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About Baker City herald. (Baker City, Or.) 1990-current | View Entire Issue (May 19, 2022)
MAY 18–25, 2022 Explore EOU Arts Fest Celebrate Family Fun Fest Listen Bad Bad Hats PAGE 3 PAGE 7 PAGE 12 WWW.GOEASTERNOREGON.COM A passport to art and culture PAGE 8 Lisa Britton/Go! Magazine The National Historic Oregon Trail Interpretive Center is closed for renovations, but is setting up exhibits inside the Baker Heritage Museum. Both are included in the Baker County Culture and Heritage Passport. “The food is fresh, locally sourced and unbelievably delicious. Their IPAs are distinct and clearly not copy-cats of each other or anyone else making NW IPAs.” - Yelp Review, Bend. Oregon INSIDE GO! Magazine Check out art and museums in Go! LOCAL A3 SPORTS A6 Little League reports break-in at Wade Williams Baker boys golf team 2nd at state 1219 Washington Ave • La Grande, OR 97850 www.sideabeer.com IN THIS EDITION: LOCAL • BUSINESS & AG LIFE • SPORTS QUICK HITS ————— Good Day Wish To A Subscriber A special good day to Herald subscriber Mike Schoeningh of North Powder. BRIEFING ————— Groups urge residents to attend school board meeting Baker County United is planning its monthly freedom rally at the Baker 5J School District offi ce, 2090 Fourth St., on Thursday, May 19, at 5 p.m. The group is urging people to attend the school budget committee meeting, which starts at 5 p.m., and the school board meeting at 6 p.m., to ask questions about the district’s spend- ing priorities, including the board’s recent decision to buy two homes to house foreign students attending Baker High School through the district’s Oregon Interna- tional School program. A local parent, Heather Dallstream, is also urging residents to attend the board meeting and learn about district priorities. Brown nominates local man to remain on EOU board of trustees Gov. Kate Brown has nomi- nated Richard Chaves of Baker City to serve another four-year term on the board of trustees for Eastern Oregon University, starting July 1, 2022. Chaves’ current term on the board expires June 30. The Oregon Senate Com- mittee on Rules is scheduled to consider Brown’s list of nominees for a variety of state boards and commis- sioners in June. WEATHER ————— Today 51/32 Rain showers Friday 60/34 Partly sunny Full forecast on the back of the B section. The space below is for a postage label for issues that are mailed. Serving Baker County since 1870 • bakercityherald.com THURSDAY, MAY 19, 2022 • $1.50 Garrick, Alderson advance to general election Justus, Witham race has not been decided BY JAYSON JACOBY jjacoby@bakercityherald.com One of the two races for a Baker County Commission slot was too close to be deter- mined the day after the May 17 primary. But the tiny gap between Kody Justus and Christina Witham — Justus had a 3-vote advantage as of Wednesday, May 18 — isn’t even the key factor at this point. Because neither candidate has more than 50% of the to- tal votes cast, it’s possible that Justus and Witham will both advance to the Nov. 8 general election, where they’ll again be the only two names on the ballot. They are vying for position 2, one of the two part-time spots on the three-member Board of Commissioners. According to Oregon elec- tion law, if no candidate in a contested race gets more than 50% of the votes cast, then the top two advance to the general election. That standard also applies in races, like this one, with just two candidates. In unofficial results from the Baker County Clerk’s Of- fice on Wednesday, Justus had 2,485 votes and Witham had 2,482. But the more meaningful statistic for now is the percent- age of the total votes cast that each candidate has received. Justus had 49.53%. Witham had 49.47%. The reason Justus doesn’t have at least 50% of the votes, even with his slim lead, is that there were also 50 write-in votes as of Wednesday, which constitutes 1% of the 5,017 total votes cast. That means Justus and Witham are divid- ing 99% of the votes, and with See, Election/Page A5 Spring chinook season opens late BY JAYSON JACOBY jjacoby@bakercityherald.com Lisa Britton/Baker City Herald Rotarians Dave Lindley, left, and Brenda Holly help add sponsor stickers to 1,000 books that will be given to local students. Baker loves books Baker City Rotary Club supports literacy program BY LISA BRITTON lbritton@bakercityherald.com S urrounded by stacks of books and supplied with sheets of stickers, members of the Baker City Rotary Club helped label about 1,000 books on May 9 to support the REAL program. That acronym stands for Read Ev- eryday And Learn, which is a project of the Baker County Community Lit- eracy Coalition. Rotary also donates money every year to help purchase books. “As a club, we believe literacy is a big deal and we want to help anyway we can,” said Anthony Bailey, club presi- dent. “This is the biggest way we can impact the most kids.” Literacy, he said, is one of Rotary’s “key areas of service.” The club’s other community service projects include a coat drive (in collab- oration with Sorbenots), ringing bells for The Salvation Army every Decem- ber, scholarships, volunteering at the 1A basketball tournaments and orga- nizing the community Easter egg hunt. To support these projects, the Ro- tary Club sells buffalo burgers during Miners Jubilee every year in Geis- Lisa Britton/Baker City Herald Baker City Rotary Club members Dotty Miles, right, and Anthony Bailey help add stickers to books that will be given for free to local school children through the Read Everyday And Learn program, coordinated by Jessica Dougherty, left. Each year, the club finan- cially supports the literacy program and Rotarians read with students