‘A C ACOPHONY C OLOR ’ THURSDAY FOOTBALL COACH TAKES ON UNUSUAL TASK: PAGE 6A OF NORTHEAST OREGON First Friday art shows open March 5 MARCH 4, 2021 www.gonortheastoregon.com Also inside: Image by Laurel Macdonald BIG READ NEARS THE SHORE FISHTRAP FIRESIDE BOOK REVIEWS Handcrafted beers, baked goods and food. Find us on Facebook and Instagram Open for Dine-In or our website 1188brewing.com Lunch & Dinner 141 E. Main St., John Day 541-575-1188 Toast Takeout App for online ordering. GO! Magazine Serving Baker County since 1870 • bakercityherald.com March 4, 2021 IN THIS EDITION: QUICK HITS Good Day Wish To A Subscriber A special good day to Herald subscriber Alisa Anderson of Baker City. Local, 2A Every Oregon county will receive 100 doses this week of the new Johnson & Johnson single-shot COVID-19 vaccine that President Joe Biden said Tuesday is a key part of vaccinating all Americans before summer. Local • Business & AgLife • Go! magazine $1.50 County extends visitor contract ■ Deal with Chamber of Commerce to operate visitors center in Baker City continues through Aug. 31 By Samantha O’Conner soconner@bakercityherald.com The Baker County Board of Com- missioners voted 3-0 on Wednesday morning, March 3, to extend until Aug. 31, 2021, the county’s contract with the Baker County of Chamber of Commerce, through Baker County Unlimited, to operate the visitors center in Baker City. Commissioner Mark Bennett, who made the motion to extend the contract, said the action will end any uncertainty about the Chamber’s role through the summer. Shelly Cutler, the Chamber’s execu- tive director, said last week that she was concerned about the possibility that commissioners would cancel the contract, which pays the Chamber about $77,000 per year. The loss of the contract could im- peril the Chamber’s ability to put on events, including the Miners Jubilee celebration in July, Cutler said. The money comes from the lodging tax that guests pay at motels, bed and breakfasts, RV parks, vacation rental homes, campgrounds and other lodg- ing businesses. Class 1A State Basketball Tournaments Take A Year Off Due To Pandemic BRIEFING Prekindergarten preenrollment at Haines Elementary HAINES — Haines Elementary School has announced that preenroll- ment for its prekindergar- ten program will begin April 1. Students must be 4 years old by Sept. 1, 2021, to enroll for the 2021- 2022 school year, a press release stated. Priority will be given to students resid- ing in the Haines enroll- ment area. From there, it will follow the policy on the District’s website under Board Policies, Students, Remote Rural Schools Enrollment at policy.osba.org/baker/J/ JC%20R%20D1.PDF Pre-K hours are 7:45 a.m. to 11:20 a.m. Monday through Thursday. More information is available by calling Kathleen Chris- tensen, school secretary, at 541-524-2400. WEATHER Today 50 / 33 54 / 33 Partly sunny Full forecast on the back of the B section. The space below is for a postage label for issues that are mailed. See Contract/Page 3A Two COVID deaths reported ■ 87-year-old Baker County woman, and an 88-year man, each of whom had underlying conditions, both died Feb. 26 at home By Jayson Jacoby jjacoby@bakercityherald.com Kathy Orr/Baker City Herald File The bleachers in the Baker High School gym aren’t packed as usual this week with enthusiastic basketball fans from Oregon’s smallest high schools. Due to the pandemic, the annual Class 1A state girls and boys basketball tournaments, a Baker City tradition since the 1970s, were canceled. Missing Hoops Sunny Friday Your guide to arts, entertainment and other events happening around Northeast Oregon Two Baker County residents died on Feb. 26, two days after testing positive for COVID-19, the Oregon Health Authority (OHA) an- nounced on Tuesday, March 2. The deaths bring the county’s total to nine during the pandemic. Both people died at home, according to OHA. One resident is an 87-year- old woman, the other an 88-year-old man. Both had underlying medi- cal conditions, according to OHA. See Deaths/Page 3A By Jayson Jacoby jjacoby@bakercityherald.com Kathy Taylor is