THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 2021
BAKER CITY HERALD — A5
LOCAL & NATION
CONTRACT
CRISIS
Continued from A1
Continued from A1
In denying the Herald’s request for copies of the
two proposals, Mosier cited a section of Oregon’s Public
Records Law that allows public agencies (but does not
require) to withhold records when, according to the law,
the “information submitted to a public body in conﬁ dence
and not otherwise required by law to be submitted,
where such information should reasonably be considered
conﬁ dential, the public body has obliged itself in good
faith not to disclose the information, and when the public
interest would suffer by the disclosure.”
Mosier wrote in her email to the Herald that “The
public interest would suffer by disclosing the proposals
prior to the public meeting. Allowing the competing pro-
posers to see the contents of the proposals gives them
the opportunity to modify their responses to questions,
clariﬁ cations and negotiations in a way that could un-
dermine the public beneﬁ t of the competitive process.”
However, both Cutler and Peter Johnson, general
manager of Anthony Lakes Outdoor Recreation Associa-
tion, supplied copies of their proposals to the Herald.
Those two organizations were also the only to submit
proposals at the end of 2019.
In early 2020 both the lodging tax committee and the
Baker County Economic Development Committee, after
reviewing the proposals, recommended commissioners
award the contract to Anthony Lakes.
But commissioners decided in February to postpone
a decision, and the process was delayed several times
subsequently.
The proposed location for the visitors center is the
same in the current proposals as in the 2019 versions.
The Chamber would keep the center in its current
location at 490 Campbell St.
“The Baker County Visitor Center’s location is
uniquely optimal for this particular city and county,”
the Chamber’s proposal states. “While some destina-
tions have chosen to locate their visitor centers next to
or within a major attraction or in a downtown location,
the Baker County Visitor Center has long been situated
at the busiest entrance to Baker City, in a highly visible
spot beside the freeway exit onto Campbell Street.”
Anthony Lakes proposes to operate a visitors center
at 1830 Main St., beside its bike, hiking and outdoor
shop, The Trailhead, on the east side of Main Street
between Valley and Court avenues.
“1830 Main Street could not be more ideal for a Visi-
tor Center,” Anthony Lakes’ proposal states. “Located in
the heart of downtown historic Baker City, this location
brings visitors to beautiful downtown Baker City and
proximate small businesses. In addition, the amount of
already existing foot trafﬁ c of visitors in the downtown
area will provide for substantially higher visitation rates
to the physical Visitor Center than have been seen or
documented in the past.”
Parking, particularly for RVs and trailers, is an issue
that one lodging tax committee member raised in early
2020 regarding Anthony Lakes’ proposal.
The concern was that the downtown location lacked
parking, especially for larger vehicles.
In its new proposal, Anthony Lakes notes that over
a two-month period earlier this year, workers counted
“over 43 RVs, trailers, and/or other large vehicles park-
ing at or within a two-block radius of the proposed Visi-
tor Center location” and that “there are currently 55
parking spaces, 40 of these allow for oversize vehicles,”
within a one-block radius of the proposed visitors
center.
The proposal also notes that Baker City is looking to
pave a parking area it owns just east of Resort Street,
near Central Park.
The Chamber’s proposal also references parking,
nothing that the Campbell Street location has “ample
parking for personal vehicles, RVs and motor coaches...”
The Anthony Lakes proposal counters that the
Chamber doesn’t own the parking lot adjacent to the cur-
rent visitors center.
Cutler said there has never been a conﬂ ict between
parking for guests at the Sunridge Inn, on the north side
of the parking lot, and parking used by people coming to
the visitors center.
The Chamber proposes an operating schedule from
May 1 through Oct. 31 or Monday through Saturday
from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., and Sundays from 8:30 a.m.
to 2:30 p.m. From Nov. 1 through April 30, the schedule
would be Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. to
4:30 p.m.
Anthony Lakes proposes a schedule from May
through September, of 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day, and
from Oct. 1 through April 30 a minimum of ﬁ ve days a
week, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
He said he carried about
70 children younger than
four down the portable stairs
that were used for deplaning
— not being an airport, there
were none of the movable
tunnels that commercial
airline passengers are accus-
tomed to navigating.
Although COVID-19 was
not yet a major story in the
U.S., the citizens who were
returning from Wuhan un-
derstood the risk, Strommer
said.
“We didn’t know much
about the virus in those ﬁ rst
few days,” he said. “They were
scared.”
But they were also ecstatic
to be back in the U.S.
“Many people when they
deplaned kissed the tarmac,”
Strommer said.
Later in February 2020,
Strommer was deployed to
Dobbins Air Force Base in
Georgia. That base and three
others were the temporary
homes for hundreds of pas-
sengers from cruise ships that
had been quarantined when
they reached American docks.