in the schools. er-Pollman Park, and on holidays they place American flags, sponsored by lo- cal businesses, around Baker City. “We especially feel pride on patriotic holidays such as Independence Day, Vet- erans Day and Memorial Day because without our service men and women we wouldn’t have the rights we have today, and many have made the ultimate sacri- fice for those rights,” Bailey said. The Rotary Club meets at noon on Mondays in the banquet room at the Baker Tower. Potential members are welcome. “People are welcome to come check it out,” Bailey said. Anglers had to wait longer than they have in more than a decade, but they will again get the chance to hook a spring chi- nook salmon in the Snake River between Hells Canyon Dam and Dug Bar. The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW), which typically has opened the spring chinook season in late April, announced Tuesday after- noon, May 17, that the season had opened that day. (Spring chinook are so named because they typically move from the Pacific Ocean into the Columbia River starting in early spring to begin their upstream migration.) The issue this year is that few spring chinook are expected to arrive in that reach of the Snake River, said Kyle Bratcher, fish bi- ologist at ODFW’s Enterprise office. But the story, and the problem that led to this situation, actually dates to 2018. There was a meager return of spring chinook that year to the fish trap that Idaho Power Com- pany operates just below Hells Canyon Dam, Bratcher said. Workers harvest eggs and sperm from those fish, and the eggs are reared at Idaho Power’s Rapid River hatchery near Rig- gins, Idaho. Volunteer readers Rotary members also volunteer with REAL as readers in the schools, al- though that hasn’t been possible for the past two years due to the pandemic. See, Salmon/Page A3 Island City man dies in Fire chief warns county of response delays motorcycle accident BY JAYSON JACOBY AND SAMANTHA O’CONNER Baker City Herald Baker City Fire Chief Sean Lee has notified Baker County that the city fire department might have to delay responses to fire and ambulance calls due to a staffing shortage. In a Tuesday, May 17, email to county commis- sioners and Jason Yenco- pal, the county’s emergency management director, Lee wrote that “We are at the point that we will have to start staging the calls for service that we receive. We will be able to take the first call for service, but doubles and/or triples may have to wait until the crew can clear the first call. When we receive fire call and medi- TODAY Issue 4 28 pages cal call simultaneously, we will have to triage the calls as they come and deter- mine the greatest threat to life and property. My hope is that this will give you an opportunity to find a pro- vider for the interim that will be able to maintain the existing level of service as is referenced in OAR 333-260- 0070 (d).” Lee wrote that the depart- ment’s “staffing level has re- duced, and existing staff are not responding to call back.” Casey Johnson, a fire- fighter/paramedic and pres- ident of the local union chapter that represents fire- fighters, called Lee’s email a “direct dig” at firefighters, and in particular the refer- ence to staff not responding to call backs. Business ...........................B1 Classified ....................B2-B4 Comics ..............................B5 Johnson blames the fre- quent need to call in off-duty employees, and the resulting rise in overtime costs, on the city’s decision in July 2021 to change the work schedules for the department’s three division chiefs. Rather than working the same 24 hours on, 48 hours off schedule that firefighter/ paramedics do, two of the three division chiefs work a standard 40-hour weekday schedule, Johnson said. He said that means the division chiefs aren’t avail- able as often to go out on calls or to cover the station when a two-person crew is out on a call. The result, he said, is that the department, more of- ten than before the staffing change, has to ask off-duty Community News.............A2 Crossword ...............B2 & B4 Dear Abby .........................B5 See, Books/Page A5 firefighters to respond to the station, to ensure it is staffed, when a two-person crew is out on an ambu- lance or fire call. According to city records, the fire department’s over- time bill for the nine-month period July 2021 through March 2022 was $135,600 — an increase of $69,900, or 94%, from the same period the previous year. Among the documents the city recently added to its website, www.bakercity. com, as part of a new am- bulance service database, is a chart showing the weekly number of requests for off- duty firefighters to respond to the station, and the per- centage of responses. Horoscope ..............B2 & B4 Lottery Results .................A2 News of Record ................A2 See, Chief/Page A2 Baker City Herald An Island City man died when he lost control of the motorcycle he was riding while exiting Inter- state 84 in Baker City on Tuesday afternoon, May 17. John Dale Atwood, 73, was pro- nounced dead at the scene. The accident happened around 4:24 p.m., according to an Oregon State Police report. Atwood was riding westbound on the freeway when he took the offramp at Exit 304, the Campbell Street interchange. “For unknown reasons,” At- wood lost control of the 2011 Harley-Davidson and crashed into a guardrail, according to the OSP report. He was thrown from the motorcycle, which continued down the offramp. Opinion .............................A4 Senior Menus ...................A2 Sports ...............................A6 Sudoku..............................B5 Turning Backs ..................A2 Weather ............................B6