Eagle Cap Extreme Dog Sled Race
events begin Wednesday.
Schedule of events, page A16
www.wallowa.com
Enterprise, Oregon
January 21, 2015
$1
Lear returns as Enterprise mayor
Lear says city should consider making mayor’s term four
years, suggests changing the form of city’s government
three council members, Laura Miller,
Jenni Word, and Dave Elliott, who were
sworn in as a group. Among the trio, only
ENTERPRISE – Steve Lear, who was Elliott is new to Enterprise government.
sworn in as Enterprise’s mayor for a sec-
Lear, who was previously mayor from
RQGWLPHÀRDWHGDIHZLGHDVIRUPDNLQJ 2011 to 2013, and before that served four
major changes to the structure of city years as a councilor, spent the past two
government as a new governing group years outside of government after being
assembled Tuesday night, Jan. 13, in the defeated for re-election in 2012.
Enterprise City Council chambers.
In his return to the gavel last week,
At the outset of the monthly regular Lear spoke for several minutes about his
meeting of the Enterprise City Council, vision for city government, mentioning
Michele Young, city administrator, ad- certain concerns he said he periodically
PLQLVWHUHGWKHPD\RUDORDWKRIRI¿FHWR heard from residents “on the street,” but
Lear, and then the councilor’s oath to also extolling Enterprise as “a wonderful
By Rob Ruth
Wallowa County Chieftain
Walden
talks
plans at
meeting
city” that compares favorably “to anyone
in the state.”
Additionally, Lear talked about the
possibility of changing the form of city
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should explore the merits of “a city man-
ager or a strong mayor system.”
While Lear’s comments about the
structure of government included no
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Rob Ruth/Chieftain
about another change he’d like the city to
consider: lengthening the term of mayor Enterprise Mayor Steve Lear, right, began his term of office
at the Jan. 13 meeting. At left is City Administrator Michele
from two years to four.
See MAYOR, Page A3
Young, who administered oaths of office to Lear and to three
city councilors elected in November.
A triple threat
Musician delights as a singer-songwriter-instrumentalist
By S.F. Tool
Wallowa County Chieftain
L
By S.F. Tool
ocal musician Heidi
Muller comes from
WKHIDUÀXQJODQGRI
New Jersey. “Rural,
northwest New Jersey,
not near the cities. We were near
Pennsylvania, where it’s all farm-
land,” Muller said.
A triple threat as singer-song-
writer-instrumentalist, Muller’s
love of music goes as far back
as she can remember. “I was
told I walked up to the piano and
played a little tune when I was
three years old. I grew up in the
’50s and my older brother and
sister had a record player with
45s which we’d play getting
ready for school and I’d just sing
harmony to them,” Muller said.
Muller learned to play guitar
when she was 11 and her exper-
tise is mostly self-taught. “By the
end of high school, I was doing
folk songs like Joan Baez and
Joni Mitchell and by college I
was performing with friends and
it just kind of grew from there.”
She attended a small college
near Boston and majored in
psychology. “I worked a bit in
WKH¿HOGZKHQ,JUDGXDWHGEXW
I couldn’t get far without an ad-
vanced degree,” Muller said.
Muller left the East Coast to
work in Texas for a few years and
didn’t like it. She had traveled
WKH3DFL¿F1RUWKZHVWLQKHU
college days and heard its call.
She moved to Seattle with the
idea of obtaining her master’s in
social work from the University
of Washington.
Wallowa County Chieftain
ENTERPRISE – An en-
thusiastic crowd of two doz-
en Wallowa County citizens
forsook football and crowd-
ed into the
community
center
to
greet Dis-
trict 2 U.S.
Represen-
tative Greg
Walden at
a Jan. 18
Walden
town hall
meeting.
Walden, casually dressed
in a plaid shirt and jeans,
spent a congenial period of
well over an hour answer-
ing questions and bantering
with audience members.
Walden opened the forum
with an obligatory mention
of the Oregon Ducks loss in
the national championship
game before getting down
to business informing the
audience of congressional
activities in Washington
D.C., and answering audi-
ence queries
on
subjects
ranging from
forest management to U.S.
foreign policy.
See WALDEN, Page A3
C HIEFTAIN
WA L L O WA
C O U N T Y
Wallowa County’s
Newspaper Since 1884
Volume 132 Issue No. 40
© 2015 EO Media Group
S.F. Tool/Chieftain
See MULLER, Page A3
Singer-songwriter-instrumentalist Heidi Muller plays dulcimer in the living room of her Enterprise home.
Joseph street repair plan still has bumps
By S.F. Tool
Wallowa County Chieftain
JOSEPH – Nearly 25 Jo-
seph residents attended a Jan.
15 town hall meeting to offer
the city council their opinions
and solutions addressing the
city’s street repair quandary.
The council, Mayor Den-
nis Sands, and Brad Baird,
president of Anderson Perry
& Associates, the engineering
¿UPWKDWFUHDWHGWKHSURSRVDOV
already under consideration,
listened, answered questions
and took notes from citizens
whose demeanors ranged
from congenial to nearly hos-
tile.
Sands opened the meeting
with a rundown of the city’s
preferred alternatives of fund-
ing the street repair through
either a property tax increase
or a transportation utility fee.
S.F. Tool/Chieftain
Mayor Dennis Sands (standing) leans forward to listen to an audience member’s comment
regarding the funding of Joseph street repair.
While a transportation util-
ity fee, which would amount
to approximately $14 per
month added to the sewer/
water bill of Joseph resi-
dents, gained some traction
within the audience, others
complained those who owned
lots without hookups would
escape the fee. The council
offered to investigate the pos-
sibility of collecting fees ret-
roactively.
The transportation utility
fee is, in fact, the $1.2 million
bottom rung of three alterna-
tives to repair the streets. The
other alternatives include a
$2.55 million street repair
bond levy voters torpedoed
and sank in November, and a
$4.2 million comprehensive
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funding.
Town hall attendees pro-
posed a number of alterna-
tives, one calling for the city
to purchase the road repair
equipment and perform the
work itself, and then selling
the equipment after the proj-
ect ended. Baird proposed the
city establish talks with the
Wallowa County Road De-
partment to minimize the re-
pair costs.
See REPAIRS, Page A7