A8 The BulleTin • Thursday, June 17, 2021
EDITORIALS & OPINIONS
AN INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER
Heidi Wright
Gerry O’Brien
Richard Coe
Publisher
Editor
Editorial Page Editor
Give Oregon a shot
of more normalcy
W
e want wearing masks to be over. We want more
normalcy in restaurants, in stores, in backyard
parties and in schools.
And Oregon is so wonderfully
close. We just need several more
thousand people to get vaccinated
to get us to the 70% adult, state-
wide vaccination rate that Gov. Kate
Brown set as the trigger for dropping
most restrictions.
We can debate if 70% is the right
number. We can debate as some
argued Tuesday night before the
Bend-La Pine School Board that the
restrictions should already be gone.
But vaccines are the most potent
weapon we have against this virus.
They work. Cases in Central Oregon
have dropped fairly steadily since
May.
And even if someone does con-
tract COVID who has been vacci-
nated, the severity of the illness is
usually reduced.
If you happen to be someone still
on the fence about the vaccine, well,
here’s one more thing to think about.
Your employer can require all work-
ers entering a workplace to be vac-
cinated against COVID-19. There
do have to be reasonable accommo-
dations for those who have medical
reasons or a religious belief, but basi-
cally employers can require it. That’s
a decision by the U.S. Equal Employ-
ment Opportunity Commission.
Perhaps that will be challenged and
overturned. Those are the rules now.
The worrying thing about the
70% number is there are pockets of
Oregon and of the country where
vaccination rates are low. In Malheur
County for instance, less than 30%
of the people are vaccinated. Some
areas of Jefferson County are that
low as well. At this point, that’s more
about a choice than lack of available
vaccine.
Masks are going to come off. We
are going to get more back to nor-
mal. But people are still going to end
up in the hospital. Gasping for air.
Removed from those they love. And
some will die.
Please get vaccinated.
Residents should get involved in
Bend’s neighborhood associations
BY STEPHEN KATZ
I
Submitted photo
This is the building under construction at Bend High School that is named after
Robert Maxwell, Medal of Honor recipient and former teacher.
A pleasing tribute
to Robert Maxwell
T
he Bend-La Pine School
Board voted Tuesday night to
name a new building at Bend
High School after Robert Maxwell,
recipient of the Medal of Honor and
a longstanding teacher.
It’s a deserved tribute for a World
War II hero and a man to admire.
The school board had to waive
a rule to do it. Board policy is that
a school or a building cannot be
named after a person unless they
have been dead five years. That pol-
icy is in place in part to protect the
district from having to go through
what could be an embarrassing pro-
cess of a name change if a person
was later discovered to have some
dark secrets.
We thought the district should
have named what is now called Cal-
dera High School after Maxwell in
2020. After all, if it’s OK to waive the
rules for a building now, why wasn’t
it OK to waive the rules when nam-
ing that school? We suppose you
could argue a school name is more
significant, so this is less of a risk.
It’s also less of a tribute to Maxwell,
though still a pleasing one.
Editorials reflect the views of The Bulletin’s editorial board, Publisher Heidi Wright, Editor
Gerry O’Brien and Editorial Page Editor Richard Coe. They are written by Richard Coe.
n the city of Bend there are 13
neighborhood associations (NA)
officially recognized by the Bend
City Council and each provided an
annual budget to spend on such
things as a website and an annual gen-
eral meeting. Each NA is assigned a
city councilor as a liaison between the
council and the NA.
Each NA sends a representative to
something known as the Neighbor-
hood Leadership Alliance (NLA),
which meets once a month. The cur-
rent chair of the NLA is Hans Jor-
gensen from the Awbrey
Butte NA. The NLA period-
ically reports its considered
positions on various issue to
the City Council. This is an
officially recognized group.
Each NA also has a land
use chair who represents the
Katz
NA at the Land Use Com-
mittee meetings whose cur-
rent chair is Deb DeWeese.
This group is also officially recog-
nized by the council and issues re-
ports as necessary.
Finally, there is the Neighborhood
Association Roundtable (NART),
which is an informal grouping of rep-
resentatives from each NA.
It is not officially sanctioned and
does not issue reports. The leader
of this group is Joette Storm, who
is from the Boyd Acres NA. In this
NEIGHBORHOOD FORUM
group the NAs can sort of “let their
collective hair down” and speak very
candidly about pending local issues
and their frustrations with having
those issues addressed appropriately
by city government.
Out of discussions at NART came
the idea of approaching The Bulle-
tin for an occasional column for NA
leaders to directly discuss issues pub-
licly without any filter. I can assure
you that we do not speak with a sin-
gle voice; there are definitely
a range of views on different
problems of which there are
many (and most overlap with
each other):
Water; wildfire; illegal fire-
works; Mirror Pond; trans-
portation; parking; legacy
trees; HB 2001 and middle
housing; affordable hous-
ing; rapid growth; homeless/
houseless; policing; effective bilateral
communication between the bureau-
cracy and concerned residents; public
notice of proposed projects; racism;
density; city revenues; building codes;
pandemic; schools; septic tanks; land
use planning; urban growth bound-
ary; tourism; recreation; transient
rentals, the dump; the railroad; pre-
serving a small town ambiance; li-
brary expansion, parkway improve-
ments, downtown street closure(s),
the railroad and many more.
