for several street reconstruction proj-
ects this coming summer, as well as funds to
cover existing grants approved for restoring
more historic buildings and even adding new
housing units to our thriving downtown.
Despite the pandemic we plan to continue
our urban renewal programs to increase
economic vitality in Pendleton.
———
Kevin Martin is a member of the Pendleton
City Council and has served as the chairman
of the Pendleton Development Commission for
the past two years.
Oregon needs climate action immediately
KURT
SCHRADER
OTHER VIEWS
O
regonians saw millions of acres of
our forests go up in smoke in 2020.
In my district, the Beachie Creek
Fire engulfed 193,500 acres, destroying
farms and homes families had lived in for
decades. The skies were thick with black
smoke for weeks.
That was the worst summer I had ever
seen — until last year. Most of us will
never forget the devastating heat waves
that struck across our state, killing nearly
a hundred Oregonians after temperatures
topped 116 degrees Fahrenheit, the high-
est we have ever recorded. Fires also raged
for weeks, producing more smoke. We lost
more loved ones, and homes and liveli-
hoods were destroyed.
Oregonians are feeling these real costs
and consequences of climate change
every day. From 2010 to 2020, our state
experienced 12 extreme weather events,
costing us $5 billion in damages. This
proves we must act and finally address
this growing threat.
Wildfire mitigation long has been a
priority for me. For instance, my legislation,
the Electricity Reliability and Forest Protec-
tion Act, helped the Forest Service and
power companies streamline the process to
remove hazardous trees to boost the elec-
tricity grid’s reliability and help reduce the
threat of wildfires. I also worked with Sen.
Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, to allow responsi-
ble fuels thinning and facilitate prescribed
burns, and to increase the funding for wild-
fire response. And most recently, I led the
charge in Congress to pass the Bipartisan
Infrastructure Law which makes important
strides in tackling the climate crisis. This
bipartisan law makes historic investments
in transportation, water and broadband.
It also makes significant investments
in climate-caused catastrophic wildfire
management and the largest-ever contribu-
tion toward energy transmission and elec-
tric vehicle development. This is the biggest
investment in the nation’s future in decades,
and it will create millions of good-paying,
family-wage jobs.
Climate action is vital to preventing
extreme weather events and mitigating
their effects. This is one of the core reasons
I supported the Build Back Better Act,
which is the largest effort to combat climate
change in American history. It invests $555
billion in renewable and clean energy initia-
tives, including electric vehicle expansion,
building new clean energy transmission
and creating more energy-efficient homes
and businesses, which will save the average
family $500 a year on their energy bills.
Unfortunately, the Build Back Better
package is stalled in the Senate over
disagreements on individual pieces, but
I remain confident we can find a solution
that builds off the powerful foundation the
Bipartisan Infrastructure Law lays out.
Together, we can make America a global
clean energy leader, cut pollution fuel-
ing the climate crisis and avoid a growing
disaster, all while boosting our economy,
creating jobs and putting real money back
in Oregonians’ pockets.
Congress must come together to deliver
a transformational climate bill in addition
to the historic infrastructure investments
we’ve already enacted to protect our envi-
ronment and our economy. I am committed
to being a leader in this fight because the
future of Oregon and our planet depends
on it.
———
Kurt Schrader is a Democratic senator,
who serves as the U.S. representative for
Oregon’s 5th Congressional District since
2009.