Wallowa County Chieftain
News
wallowa.com
March 4, 2015
A7
WHITTLE: Not all assignments good BOND: Company ups
proposed levy intake
Continued from Page A1
Whittle credits his artist fa-
ther for indirectly helping him
pursue photography. “I really
wanted to be an artist like my
dad, but I could never get the
images in my head on paper,
so I decided to try photography,
and once I did, it was all over.”
Graduating Brooks on the
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Whittle quickly adapted to
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that the instant access to pho-
tos largely eliminated the stress
of waiting to see the quality of
a photo shoot. “Once I bought
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credibly rapidly as a photogra-
pher,” Whittle said.
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photography jaunts included a
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door for me as far as travel,
street photography, documen-
tary and photojournalism. I hit
the streets with my camera and
just started shooting whatever
caught my eye.”
Because of his membership
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American Indian tribes, Whit-
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photography of Native Ameri-
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nently in his website.
As much as he loves pho-
tography, Whittle gets his
share of unpleasant assign-
ments. “The worst was this
contract I took for a week and a
half as a K-Mart photographer
during the holiday season be-
cause money was short. After
the week and a half, I thought,
‘I’ll do anything but this.’ It re-
ally saps your creative spirit,”
Whittle said.
His jobs come through lo-
cal word-of-mouth and scan-
ning craigslist and other sites
as well as sending out queries
to various publications. “Out-
side,” “Backpacker,” “1859”
and other publications publish
his work regularly. He credits a
former Oregonian outdoor and
travel editor with honing his
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Continued from Page A1
Courtesy photo/Joe Whittle
An example of Whittle’s photography of the local area.
his potential market.
When asked about his fa-
vorite photo, Whittle laughed.
“I can’t decide on a favorite
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the Wallowas are my favorite
place to photograph. There’s a
lot of the world I haven’t seen,
but this is the most beautiful.”
Whittle generally spends
four months a year working as
a backcountry ranger for the
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beloved Wallowas and Hells
Canyon. “It’s a great supple-
ment job for what I love doing
anyway, which is spending
time back there,” Whittle said.
As his daughter is now
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University, Whittle looks to
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to get a staff gig with a nice
publication doing photojour-
nalism. It’s really my number
one love as far as photography
goes,” he said.
The bond issuing company
also suggested a small proper-
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enue backup in case too many
of the city’s utility customers
failed to pay their bills, includ-
ing the fee for streets, leaving
the city short of funds to pay
its bondholders.
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city from dipping into general
funds in case of a shortfall and
also make the bond more at-
tractive to potential investors.
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timeline on issuing the bonds
and getting street work start-
ed if the levy passed. Without
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take as long as two years. If
it’s included, however, it could
begin as early as June or July.
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answer.
The mayor said he planned
to ask for a $1.3 million levy
as it still worked out to about
$11 per month as a transporta-
tion utility fee. He added that
the council needed to consider
placing two items on the ballot:
imposition of the transportation
utility fee, and the issuance of
general obligation bonds to be
repaid by the transportation
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backup.
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ing it very clear to voters that
property owners would only
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there were a shortfall in trans-
portation utility fees collected.
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increases for any reason. “This
is a gamble. When people hear
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what government is capable of
doing — I can’t vote for it.”
“I think we’re at a stand-
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ahead with this, it’s gonna be
a helluva sales job to convince
people it’s basically $11 a
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is just an insurance policy for
the bondholders. Or we could
go through all of this and come
up short again – or we say it’s
an unsolvable problem and live
with it.”
The council followed with
a discussion about writing an
ordinance to shut off the water
of people who do not pay their
transportation utility fees. City
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the city typically sends out 20
late notices per month to water
users with one to four users per
month getting their water shut
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said he planned to look through
records to ascertain the month-
ly delinquency rate and see if
the city could still pay the bond
service with only the fee reve-
nue.
The council followed with a
vote to increase the bond total
to $1.3 million with a trans-
portation utility fee of $11 per
month and a measure to issue a
general obligation bond of $1.3
million payable by the trans-
portation utility fee with prop-
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an anticipated shortfall in fees.
The motion passed, 3-1,
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against it.
DOLLARS: Some payments could fall through cracks
Continued from Page A1
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for such potential funding in
Wallowa County within the last
year.
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tion, especially since monetary
reimbursements could be small
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direct-loss victims due to be re-
imbursed from the $3,920 total
is the Went Operation on Crow
Creek, which lost 23 sheep in
one wolf attack May 30, two
calves in separate incidents in
the Chesnimnus area, and one
calf near Imnaha.
The funding breakdown for
non-lethal measures includes a
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federal government, which will
be matched dollar-for-dollar by
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and $40,000 of that total already
has been requested by the coun-
ty to hire range riders during the
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about $15,000 of non-lethal
deterrence money went to pur-
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effective in protecting livestock
from wolves, however.
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any or all of the $33,200 of in-
direct wolf losses suffered here,
and more elsewhere, could be
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redirects some of the state mon-
ey it was going to use for the
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dollar-for-dollar match on the
feds’ non-lethal spending.
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rect livestock losses to wolves
are calculated by using herd
histories for the previous 10
years, establishing a base per-
centage of livestock that are
brought back in after being
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after, if the percentage of re-
turning cattle is lower than
usual, the producer should be
eligible for some reimburse-
ment.
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direct losses steadily have in-
creased in tandem with the rise
of the wolf population here.
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population report for Oregon,
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minimum total of 77 wolves
in Oregon compared to a min-
imum total of 14 wolves at the
conclusion of 2009.
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ferred with the Oregon Cattle-
men’s Association on the issue
of funding producers’ indirect
Overwhelmed?
Is the weight of
day to day stress getting
too much to bear?
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with two state legislators and
has drafted proposed state
legislation that would provide
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rently, producers approved for
direct loss compensation have
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credits in lieu of cash reim-
bursements, but no such option
is available for indirect losses,
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tions occurring in remote areas
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isn’t feasible.
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Although not listed as Wal-
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says the collared leader of the
Umatilla Pack recently was
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rivers join, and later was seen at
the Joseph Canyon Viewpoint
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Pack has no collared wolves,
meaning livestock producers
within that pack’s general ter-
ritory virtually are defenseless
against wolf depredation.
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