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❘ MAY 3, 2017 ❘ $1.00
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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 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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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
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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.
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C OPYRIGHT 2017
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UPGRADE 7A