SPORTS A2
SPORTS A3
2 Baker girls qualify for state wrestling
meet, Baker boys fi rst at Heppner tourney
Reece Dixon’s 3-pointer lifts Powder
Valley to stunning win over Baker boys
IN THIS EDITION: LOCAL • HOME & LIVING • SPORTS
Serving Baker County since 1870 • bakercityherald.com
FEBRUARY 8, 2022 • $1.50
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Good Day Wish
To A Subscriber
COVID cases
drop again
A special good day to
Herald subscriber Jennifer
Long of Sumpter.
Indoor mask mandate
to end by March 31
BY JAYSON JACOBY
jjacoby@bakercityherald.com
BRIEFING
—————
GOP candidate to
speak Feb. 12 in
Baker City
Marc Thielman,
Republican candidate
for Oregon governor, will
speak Saturday, Feb. 12, in
Baker City.
Thielman will speak at
the Baker County Events
Center, 2600 East St.
Doors open at 5 p.m. and
the event starts at 6 p.m.
Thielman, who is
being hosted by Baker
County United, is the
superintendent of the
Alsea School District in
Western Oregon, where he
decided in late January to
make face masks optional,
in defi ance of an executive
order from Gov. Kate
Brown.
COVID-19 testing,
vaccine clinic Feb. 11
A free COVID-19 testing
and vaccination clinic is
set for Friday, Feb. 11,
from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at
3175 Pocahontas Road,
the former Baker Clinic
building just east of Saint
Alphonsus Medical Center.
All three COVID-19
vaccines — Moderna,
Pfi zer and Johnson and
Johnson — will be available.
Please bring your COVID-19
vaccine card if you have
previously been vaccinated.
WEATHER
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Today
34/20
Mostly sunny
Wednesday
40/24
Partly sunny
Full forecast on the back
of the B section.
The space below is for a postage label
for issues that are mailed.
Jayson Jacoby/Baker City Herald
Mark Witty, Baker School District superintendent, stands at the north end of the playground at South Baker Intermediate on
Friday, Feb. 4, 2022. Witty said the district’s plan to build a new bus lane will require the removal of the backstop and bike rack.
Easing congestion at
South Baker School
School district
plans separate
bus lane
The plan starting in the fall of 2022
is to have buses, which now travel
south on Fourth Street to Grace Street,
turn right one block north, on Car-
ter Street, and then continue south on
Fifth Street.
That street right-of-way extends
BY JAYSON JACOBY
south of Grace Street into the north-
west corner of the South Baker play-
jjacoby@bakercityherald.com
Mark Witty isn’t a traffic cop but
ground.
he worries about congestion just
The district will pave a lane for
the same.
buses and install a fence between that
Witty, superintendent of the Baker lane and the playground, Witty said.
School District, said a specific con-
When buses leave the school, they’ll
cern involves South Baker Interme-
drive north on Fourth Street, avoiding
diate, the school that houses fourth, Grace Street altogether.
fifth and sixth graders.
Wayne Paxton, the district’s trans-
The problem, Witty said, is that
portation supervisor, said he came up
buses as well as parents pick up and
with the proposal a few years ago to
drop off students in the same area,
alleviate congestion as buses and par-
the one-way block of Grace Street
ents’ vehicles vied for the same limited
between Third and Fourth streets on amount of space.
the north side of the school.
He said there’s room for three buses
The result, he said, is a crowded
now in the bus lane on the south side
section of street that forces many
of Grace Street next to the school.
parents to park elsewhere in the
“It’s just really tight,” Paxton said. “I
neighborhood and requires students, think this is going to open it up quite a
in many cases, to cross one or more
bit and be safer.”
streets.
In addition to separating the buses
“We’re trying to avoid that,” Witty from parents’ vehicles, Paxton said the
said as he stood beside the school on change will help with traffic issues far-
the chilly afternoon of Friday, Feb. 4. ther east on Grace Street.
“It’s been a goal for a number of years
Now, buses, after dropping off or
to make this area safer.”
picking up students, continue east on
The district’s solution, which Witty Grace to Second Street, where there
said is slated to happen this summer, are two stop signs in just 50 feet — one
is to separate the bus loading and
at the Grace Street intersection, the
unloading zone from where parents other at Dewey Avenue.
pick up and drop off students.
Starting this fall, buses will no
longer use Grace Street, Paxton said
— they’ll be confined to Fourth and
Fifth streets.
Witty said the change won’t elimi-
nate potential conflicts between buses
and other vehicles.
Buses heading north on Fourth
Street, for instance, will cross Grace
Street where parents will turn left.
But Witty said he’s convinced the
situation will be safer since buses
and cars won’t be parking close to
each other.
Witty said district officials are still
working on the design, and he didn’t
have an estimated cost for the project.
He emphasized that it is not one of
the jobs that will be done with money
from the $4 million bond that district
voters approved in May 2021.
Witty said the district should be able
to make the changes at South Baker
using its capital projects budget.
The district will have to move a
chain link baseball backstop at the
north end of the South Baker play-
ground, and the lane will reduce the
size of the playground, Witty said.
He noted that it is a relatively large
playground. The district will move the
backstop to another part of the play-
ground if that’s feasible, although he
said that there is already another back-
stop on the property.