supposed to be exhausted right now. She should be rushing from one task to another this week, with scarcely a spare moment to rest. Taylor wishes that were so. For more than a quarter century, the fi rst week of March has meant one thing for Kathy and her husband, Rick. Basketball. Specifi cally, the Class 1A state basketball girls and boys tourna- ments at Baker High School. It’s the culmination of the season for Oregon’s smallest high schools, the week when players from towns, some of which lack a single traffi c signal, try to win one of those glossy trophies carved in the shape of the state. Kathy Taylor has been co-director of the annual tournaments, which are run by Baker County Tournaments, since 2017. But she and her husband have volunteered to help with the events since 1994. The tournaments themselves have an even longer legacy at BHS. The boys tournament has taken place there every year since 1974, and the girls tournament moved to Baker City in 1977. But then came the pandemic. And with high school basketball not scheduled to start in Oregon until May, and no state tournaments planned, 2021 will be the year of the asterisk. TODAY Issue 126, 22 pages Tournaments A Big Boost For Baker City businesses By Samantha O’Conner and Jayson Jacoby Baker City Herald The Class 1A state tourna- ments don’t just bring exciting basketball to Baker City. They bring business. The infl ux of hundreds of visitors who arrive from across Oregon to watch their sons and daughters, grandsons and grand- daughters, compete at Baker High School also fi lls motels and restaurants during late winter, an otherwise sluggish period for the area’s tourism economy. “Economically it’s huge,” said Shelly Cutler, executive director “I feel lost,” Kathy Taylor said on Tuesday morning, March 2. “It’s like there’s something I’m supposed to be doing but I’m not.” Taylor said the Oregon School Activities Association (OSAA), which oversees prep sports in the state, told her in December that the tournaments wouldn’t happen in 2021. An OSAA offi cial says, however, that the organization has no plan to move the tournaments from Baker City. And Taylor wants nothing more than to return to her usual hectic Business .............. 1B-3B Classified ............. 4B-6B Comics ....................... 7B Community News ....3A Crossword ........4B & 6B Dear Abby ................. 8B of the Baker County Chamber of Commerce. “Each one of those folks, they’re dining out, they’re shopping downtown.” In a report after the 2020 tour- naments, Kathy Taylor, co-director of the events, wrote that “the mo- tels reported that they were full from Wednesday evening through Saturday morning. Some teams stayed Tuesday night and some stayed Saturday night depending on their games.” Total attendance at the tourna- ment over the four days was 9,493. 15 virus cases at Settler’s Park ■ 10 cases reported at Behlen Mfg. Co., the county’s first workplace outbreak By Jayson Jacoby jjacoby@bakercityherald.com introduction to March in 2022. “I’m hoping we get back to some semblance of what we call normal,” she said. A year ago the situation at the BHS gym seemed normal only with the benefi t of hindsight. The 2020 Class 1A tournaments took place as scheduled from March 4 to March 7 (as did the Class 2A events in Pendleton, and the Class 3A tourna- ments in North Bend). Fifteen cases of COVID-19 have been reported at Set- tler’s Park memory care com- munity in Baker City. The majority of people who have tested positive have had “mild to no symptoms,” according to a press release issued Wednesday, March 3, by the Baker County Health Department. The press release did not say how many of the cases are residents and how many are employees. See Hoops/Page 3A See Outbreak/Page 2A See Business/Page 3A Horoscope ........4B & 6B Letters ........................4A Lottery Results ..........2A News of Record ........2A Obituaries ..................2A Opinion ......................4A Senior Menus ...........2A Sports ........................5A Weather ..................... 8B INSIDE — BAKER VOLLEYBALL FALLS TO BURNS IN 5 SETS: PAGE 5A