Serving Central Oregon since 1903 • $1.50
TUESDAY • May 11, 2021
Bong stigma is long gone
SPORTS PULLOUT, A5-8
Serena Williams’
return
Consumers drop
$800 on wares as
businesses join in on
cannabis culture
BUSINESS, A11
High Desert Storm’s
opener
COVID-19 | FDA authorizes Pfizer vaccine for adolescents 12 to 15, A2
SCHOOL BOARD
ELECTIONS
Redmond
candidates
discuss equity,
mental health,
community
Police chief’s first budget: 8 new posts
Bend department’s $69 million
proposal goes before City Council
BY GARRETT ANDREWS
The Bulletin
Police Chief
Mike Krantz
Editor’s Note: This is part one of a
two -part series of mini profiles of
Redmond School Board candidates
in the May 18 election. Part two will
publish Wednesday.
To help meet his and the Bend City Council’s
goals, Bend Police Chief Mike Krantz is asking
for eight more staff members in his first pro-
posed budget.
The $69 million proposal for 2021-23 fea-
tures funding for an officer focused on home-
less outreach, a communications staff member
to “increase transparency and community en-
gagement, a detective to support child abuse
investigations and a technician to support new
body-worn cameras coming to the agency.
The department is also asking for two new
school resource officers, one at Central Oregon
Community College and one for Bend-La Pine
Schools. Under the proposal, about 40% of
the cost to staff the resource officers would be
funded by the schools.
Krantz, who was hired in July from the Port-
land Police Bureau, will address the City Coun-
cil as part of budget presentations Wednesday.
See Police / A13
Toss your yard debris, for free
BY JACKSON HOGAN
The Bulletin
The Redmond School
Board races are the most com-
petitive in Central Oregon this
year.
Eleven candidates are vying
for four seats in the May 18
election, and only one — board
Chair Shawn Hartfield — is
an incumbent. This is a sharp
turnaround from the 2019
board elections, where one in-
cumbent ran unopposed and
the other incumbent only had
one challenger.
The Bulletin asked the Red-
mond School Board candidates
the same questions about guns
in schools, COVID-19, the
district’s new equity task force,
and more.
Position 1
With the school board guar-
anteed to have at least three
new members next school
year, Hartfield said her nearly
six years of experience would
serve Redmond schools well.
“Whether I get elected or
not, we’re going to have a very
new board,” Hartfield, 50, said.
“It’s important to have some-
body there with the knowledge
and experience that I have.”
Besides serving on the
board, Hartfield works in hu-
man resources for Buckstop
Truckware, a Prineville auto
bumper manufacturer, and
teaches business classes at Cen-
tral Oregon Community Col-
lege. She has three children in
Redmond schools: one each at
Sage Elementary and Obsid-
ian and Elton Gregory middle
schools.
Once the COVID-19 pan-
demic subsides, Hartfield
wants to push for more extra-
curricular activities for ele-
mentary students, she said.
“In our elementary schools,
we have not done a great job in
developing extracurricular ac-
tivities,” she said.
Gary Dyrdahl,
from left, and
Rich Feldman
offload yard
debris at Knott
Landfill during a
FireFree yard waste
recycling event,
which runs through
Sunday at Knott
Landfill.
Dean Guernsey/
The Bulletin
S
everal sites around Deschutes County are offering free
yard waste recycling this spring as a means to reduce
risk of wildfire.
The collection sites, listed at right, are coordinated by
FireFree, a year-round educational effort to encourage home
and property owners to keep defensible spaces around their
homes by removing flammable materials that could allow the
spread of wildfire.
Grass clippings, brush, plant prunings, pine needles, pine
cones, weeds, trimmings and branches, stumps or trees no
larger than 12 inches diameter are accepted. Sod, dirt, rocks,
lumber, metal, trash or plastics of any kind, including plastic
bags, and stumps or trees larger than 12 inches in diameter
are not accepted.
The collection locations and times are listed at right.
Knott Landfill
61050 SE 27th St., Bend
7 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily through
Sunday
Northwest Transfer Station
68200 Fryrear Road, Cloverdale
8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday
through Saturday May 22-June 5
West side Collection Site
Off Skyliners Road west of Miller
Elementary School
8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and
Sunday
Southwest Transfer Station
54580 U.S. Highway 97, La Pine
8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday
through Saturday May 22-June 5
FireFree events since 1999 have
collected 444,605 cubic yards of
material, or enough yard debris to
fill almost 44,500 dump trucks.
Negus Transfer Station
2400 NE Maple Way, Redmond
8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through
Saturday May 22-June 5th
— Bulletin staff report
See School board / A13
COVID stubborn in region as cases dip statewide
The latest rise in COVID-19 in-
fections in Oregon has peaked and is
heading down, though Central Oregon
continues to have some of the top case
numbers and infection rates in the state.
The Oregon Health Authority re-
leased the weekly COVID-19 risk level
numbers late Monday morning. The
official announcement on any changes
in risk levels — and restrictions in each
county — will not be announced by
Gov. Kate Brown until Tuesday.
But some of the numbers showed
TODAY’S
WEATHER
clear indicators of what to expect.
Overall, they show a slight decline
COVID-19 cases over the past two
weeks, compared to last week’s report.
The state reported 10,755 new cases
over the two-week period, which
equals 252 cases per 100,000 residents.
Both are slight declines over the previ-
ous period.
The rate of positive cases remains
at 6.4% — state officials say anything
above 5% has the potential to lead to a
rebound of cases.
Several counties had case rates
that would in the past have pushed
Mostly sunny
High 74, Low 42
Page A13
INDEX
Business
Classifieds
Comics
A11
A14
A9-10
6.4%
The rate of positive cases in Oregon.
New cases are on a downward trend, but
the state says anything above 5% has the
potential to lead to a rebound.
Daily numbers on A2
them into the extreme risk category.
For large counties, an infection rate
of more than 200 per 100,000 people
would place them in the most restric-
tive of the state’s four tiers of risk levels.
But Brown introduced a new metric
last month that keeps counties from
Dear Abby
Editorial
Horoscope
A7
A8
A7
Kid Scoop
Local/State
Lottery
A12
A2-4
A6
Obituaries
Puzzles
Sports
A story headlined “The impor-
tance of family becomes more mean-
ingful,” which was published Sunday,
May 9, on Page A1, misstated what
bills a family received assistance to
pay. The family received assistance
for electric bills.
In an article headlined “School
board race sees unusual division,”
which appeared Saturday, May 8, on
Page A1, the total amount of cam-
paign contributions that Bend-La
Pine School Board candidate Carrie
McPherson Douglass received in
2021 was misstated. In this cam-
paign cycle, McPherson Douglass has
received $13,784.80 in contributions.
The Bulletin regrets the errors.
the harshest limits, including a ban on
indoor dining.
Counties will not be put in the ex-
treme risk level regardless of their own
COVID-19 numbers if the state over-
all has under 300 hospitalizations for
COVID-19. After that threshold is
crossed, an increase of 15% has to be
met to hit the extreme risk level.
As of Monday, the Oregon Health
Authority reported 324 confirmed
COVID-19 cases hospitalized in the
state, a slight reduction over the last
period.
See COVID-19 / A4
A4
A10
A5-7
The Bulletin
An Independent Newspaper
We use
recycled
newsprint
Vol. 117, No. 329, 14 pages, 1 section
DAILY
BY GARY A. WARNER
Oregon Capital Bureau
Corrections
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