Witty said the district hopes to in-
stall some new playground equipment
over the next few years, a project it’s
working on with the South Baker Par-
ent-Teacher Organization.
Baker County’s COVID-19
case totals and its rate of positive
tests both dropped for the second
straight week.
That trend mirrors what’s hap-
pening in Oregon as a whole,
where the peak of the surge re-
sulting from the omicron variant
has passed, based on statistics
from the Oregon Health Author-
ity (OHA).
The Baker County Health De-
partment reported six new cases
on Saturday, Feb. 5. That’s the
fewest in a day since Jan. 16,
when there were four cases.
The six cases brought the
weekly total (measured Sunday
through Saturday) to 115.
That’s a 30% drop from the
previous week, when there were
165 cases.
Since the week of Jan. 16-22,
when the county reported a re-
cord 183 cases, the decline is 37%.
There were three cases on Sun-
day, Feb. 6, the lowest one-day
total since Jan. 2, when no cases
were reported (totals for Sundays
tend to be lower due to week-
end delays).
“We’re headed in the right di-
rection,” Nancy Staten, director of
the Baker County Health Depart-
ment, said on Monday morning,
Feb. 7. “We can be cautiously op-
timistic that we’re on the down-
hill slide. But we still have to
protect our most vulnerable pop-
ulations.”
The rapidly declining case
numbers statewide prompted
the OHA to announce on Mon-
day, Feb. 7, that the state would
end the mask mandate for in-
door public places no later than
March 31.
The mask requirement for
schools will end on March 31.
The OHA also reported that
the county’s percentage of tests
that are positive dropped from
33.2% from Jan. 16-22, to 24.6%
the next week, and to 23.9% from
Jan. 30-Feb. 5.
Baker County’s case rate per
100,000 people has dipped from
1,076 the week of Jan. 16-22, to
680 the most recent week.
The latter rate is the third-low-
est among Northeastern Oregon
counties.
The rate per 100,000 in other
counties:
• Union: 816
• Wallowa: 964
• Umatilla: 793
• Malheur: 925
• Morrow: 499
• Grant: 506
The statewide rate per 100,000
last week was 689.
Search fails to turn up Idaho angler
who has been missing since Jan. 17
A steelhead
fisherman reported
seeing a body in
the Snake River on
Friday, Feb. 4
Ash said the searchers
Idaho fisherman, Alberto Sill-
onis, who went missing in the spent a few hours searching
but did not find a body.
area on Jan. 17.
He said the cur-
Searchers did not
rent in the area is
find the body, Sheriff
strong and unpre-
Travis Ash said on
dictable, and the
Monday morning,
Sheriff ’s Office
Feb. 7.
does not have the
BY JAYSON JACOBY
The steelhead
ability to put a diver
fisherman, who was
jjacoby@bakercityherald.com
in the water at that
A steelhead angler reported fishing on the Ore-
site.
seeing what he believed was a gon side of the river,
Sillonis
Ash said no addi-
body in the Snake River below reported seeing the
tional searches are planned
Hells Canyon Dam on Friday body in a back eddy where
morning, Feb. 4.
the water is about 10 to 12 feet unless the Sheriff ’s Office
receives new reports in the
A team from the Baker
deep, Ash said.
County Sheriff’s Office Search
The Baker County Dispatch area.
The Sheriff ’s Office an-
Center received the report at
and Rescue team brought a
nounced last month that
9:13 a.m. on Friday, Feb. 4.
boat to the site, about one
it believes Sillonis, 85, of
mile downriver from the Hells Ash said he and four others
Weiser, drowned after falling
Canyon Visitors Center, hop- left the dock at the Visitors
Center around 1 p.m. that day. from a dock into the river
ing to recover the body of an
TODAY
Issue 114
12 pages
Classified ....................B2-B4
Comics ..............................B5
Crossword ...............B2 & B4
Dear Abby .........................B6
Home & Living ........B1 & B2
Horoscope ..............B3 & B4
below the Visitors Center.
Sillonis had left his home
on the morning of Jan. 17
and planned to return home
that evening.
Relatives reported him
missing about 6 p.m. that
day when he failed to return.
Baker County deputies,
along with deputies from the
Washington County Sher-
iff ’s Office in Idaho, began
searching the route to Hells
Canyon as well as checking
hotels in nearby towns.
At about 9:07 p.m. on Jan.
17, deputies found Sillonis’
2008 Nissan Frontier pickup
truck in the parking lot at the
Hells Canyon Visitors Center.
Deputies searched the im-
mediate vicinity and found
Letters ...............................A4
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two fishing poles, with the
line from one still in the wa-
ter, on the center dock.
On the morning of Jan. 18,
searchers found a felt, short-
brimmed hat on rocks about
60 feet from the dock, which
Sillonis’ family confirmed
was his.
Idaho Power Com-
pany employees used a re-
mote-operated vehicle with
an underwater camera and
sonar to search the river, but
with no success.
Sillonis is a white man
who stands 5-foot-8 and
weighs about 160 pounds.
He has white hair.
If anyone has information
about Sillonis, they can call
Ash at 541-523-6415.
Sudoku..............................B5
Turning Backs ..................A2
Weather ............................B6