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SCHEDULE INSIDE
SAILORS SINK PIRATES
SPORTS — B
128TH YEAR | ISSUE NO. 70
SERVING WESTERN LANE COUNTY SINCE 1890
Home of the Sailors
Bt Jared Anderson
Siuslaw News
“T
his is a special place,”
Jeff Greene said. “The
students talk about how dif-
ferent Mapleton is from big-
ger schools. Every school has
their issues, negatives and
positives, and so do we. But
one of the things students al-
ways say is, ‘You guys are so
close. You know each other so
well.’ The kids get to know us,
and we get to know them at a
deeper level. You know these
kids through and through, like
they know you.”
Greene, the physical educa-
tion teacher for the Mapleton
School District, stood in his
newly remodeled classroom
at Mapleton High School.
Freshly purchased chairs
were still resting atop the stu-
dent’s desks, the walls bare.
He was busy setting up his
classroom for the school year
that will begin next week.
The entire school was re-
modeled over this summer,
with new hallways, locker
rooms, a student common
area and a courtyard, among
Mapleton High School set to complete
remodel in time for new school year
When students at Mapleton High School set foot on cam-
pus on Tuesday, they will enter a renovated building with
updated student spaces, classrooms, outdoor areas, lock-
er rooms and gyms.
a whole host of other improve-
ments.
“This place looks incredible,”
Greene said. “It’s like we’re a kid
in a candy store over here. This
is huge for education and learn-
ing. It’s going to change the stu-
dents as individuals for the bet-
ter. We’re excited for this year.”
Built in 1948, Mapleton High
School had never gone through
a major remodel in its 70-year
JARED ANDERSON/
SIUSLAW NEWS
Sutton, Mercer Lake areas get service upgrade
INSIDE
Cell phones have become an essen-
tial part of the human experience.
Statista, a company that collects and
analyses data from more than 20,000
sources, reports that 87 percent of
Americans under 70 have a cell phone.
That number rises to 96 percent
when considering individuals under
29 years of age, while global mobile
phone usage topped 62 percent in
2016.
These numbers indicate that more
than 5 billion people will be using cell
phones by 2019.
The convenience of mobile phones,
combined with improved ease of use
and the lowering costs of equipment
and usage plans, have made the tech-
nology affordable and ubiquitous.
There remains one major limitation
to the use of cell phones and that is the
“coverage” areas available to consum-
ers.
The coverage area is determined by
the availability of a cell site, usually
mounted on a tower, that allows con-
sumers to connect with receivers and
transmitters on the tower to send a
signal from a particular phone to an-
other tower and eventually to another
phone.
The progression cannot be complet-
ed if there are no towers or cell sites
available in the transmitting or receiv-
ing phone’s geographic area.
This situation has unfortunately
limited some local cell phone custom-
ers’ ability to connect to a network on
the outskirts of Florence.
Many people are familiar with the
“No network available” message sent
from our phones when they are out of
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B6
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range of a cell tower, usually in the out-
skirts of Florence.
Fortunately, there are two new cell
towers, one completed and operational
and one in the final stages of assem-
bly, that will address the “No network”
problem for many residents of the
Mercer and Sutton Lake sections of
town.
Rebecca Fain and Rick Olson live in
the Mercer Lake area and have recent-
ly entered into a long-term agreement
with Verizon to lease the company a
plot of land on their property on Spin-
drift Way, specifically for the place-
ment of a new cell tower.
“About two years ago, a guy was up
here wandering around on the roads,
looking for a spot for a potential tower.
He asked if we would be interested in
leasing them some space for the tower
and we decided to go ahead and do it,”
Olson said. “They were going to put
it in a more obvious place and I said,
‘Let’s put it up in the trees because it is
kind of a large edifice.’”
He said the tower is 140 feet tall
and the base took 17 truckloads of
concrete, equaling approximately 170
cubic yards of cement, and 13 tons of
rebar — all within the 45-by-45-foot
base.
The process involved in the place-
ment of a cell tower is challenging
from both technological and geo-
graphical perspectives, as there are
many factors that have to be taken into
consideration to install a functioning
and safe structure.
The functioning range of a cell site is
not fixed, but dependent on a number
of variables including the height of the
antenna over that of the surrounding
terrain; frequency of the signal in use;
See TOWER page 9A
Sideshow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . B5
Sports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . B
Community Calendar. . . . . . . A6
Weather Data . . . . . . . . . . . A2
Broker/Owner
See REMODEL page 10A
Board committee to decide
effectiveness of IGA
Bt Mark Brennan
Siuslaw News
Siuslaw Valley Fire and Rescue (SVFR) and
Western Lane Ambulance District (WLAD)
board members held a joint meeting at SVFR
Station 1 on Thursday evening.
The special meeting was held to give the
directors from both boards an opportuni-
ty to chart a clear path forward as they face
uncertainty regarding the Intergovernmental
Agreement (IGA) for administration between
the two entities.
The impending departure of Chief Direc-
tor Jim Langborg and the recently reported
$500,000 financial shortage facing SVFR were
the impetus for the timing of the meeting,
which comes on the heels of board meetings
held separately by both entities in the last weeks.
During the public comment period, Lori
Severance, coordinator of SVFR’s Community
Support Team, spoke in defense of the work
done by Langborg in the face of what she per-
ceived as hostile and disrespectful treatment of
the chief in the regular SVFR board meeting on
Aug. 15.
“I’ve worked under a number of adminis-
trators over the years and I have to say that
working for Chief Langborg at this late stage
in my career has been a very satisfying expe-
rience. I have never worked for anyone in all
my years who has been as fiercely devoted to
his staff and volunteers and the community in
which he serves,” Severance said. “I attended the
last board meeting and, to use a term that was
thrown around quite a bit in that meeting, I was
pretty appalled by the amount of outright hostil-
ity and disrespect shown to Chief Langborg.”
PHOTOS BY RICK OLSON &
MARK BRENNAN/SIUSLAW NEWS
On Thursday, crews
from M&A Construction
completed preparation
and preliminary instal-
lation of Verizon
Wireless’s new cell
phone tower and base
on Spindrift Way,
between Mercer and
Sutton Lakes north of
Florence. The property
is being leased by a
local couple to the
company in a long-
term agreement.
THIS WEEK ’ S
See SPECIAL MEETING page 9A
TODAY
SUNDAY
MONDAY
TUESDAY
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WEATHER
Full Forecast, A3
Jim Hoberg is a Florence native, and has been working in Real Estate
since 1989. He has served as a Principal Broker for 29 years. He has
obtained several designations that require continuing education, which
keeps him on the cutting edge of the industry and he is constantly looking
for ways to expand his areas of expertise. Jim enjoys helping people fi nd
solutions to their real estate needs and discovering why Florence is such
a great place to live.
JIM HOBERG
history. Paint was peeling off
the walls and there were holes
in the floors.
“There was a real ‘poor’ feel-
ing to it,” said algebra teacher
Elisa Gray. “It created an at-
titude of, ‘We don’t get good
things.’ A lot of the rest of the
world has a really bad attitude
about people in poverty, that
SVFR, WLAD
joint special
meeting discusses
financials, future
New cell phone towers
increase coverage area
Bt Mark Brennan
Siuslaw News
FLORENCE, OREGON
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