A4 THE BULLETIN • WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 2021
Arctic blast kills over a
dozen across southern U.S.
BY ANNIE GOWEN,ANDREW
FREEDMAN,TIM CRAIG AND
FENIT NIRAPPIL
The Washington Post
WASHINGTON — An
Arctic blast continued to
wreak havoc across a large
swath of the United States on
Tuesday after a snowstorm left
more than a dozen dead and
millions without power, with
officials in some places saying
residents might be in the dark
for days.
And it’s not over. A sec-
ond storm had begun taking
shape Tuesday night, aimed at
the nation’s southern tier and
some of the same hard-hit ar-
eas, according to The Wash-
ington Post.
Among those killed were
a 10-year-old boy who fell
through ice near Milling-
ton, Tennessee, and a woman
and a girl who died of car-
bon monoxide poisoning in
Houston after a car was left
running in a garage to keep
them warm, according to po-
lice. A tornado associated with
Bond
Continued from A1
“It’s not ideal. You don’t want
kids in a closet,” said Principal
Joan Warburg. “Who wants
learning in the hall? I don’t.”
School administrators say
these capacity issues could be
fixed if voters approve Sisters
School District’s $33 million
bond on May 18.
“If we don’t (pass the bond),
I’m not sure how we fit in more
kids,” Warburg said.
The bond would replace Sis-
ters Elementary School — the
school district’s oldest build-
ing — with a larger, K-5 school
right next to Sisters high and
middle schools.
Sisters school leaders tout
increased capacity, the conve-
nience of being next to the dis-
trict’s existing schools and an
outdated building as the main
reasons for a new school.
School officials say a new
building is simply needed for
a city where new families keep
arriving. Sisters’ population
grew by nearly 35% between
2010 and 2018, from 2,038
people to 2,747, according to
the U.S. Census Bureau esti-
mates. It’s a growth rate com-
parable to Bend.
“The area’s growing quickly,
and we want to make sure
we’re ready for kids,” said Su-
perintendent Curt Scholl.
the storm system also struck
North Carolina, killing at least
three and injuring 10.
Wind-chill watches and
warnings stretched from the
Dakotas to the Gulf Coast as
the coldest of this Arctic out-
break hit Tuesday morning,
with Dallas, Houston, and
Oklahoma City posting their
lowest temperatures since at
least 1989.
With nearly three-quar-
ters of the contiguous United
States blanketed by snow, at
midafternoon Tuesday, there
were 3.8 million still without
power in Texas, and thou-
sands more in 16 states, in-
cluding Oregon, Kentucky,
Louisiana and West Virginia,
according to the website Pow-
erOutage.us.
Texas was hit especially
hard. In Corpus Christi, a
coastal community in the
southern part of the state,
preparations are typically un-
derway to host an influx of
students for spring break at
this time of year. But on Tues-
And for locals who need
convincing, the bond won’t
raise property taxes, said
Scholl. It will maintain the
tax rate that’s been in place
since residents passed a bond
in 2001 to build Sisters High
School, he said.
A new, larger Sisters Ele-
mentary would bring fifth
graders back to the school. The
current setup is vexing for staff.
When Warburg orders ele-
mentary curriculum, it always
comes as a K-5 package —
which means she has to over-
see what teachers are doing in
an entirely separate building,
she said.
Furthermore, gifted fourth
graders who might benefit
from sitting in for some fifth-
grade lessons don’t get to do so
in the current setup, Warburg
said.
“We can’t transport kids
across town just to do that,”
she said.
Capacity aside, Sisters Ele-
mentary also dates back to the
1970s. Warburg quipped that it
took a year and half to replace
lightbulbs in her office and
some hallways, since the bal-
lasts that held the bulbs were
so outdated that nobody made
them anymore.
Even small upgrades in pre-
vious bonds, from replacing
carpeting to adding classrooms,
can’t fix everything, she said.
day morning, the temperature
had plunged to 19 degrees,
causing pipes to burst and
straining the city’s ability to
care for its residents.
“This cold has been ex-
tremely difficult on us because
we are a coastal community
of 300-plus days of warm
weather a year,” said Mayor
Paulette Guajardo, who has
been on the job for a month.