Strommer said about 400
of the 1,500 former passen-
gers at Dobbins during his
stint there became sick, and
eight died.
He returned to Oregon on
March 30. In the meantime
Amy had returned to their
home near Baker City.
“We were moving back
anyway, and we felt like she
was safer here,” Strommer
said.
Baker County’s ﬁ rst con-
ﬁ rmed case was reported on
May 6, 2020.
One day after returning,
March 31, 2020, Strommer’s
team was sent to New York
City, and speciﬁ cally Manhat-
tan.
The Big Apple was the
unfortunate epicenter of
the pandemic in those early
weeks, with comparatively
high death rates.
A week after Strommer ar-
rived, on April 7, 2020, a total
of 815 New York City resi-
dents died from the virus, the
city’s highest one-day total.
For the week of April 5-11,
the city’s death toll was 5,319.
Another 10,000 or so were
hospitalized.
Cost
Anthony Lakes proposes an annual budget of $69,574
if it is required to create a new website, or $59,574 if it
can use the current Travel Baker County website.
The Chamber’s proposed annual budget is $87,575.
Cutler said that includes $7,600 in payroll expenses that
in the previous contract the Chamber paid alone.
Deon Strommer/Contributed Photo
The Manhattan skyline, including One World Trade Center at left, with a row of
refrigerated trailers used to store the bodies of COVID-19 victims in New York City
during the spring of 2020.
“They were overwhelmed”
Strommer said of the city’s
mortuary services.
And Strommer, who was
designated as morgue opera-
tions manager for his group,
felt the same.
“I was overwhelmed by the
sheer numbers,” he said. “I’ve
been doing this 40 years and
one day I had to take a knee.
It’s a shock to your system. It’s
just not natural.”
Although most of the vic-
tims were 65 or older, Strom-
mer said he also saw children,
as young as 3 and 6, die from
COVID-19.
As ofﬁ cials struggled just
to ﬁ nd places to keep bodies,
Strommer saw things that
were beyond his experience, in-
cluding after natural disasters.
He saw body bags stacked
atop one another because there
had been no time to build
shelves.
He saw arms and legs dan-
gling from body bags.
“It was amazing how
quickly the system became
overwhelmed,” Strommer said.
“Dignity for decedents goes out
the door.”
New York ofﬁ cials insti-
tuted a “super catastrophic
fatality management plan” —
a term Strommer said he had
never heard.
Ofﬁ cials buried hundreds
of people — not all of them
COVID victims — in mass
graves on Hart Island, just off
the coast of the Bronx.
Strommer said some
funeral homes simply stopped
answering their phones be-
cause they had no capacity.
Deon Strommer/Contributed Photo
Deon Strommer just before he deployed to New York
City in late March 2020.
Deon Strommer/Contributed Photo
Bodies of COVID-19 victims in a makeshift morgue in
New York City during the spring of 2020.
He praises the National
Guard soldiers he worked
with who were charged with
removing bodies from homes
and from apartment build-
ings, some of the latter lack-
ing elevators despite being 10
or more stories tall.
Strommer said the
soldiers actually rigged up
pulley systems to lower body
bags from buildings.
“Moving bodies is physical
work,” he said. “I give all the
credit to these young men
and women, who had never
seen anything like this.”
Coping with
traumatic scenes
During the worst days
of the pandemic, Strommer
said he depended heavily on
frequent phone conversations
with his wife.
He said he can cope with
emotionally trying circum-
stances only by talking about
his feelings.
“Those became very
important conversations at
night, just to allow me to
talk about it,” he said. “Amy’s
always been good at that.”
The worst phase of the cri-
sis had ended before Strom-
mer left New York City on
June 6, 2020, and returned to
Baker City.
Although he stayed busy
with household chores —
building fences, chopping ﬁ re-
wood — he struggled to cope
with the things he had seen.
Strommer observed au-
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topsies of COVID-19 victims.
He was struck by how the
disease ravaged lungs in
particular.
“It took me several weeks,
if not months, to get over it,”
he said.
But Strommer’s memories
aren’t all horriﬁ c.
He recalls the couple
from Brooklyn whom he met
at Dobbins Air Force Base,
where they were quarantined
after disembarking from a
cruise ship.
When the couple learned
later in the spring of 2020
that Strommer was working
in New York City, they in-
sisted on bringing him boxes
of food and pre-prepared
meals.
“You took care of us, and
we want to take care of you,”
the couple told him.
Strommer hasn’t been
dispatched to any COVID-
related emergencies since
returning from New York
City in June 2020.
He did work in Western
Oregon during the historic
ﬁ res in September 2020.
And although he will nev-
er forget the terrible things
he saw in America’s biggest
city, he will also continue to
cherish the relationships he
made, and the selﬂ essness he
saw in so many people.
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