As Bend morphs from a lumber
mill town into a real city, our part-
time City Council will find it difficult
to grapple with all of these many is-
sues; thus it imperative that you, the
residents of this community, speak
out — not only about identifying
problems but helping find solutions,
Civic responsibility does not end
with Election Day voting and sim-
ply leaving all decisions to the City
Council. If you are concerned about
the future of Bend, attend your local
NA board meetings – and even better,
become a member – some NAs lack a
full board. The squeaking wheel gets
the oil.
In order to provide a more effective
outreach to the Bend community and
a greater discussion of topical issues,
on June 2 we met with the editorial
staff of The Bulletin; the paper has
agreed to periodically publish essays
written by NA leaders. Each essay rep-
resents the opinion of the writer and
not necessarily of anyone else. Dis-
agree with an essay? Write a letter to
the editor!
I suspect The Bulletin will welcome
your additional input; after all, its staff
resides here too.
e
Stephen Katz is acting chair of the Southeast
Bend Neighborhood Association. He first visited
Central Oregon in 1978 and took up full time
residence in 2012.
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Bend, OR 97708
Fax:
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Both parties are needed to strengthen Oregon elections
Since then, Oregon has admin-
istered some of the most secure,
n 2016, Oregon made
cost-efficient, and accessible
history by creating Auto-
elections in the nation. But
matic Voter Registration
now, with five years of ex-
at DMV offices, automati-
perience with the new AVR
cally forwarding eligible cit-
system, we believe that bi-
izen information from the
partisan action is needed to
DMV to elections officials for
make some common-sense
voter registration. Our first-
upgrades to our voter regis-
Zika
of-its-kind “motor voter” law
tration system.
increased access to the bal-
While our current system
lot by registering thousands
works well, we should not be
of Oregonians to vote. It set
complacent about something
a new standard in list main-
as important as our elec-
tenance, ensuring that voter
tions. There are two key bar-
riers that prevent our voter
rolls were kept as up-to-date
registration system from
as possible, so that each mail
working as well as it should:
ballot reached the voter it was
(1) right now, automatic
intended for, and elections of- Fahey
registration and updates
ficials could focus more time
are only available to Oregonians who
on administering elections rather
have contact with the DMV; and (2)
than manually entering data from
Oregonians who register online must
thousands of hand-written forms.
BY STATE REPS. JACK ZIKA
AND JULIE FAHEY
I
GUEST COLUMN
have a state issued ID, even though
state IDs are not required for registra-
tion by paper forms. That means that
the 10% of Oregonians who are eligi-
ble to vote but only have a U.S. pass-
port, out-of-state ID, or have not yet
gotten a driver’s license must print off
a paper form, fill it out by hand, and
either mail it in or drop it off in-per-
son at their local elections office.
House Bill 2499 is a chance for
Republicans, Democrats, and inde-
pendents to come together and make
common-sense improvements to our
voter registration system that will save
election workers time and money and
further secure our elections. The bill
will do two things: first, it will allow
the address data from our annual state
income tax returns to be shared with
election officials to identify changes of
address for updating registration re-
cords, just as DMV records and Postal
Service records are. Second, it will
allow Oregonians without a DMV-is-
sued ID to upload an image of their
signature and register online with the
last four digits of their Social Security
number, the same information they
provide on the paper form in order to
be registered. These are small changes
that will ultimately level the playing
field for eligible voters, and help our
elections function more smoothly.
Both parties can agree that there is
nothing about the act of handwriting
information onto a form that makes
our systems more secure — that’s
why you can get a mortgage online,
buy a car online, and even file court
documents online. Voter registration
should be no different. Voters should
be able to utilize the same proof of
identity that is verified on a paper
form through our online systems, and
we should continue to strive to ex-
pand AVR to additional agencies. Or-
egonians of all political affiliations de-
serve to have accurate and up-to-date
information on the voter rolls.
This is a tense time in our democ-
racy, and many feel that there is no
room to cooperate in securing our elec-
tions while preserving access. But we do
not need to compromise on our goals
in order to find common ground. Leg-
islators from both parties have worked
together across the aisle this session in
states like Delaware, Louisiana, Maine
and Kentucky to take commonsense
steps to improve election adminis-
tration, and Oregon should join the
list. Let’s pass HB 2499, and show the
country that Oregon continues to run
the most secure, safe and accessible
elections in America.
e
State Rep. Jack Zika is a Republican representing
Redmond. State Rep. Julie Fahey is a Democrat
representing Eugene.