“We are just completely un-
accustomed to it — we are a
bathing-suit-and-shorts com-
munity, but we are going to
get through it, and we are go-
ing to be stronger because of
it.”
Like the rest of Texas, Cor-
pus Christi has been hit by
sustained power outages, with
Guajardo estimating that
at least a third of her city’s
325,000 residents have lost
power. She and numerous of-
ficials around the state said
the Electric Reliability Coun-
cil of Texas “failed” Texans by
not doing enough to prepare
for the cold snap.
Fairgrounds
Continued from A1
Hinds said the fairgrounds
has been working with the
county to get appropriate
fund transfers to cover the
cost of operating these kinds
of services.
But even those events, such
as the Cascade Chute Outa
rodeo, still did not make
the fair and expo center as
much money as they would
in a normal year, given ca-
pacity restrictions and more
time and resources it takes
to make an event safe, Hinds
said.
“Any return was better
than none,” he said.
Hinds and the fair board
are now trying to plan for
multiple scenarios as the
county heads into another
year rocked by the pandemic.
The plan is to create multiple
budgets for the county fair,
ranging from forecasting rev-
enue from a typical fair, to
not having any kind of fair at
all, he said.
“The No. 1 goal is to do
this safely and responsibly,”
he said.
Hinds said he is cautiously
optimistic about having some
kind of fair this year, even
if it doesn’t look like fairs in
Dean Guernsey/Bulletin file
In December 2020, students at Sisters Elementary School walk apart,
guided by pictures of horseshoes on the floor.
“It’s starting to show its age,
regardless of how much we re-
pair it,” she said.
Because the new school
would be built next to Sisters
high and middle schools, on
the city’s western edge, life
would be easier for school dis-
trict staffers like the Latino
family liaison or school psy-
chologist, who work with stu-
dents at all three schools, said
Warburg.
It could also make com-
mutes easier for parents like
Haley Ellis, who has students
at both Sisters Elementary and
Sisters Middle schools. The
schools are on opposite sides of
the city, and traffic going east
to west, or vice versa, can be
rough due to Sisters only hav-
ing a couple main thorough-
A number of events have already been rescheduled, either
being moved onto later dates or next year, Geoff Hinds
said, and he expects to see those impacts through the first
part of next year.
past years. And this year, De-
schutes County has the bene-
fit of being able to learn from
the lessons already learned
from running safe events in
the COVID-19 era.
“We’re not going into it as
blind as we were last year,”
he said.
While not preferable,
Hinds said even if a fair does
not happen again this year,
the situation will be “livable.”
“We lived through it this
year, and we’ll still be in ex-
istence. We’ll still be able to
pay the bills,” he said. “But
it certainly doesn’t happen
without challenges, and those
will continue to compound
into the future the longer we
are forced to do things and
make cuts.”
As of last week, every
weekend in 2021 except one
was booked at the expo cen-
ter, which is just one section
of the whole fairgrounds
property, according to a pre-
sentation made to the De-
schutes County Commission
fares, she said.
“It would definitely make
my life simpler to have (the
schools) all consolidated,” said
Ellis, who’s also a member of a
political action committee to
pass the bond.
The school board decided
to put the bond on the May
ballot, rather than November,
due to timing, Scholl said. If
passed in May, the district can
get a head start on building
the school in time for 2023-24
school year, he said.
“With November, I’m not
sure we’d be able to make that
timeline,” Scholl said.
The school district hopes to
pay for other various repairs
and upgrades in the district if
the bond passes, said Scholl.
But because the price of build-
ing the new school is still un-
on Thursday. Some are more
traditional events, like a Taco
& Margarita festival in Sep-
tember and a BBQ&Brew
Festival in April, as well as
continued vaccination clin-
ics.
But a number of events
have already been resched-
uled, either being moved
onto later dates or next year,
Hinds said, and he expects
to see those impacts through
the first part of next year.
While the fairgrounds
can accommodate multi-
ple events at the same time,
Hinds said that if there is
ever a conflict between a dif-
ferent event and the coun-
ty’s vaccination clinics,
COVID-19 response efforts
will always take priority.
