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About The Siuslaw news. (Florence, Lane County, Or.) 1960-current | View Entire Issue (May 3, 2017)
THESIUSLAWNEWS . COM ❘ / SIUSLAWNEWS ❘ @ SIUSLAWNEWS WEDNESDAY EDITION F LORENCE GREEN F AIR — INSIDE ❘ MAY 3, 2017 ❘ $1.00 COAST CENTRAL A DAY AT THE PARK A&E — INSIDE SPORTS — B 127TH YEAR ❘ ISSUE NO. 35 SENIOR SERVICES Memory Loss Respite Center forced to cut services SERVING WESTERN LANE COUNTY SINCE 1890 FLORENCE, OREGON Nurses hold informational picket MARK BRENNAN/SIUSLAW NEWS Pat Duncan, Nancy Hanson and Carol Krasel are three of the six remaining volun- teers at the Memory Loss Respite Center located at the Florence Senior Center. Volunteer, financial shortages endanger ‘respite’ for local caregivers F lorence Senior Center, 1570 Kingwood St., is important to the community on a number of levels. Perhaps most importantly it provides a meeting place for sen- B Y M ARK B RENNAN iors to gather and Siuslaw News socialize. Additionally, the professional kitchen at the center prepares and serves meals in the dining room on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and assists the Meals-on-Wheels program with the preparation and packaging of hundreds of meals a week for Florence seniors. The center also offers seniors physical activi- ties, games and exercise classes. Overshadowed by these higher profile servic- es is the Memory Loss Respite Center. The respite center’s mission is multi-faceted, according to volunteer Pat Duncan. See RESPITE 10A PHOTOS BY MARK BRENNAN/SIUSLAW NEWS M ore than 100 registered nurses and community members participated in an informational picket Monday, May 1, in support of the nurses at PeaceHealth Peace Harbor Medical Center in Florence. Nurses have been working with PeaceHealth’s corporate managers since November 2016 to try to reach a contract agreement that increases wages and improves nurse recruitment and retention. The 75 nurses at PeaceHealth Peace Harbor Medical Center are represented by the Oregon Nurses Association (ONA). According to ONA Communications Manager Kevin Mealy, the nurses voted in favor of the informational picket after unsuccessful contract mediation sessions with PeaceHealth’s corporate administrators in April. Key issues still being negotiated include ending staff call requirements, correcting below- market wages, improving patient and staff safety and increasing health care provider recruitment and retention. While some progress has been made, ONA members feel they have a long way to go. Nurses and PeaceHealth’s corporate man- agers have one additional mediation date sched- uled for May 8. B&G Club Central Lincoln completes $6 million upgrade project earns high marks Project more than 20 years in the making concludes with new, upgraded substations Programs offer academic support, opportunity to earn B INSIDE oys and Girls Club of Western Lane County has recently received some good news related to the clubs’ after school learning programs according B Y M ARK B RENNAN to Tracy Aaron, Teen Siuslaw News Center Director. “We recently received a report from the middle school about students that made the honor roll and those that had a 4.0 GPA. I did the math last night and our average daily attendance at the Teen Center is 30 kids per day,” Aaron said. “Of the 30 that come here daily, 21 of them made the honor roll and eight of them had a 4.0 GPA.” Boys and Girls Club currently has a number of initiatives designed to assist young people on their path to adulthood. Two of those programs, Smart Girls and Passport to Manhood, are weekly discussion groups that allow young people to explore their ideas on a particular subject and share those with other group members. The feedback the youth receive helps them to chart their own course through the choppy waters of adolescence. See CLUB 10A Classifieds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Community . . . . . . . . . . . . . Library Tidings . . . . . . . . . . . Opinion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . B6 A3 A5 A4 B Y C HANTELLE M EYER Siuslaw News A fter four years and a $6 mil- lion investment, Central Lincoln PUD (CLPUD) completed its Florence-area Electric System Upgrade project to upgrade electric utilities in the Florence area. From adding a whole new substation in the Pacific View Business Park and replacing utility poles up Highway 101, Central Lincoln more than meets the area’s projected growth rates for the next 20 years. According to Chris Chandler, CLPUD public affairs manager, a remodel of the Heceta Beach Substation was the final compo- nent of the project. “This is the last piece,” Chandler said April 19 while giving a tour to the CLPUD Board of Directors, City of Florence officials and area partners. “Everything else is done. Today is like we’re done, and we move on to what’s next in the hop- per. This was a big project that clearly needed to happen.” The project involved construct- ing the Kingwood Substation from Records . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A2 Scoreboard . . . . . . . . . . . . . B2 Sports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . B Weather Data . . . . . . . . . . . A2 THIS WEEK ’ S CHANTELLE MEYER/SIUSLAW NEWS Central Lincoln PUD completes its upgrade of the Heceta Beach Substation April 19 with a tour for the CLPUD Board of Directors, City of Florence officials and area partners. scratch, beginning in April 2015. CLPUD Director of Engin- The entire upgrade was funded eering and Operations Randy through savings and reserve funds Grove said, “We were nearing set aside in the ‘90s for this project capacity in the Florence area with- after a CLPUD engineer looked at out the new substation. Twenty trends, and forecasted the need for years ago we identified this com- another substation to serve the ing. At the time they were building Florence area. the light industrial park (on TODAY THURSDAY FRIDAY SATURDAY 71 52 65 50 54 45 55 45 WEATHER Full Forecast, A3 Kingwood), and we took advan- tage of that and picked out a new substation facility. We put in a bunch of pipe at the time in hopes that we would some day build there. Then we got to the point where we had to build. “Now we have a lot more capac- ity and a lot more reliability in the whole city.” Most of the transformers in CLPUD’s 700 square miles of service area are 20 MVA (Mega Volt Amps), though some are as low as 5MVA. The new Kingwood Substation is 25 MVA. “It’s the largest transformer in the entire district and it’s here in Florence,” Chandler said. “I call it ‘Transformer-Zilla.’” Now, CLPUD has created a closed transmission line loop sys- tem between the Kingwood Substation, the Florence Substa- tion, located near Three Rivers Casino and Resort, and Heceta Beach Substation, located on Highway 101 north of Florence. S IUSLAW N EWS 2 S ECTIONS ❘ 20 P AGES C OPYRIGHT 2017 See UPGRADE 7A
