Stanfield, Echo girls basketball both finish 6th at state | SPORTS, A11
Tuesday, March 8, 2022
146th year, No. 58
$1.50
WINNER OF 16 ONPA AWARDS IN 2021
creating
a Greater
Idaho buzz
BLUE MOUNTAIN COMMUNITY COLLEGE
cove resident Grant
Darrow articulates
frustrations of many
eastern Oregonians
By DICK MASON
The Observer
COVE — Grant Darrow is a
man of letters.
The Cove resident has penned so
many letters to newspapers over the
past four decades about pressing
issues that he has
lost count.
One stands out,
howeve r, w it h
the grandeur of
12,662-foot Borah
Peak in central
Idaho. It is a letter
Darrow
clipped from The
Observer and kept
in a black notebook. The letter is
fading slightly, unlike the move-
ment it helped ignite. Darrow, in his
391-word piece, published in The
Observer on June 29, 2015, pushed
for a sea change — the moving of
Idaho’s border west so that it could
include Eastern Oregon and other
rural portions of the state.
“Imagine for a moment Idaho’s
western border stretching to the
Pacific,” Darrow wrote at the end
of the letter.
almost seven years later, many
Oregonians are imagining just as
he hoped they would, which means
the the Greater Idaho movement is
gaining momentum.
“We are gaining support,”
Darrow said. “This is an exciting
time.”
Those who have taken note
include The Atlantic magazine,
which refers to Greater Idaho as
“Modern America’s Most Success-
ful Secessionist Movement” in a
story that appeared in its Dec. 23,
2021, edition.
Darrow is not surprised by the
growing momentum, especially
when he reflects on the response
his letter received in the days and
weeks after it was first published.
he said about 40 other rural Oregon
newspapers printed the letter after
he sent it to them.
“Some newspapers even called
me up and requested a copy so they
could run it,” he said.
Today, the letter, which stated
Eastern Oregon should be part
of Idaho because its people are
ignored by Oregon’s west-side
leaders, is viewed as so integral to
the Greater Idaho movement that a
copy is reprinted on the website of
a leading group pushing for Greater
Idaho — Move Oregon’s Border,
whose leader is Mike McCarter, of
La Pine.
Darrow credited McCarter with
doing much of the heavy lifting,
which has given Greater Idaho the
See Idaho, Page A9
Ben Lonergan/East Oregonian
Demond Lofton, of Sumitomo Electric Lightwave, demonstrates a visual fault locator Thursday, March 3, 2022, during a fiber optic splic-
ing course that Blue Mountain Community College and Amazon Web Service offered in Hermiston.
Amazon splices in
By ANTONIO SIERRA
East Oregonian
Ben Lonergan/East Oregonian
ERMISTON — Amazon Web
Service attempted inconspic-
uousness when it first came to
Umatilla and Morrow counties
by operating under a pseud-
onym. Now the web giant is openly
trying to build goodwill in the Colum-
bia Basin, and in its latest endeavor
has partnered with Blue Mountain
Community College on a fiber optic
splicing course.
On the afternoon of Thursday,
March 3, Demond Lofton of Sumitomo
Electric Lightwave was demonstrating
an optical time domain reflectometer
— a device that tests fiber cables. As
Lofton joined two fiber lines, a red light
glowed from the center.
A student asked the instructors what
would happen if they looked directly at
the lasers being emitted by the lines.
While the human eye was supposed
Demond Lofton, of Sumitomo Electric Lightwave, demonstrates a visual fault locator Thurs-
day, March 3, 2022, at Blue Mountain Community College in Hermiston.
See BMCC, Page A9
H
Children’s center looking for help from urban renewal
By ANTONIO SIERRA
East Oregonian
PeNdLeTON — The Pend-
leton children’s center is seek-
ing some financial help from the
Pendleton Development Commis-
sion, but there are some hurdles the
group behind the center will need
to clear first.
The commission will meet
on Tuesday, March 8, to discuss
providing a potential grant to the
children’s center, a nonprofit that
intends to build a child care facil-
ity at the former Active Senior
Center of Pendleton, 510 S.W.
10th st. charles denight, the asso-
ciate director of the development
commission, said the commission
isn’t expected to make any final
decisions at the meeting.
But before Pendleton Chil-
dren’s Center can get help from
the urban renewal district, it will
have to become a part of the urban
renewal district.
Although the urban renewal
district covers Pendleton’s down-
town and some of the surrounding
area, the former senior center is
only a few hundred feet west of the
train tracks that form the district’s
border in that area. denight said
the commission recently consid-
ered expanding the district but
decided against it.
The other obstacles the chil-
Mark Seder/Seder Architecture, File
A rendering shows the Pendleton Children’s Center’s plans for the for-
mer Active Senior Center of Pendleton. The nonprofit children’s center
is seeking some financial help from the Pendleton Development Com-
mission.
dren’s center will need to over-
come is more philosophical.
although there’s no rule or
law behind it, the development
commission has tried to steer its
grants and loans toward for-profit
business, the idea being the
improved property will increase in
value and further boost the urban
renewal district through property
taxes. As a 501(c)3 nonprofit, the
children’s center isn’t subject to
property taxes.
Kathryn Brown, the secre-
tary-treasurer of the children’s
center board, said the city of Pend-
leton would realize an economic
benefit by helping the group get its
child care service off the ground.
With the city facing an acute labor
shortage, Brown said an active
children’s center could help local
employers fill vacancies by offer-
ing child care in a place where
there are few options.
Additionally, Brown said the
children’s center already is ready-
ing an expansion. She said the
nonprofit has an agreement with
the owner of the neighboring
office building to buy the prop-
erty. Brown added the children’s
center intends to retain the tenants
on the bottom floor, a section of
the property that will remain on
the tax rolls, while repurposing the
upper floor as a child care space.
Once both the former senior
center and office building are oper-
ational, Brown said the children’s
center should be able to meet its
goal of enrolling 150 children. The
children’s center board hopes to
use money from the development
commission to pay for fire suppres-
sion sprinklers, although Brown
was unable to provide a definitive
number because the board still is
gathering quotes.
Denight noted one more possi-
ble obstacle for the children’s
center: the urban renewal budget.
Because the commission recently
upped its expenditures to pay for
new projects, including several
street reconstructions across the
downtown area, Denight said the
commission’s budget is less flexi-
ble than in the past.
But Denight said the decision
is in the hands of the commission,
which must way its traditional
stance toward grants with commu-
nity needs.
The commission will meet
Tuesday, March 8 at 6:30 p.m. in
city council chambers at Pendleton
City Hall, 500 S.W. Dorion Ave.
The meeting also is accessible via
Zoom at bit.ly/375U6tx.
— Editor’s Note: Kathryn
Brown is vice president of the EO
Media Group, the parent company
of the East Oregonian.