“We think working with
medical professionals that
we’ve come up with strategies
in the short and midterm to
allow what’s on the calendars
to continue,” he said.
e e
Reporter: 541-633-2160,
bvisser@bendbulletin.com
known due to fluctuating con-
struction costs, he won’t know
how much money will be left
over. So he didn’t want to guar-
antee additional projects yet,
he said.
Mylee Card — a kindergar-
ten teacher at Sisters Elemen-
tary and mother of two young
children — said a new elemen-
tary is needed.
“We are very much over
crowded here at SES — and
our population doesn’t seem to
be decreasing,” Card wrote in
an email. “I also have a daugh-
ter that will be a kindergar-
ten student next year, and I’m
very excited for her to have the
possibility of the new school
and all the positive things that
would bring!”
e e
Reporter: 541-617-7854,
jhogan@bendbulletin.com
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Continued from A1
“These (new units) won’t
immediately alleviate the hous-
ing shortage,” said Damon
Runberg, Oregon Employment
Department regional econo-
mist. “However, they will help
move us in the right direction.”
Runberg added that 2021
could see a restart in greater
“geographic mobility” as the
pandemic subsides and peo-
ple are more likely to sell their
homes with less worry about
being in contact with others.
“More churn within the ex-
isting housing market com-
bined with new construction
means we are looking at less of
a supply shortage,” said Run-
berg.
The demand for housing
continues to put pressure on
lumber markets.
The average indexed price
for pine was $856 in December
compared to $499 in the same
month a year ago. The price
of lumber doubled during the
pandemic as homebuilders
picked up supplies and home-
owners worked on projects
at home during the periodic
quarantines and lockdowns.
Bruce Daucsavage, general
manager for Prineville-based
Ochoco Lumber, said there are
other factors in play beyond
the demand for lumber.
“Mills are not able to in-
crease hours of work due to the
lack of workers. Not the lack of
logs. All of my friends who run
mills say they cannot get peo-
ple to work,” said Daucsavage.
That lack of workers is low-
ering production, and in some
cases, closing sawmills.
“It is difficult to ramp up
production in the West,” said
Daucsavage. “The industry
rarely builds large inventories
and practices just-in-time pro-
duction methods. There have
been zero mills built in the past
few years in the West. Small in-
vestments are also a concern.”
The building spree hasn’t
eased home prices. The me-
dian price for a single-fam-
ily home in Bend hit a record
high in January at $580,000,
up from $524,000 in Decem-
ber, according to data from the
Beacon Report, which com-
piles prices for Central Oregon.
Prices in Redmond have like-
wise continued to soar, with
the median price for a home at
$377,000 in January, up from
$375,000 in December.
One reason for the contin-
ued surge in prices is low in-
ventory, said David Gilmore,
broker for Coldwell Banker
Bain.
Inventory in Bend is just two
weeks, which means if no new
homes come on the market,
every available home would be
sold in two weeks. Historically,
Bend has had six months of
inventory. The median num-
ber of days on the market in
both Bend and Redmond was
four last month. One year ago
it was 115 days on the market
in Bend and 119 days in Red-
mond.
Gilmore said in his 11 years
of working in Bend’s real estate
market, he has never seen such
low inventory.
“This market is challeng-
ing,” said Gilmore. “What I am
telling buyers what they need
now is patience, flexibility, and
a willingness to pay over list
price because the perfect house
may not come up, and if it does
,there could be a feeding frenzy
on it.”
e e
Reporter: 541-617-7818,
mkohn@bendbulletin.com
First & Last Name
Email Address
Phone Number
Mailing Address
Donald “Don” L.
Hickman
of Redmond, OR
September 12, 1949 -
February 2, 2021
Arrangements:
Niswonger-Reynolds
Funeral Home is hon-
ored to serve the family.
541-382-2471 Please visit
the online registry for the
family at
www.niswonger-reynolds.
com
Services:
A celebration of Don’s life
will be held at a later date
for family and friends.
Contributions may be
made to:
In lieu of flowers please
consider donating to:
Education Foundation
for Bend-La Pine School
(Fund: Activity Fee Schol-
arships)P.O. Box 1436,
Bend, OR 97709
www.engagedminds.org
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