BAKER CITY HERALD • SATuRDAY, ApRIL 16, 2022 A5
LOCAL
Clark
Camping
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He didn’t have enough cash to
pay the entire bill. He asked Jerry
to hold the gun as collateral until
he could pay what he owed.
Jerry agreed. He placed the
pistol in a drawer.
Quite some time later — three
or so years, as Schuh recalls the
story — the truck driver walked
in. No preparatory phone call
or letter.
Jerry, acting as though the pre-
vious transaction had happened
just last week, retrieved the pistol
from the drawer — where it had
been sitting ever since — and ex-
changed the gun for the cash.
properties, including within 150 of any school,
preschool or childcare center, or at the Baker Heri-
tage Museum at 2480 Grove St., the Baker County
Courthouse, Sam-O Swim Center, the YMCA
gym on Church Street and the YMCA Fitness
Center on Pocahontas Road.
The ordinance also states that if someone is liv-
ing in a vehicle, it must be moved at least every 24
hours and for at least the distance of a city block.
“Really what we’re doing, we’re looking for solu-
tions to work with homeless issues that regularly
arise in our community,” Duby told councilors.
The police chief said last summer that he in-
tended to bring an ordinance to councilors to
consider.
He was prompted by a bill that the Oregon Leg-
islature passed earlier in 2021 and that Oregon
Gov. Kate Brown signed into law on June 23.
The law — introduced as House Bill 3115 and
passed by the Democratic majorities in both the
state House and Senate — is based on a 2019 fed-
eral court ruling in a Boise case that in effect pro-
hibited cities and counties from making it illegal
for people to sleep outdoors in public spaces if the
jurisdiction doesn’t provide indoor alternatives.
Baker County’s two state legislators, Sen. Lynn
Findley, R-Vale, and Rep. Mark Owens, R-Crane,
both voted against the bill.
The new Oregon law states that cities or coun-
ties which have ordinances that regulate “the acts
of sitting, lying, sleeping or keeping warm and
dry outdoors on public property that is open to
the public must be objectively reasonable as to
time, place and manner with regards to persons
experiencing homelessness.”
Baker City does not have such an ordinance
now, but Duby said ordinance 3383 would serve
that purpose.
The state law also states that “A person experi-
encing homelessness may bring suit for injunctive
or declaratory relief to challenge the objective rea-
sonableness of a city or county law.”
The law states that “reasonableness shall be
determined based on the totality of the circum-
stances, including, but not limited to, the impact of
the law on persons experiencing homelessness.”
Duby said that once House Bill 3115 passed, he
looked at what other cities had done, finding that
Coos Bay and North Bend had come up with an
ordinance similar to Baker City’s proposed ordi-
nance 3383.
“We feel like House Bill 3115, while offering
compassion and support to those experiencing
homelessness, can fail sometimes to protect both
the citizens of our community and the very home-
lesness the law is designed to protect,” Duby told
councilors Tuesday.
Duby said the proposed Baker City ordinance
would prevent camping on public property in
residential zones, while it would be allowed, with
time restrictions, on public property in the gen-
eral-commercial, general industrial and light in-
dustrial zones.
The time restriction states that people can’t camp
on public property between 6 a.m. and 8 p.m.
He emphasized that the ordinance applies to
public property; people are not allowed to camp
on someone else’s private property regardless of
the zone.
“I feel like we’re being reasonable and we’re al-
lowing space,” Duby said.
Hard to bid farewell
As she watches the snowflakes
fall, Donna ponders all the years
and decades that have passed, all
the cars that have rolled into the
shop and rolled out later, engine
running smoothly again.
All the grease-stained white
jackets, each bearing its owner’s
name in red thread over the right
breast pocket.
She knew it had to end.
And although she much prefers
that Clark Auto Electric, which is
closing in on the century mark,
continues, she laments the loss.
“It’ll never be run the way it
was,” she said. “No one’s interested
in working that hard.”
No one but Jerry will ever be
able to navigate the dark aisles,
shelves and bins laden with ob-
scure parts whose purpose is
known only to a few, and know
where to find just what he needs
to get an engine going, an engine
that might have been assembled
before World War II.
“He knew where everything
was,” Donna said.
Schuh also talked about the
irreplaceable knowledge that
Jerry possesses.
“It’s just not going to be the
same,” Schuh said. “We’re go-
ing to miss Jerry. A lot of peo-
ple are.”
Well
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City officials had hoped to
start tapping the new well this
spring. But Owen said supply
chain issues have prevented the
city’s contractor, General Con-
tractor Inc. of La Grande, from
building the well house and in-
stalling needed equipment.
“Getting supplies these days
is as challenging as ever,” Owen
Jayson Jacoby/Baker City Herald
Donna Goodwin in the office on April 14, 2022, at Clark Auto Electric, the business she and her husband, Jerry, have
owned since 1972.
“Jerry couldn’t run the business any longer. I
couldn’t run it. It took a lot of thought, though,
to finally end it. It’s hard.”
— Donna Goodwin
Donna will miss her office,
her ledger books kept by hand,
an accounting anachronism
in an era of spreadsheets and
smartphones.
Everything about Clark Auto
Electric has the palpable feel-
ing of a bygone era, when cars
were not as reliable as they are
today and a good mechanic, a
man like Jerry Goodwin, was
much sought after, so vital were
his skills.
The cash register is a massive
thing of steel and wood. Its lever
makes a satisfying thunk, the an-
tithesis of the plasticky clicking
of its modern equivalent.
Transactions are handled
without the aid of a single mega-
byte or silicon chip.
It’s rather dim inside the shop.
The air bears the inimitable
aroma of a place where internal
combustion engines are worked
on, as if the walls and the con-
crete floor have absorbed the
scents of oil and dielectric grease
and the tinge of ozone from 12-
volt batteries.
Donna will miss the work that
was so much a part of the life
that she and Jerry built over 66
years of marriage.
“Jerry couldn’t run the busi-
ness any longer,” she said. “I
couldn’t run it. It took a lot
of thought, though, to finally
end it.”
She glances again at the win-
said. “A lot of this is dependent
on some supply chain issues
we’re having with the control
panel boards, things like that. So,
that’s my goal; is to have a new
well by fall, an operational well.”
Drilling the well, which is 654
feet deep, cost the city about
$677,000.
The second phase, which is
underway and includes the well
house and equipment needed to
operate the well, will cost about
$2 million.
Owen said the goal is for the
well to produce about 1,500 gal-
lons per minute, approximately
2.16 million gallons per day.
The city will use the well both
during the summer, when water
demand peaks but the volume
from the streams and springs in
the city’s watershed drops. The
well will also be beneficial in
some years during spring, when
rapidly melting snow in the
watershed, which is in the Elk-
horn Mountains west of town,
energytrust.org
Jayson Jacoby/Baker City Herald
A vintage light switch at Clark Auto
Electric advertises Champion spark
plugs.
dow, as if to conjure some lin-
gering memory from the win-
try sky.
“It’s hard.”
can temporarily cloud streams
with silt.
The new well is one of the
major projects that prompted
the City Council to boost wa-
ter rates by 10% in 2016, 2017
and 2018.
The new well is the city’s sec-
ond.
The other well, which the city
drilled in 1977 near its water
treatment plant and reservoir on
the hill near Reservoir Road, is
about 800 feet deep.