TRACK CHAMPIONS
LOCAL ATHLETES TOP
THE PODIUM AT
STATE MEET
PAGE B1
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Grant County’s newspaper since 1868
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Prairie City senior Levi Burke won the 1A boys high jump title with a height of 6-05 at
the Track and Field State Championships May 17-18 in Monmouth. For the Eagle/Ben Lonergan
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CONGRATULATIONS TO GRANT UNION AND HOMESCHOOL GRADUATES | Pages A6-7
Wednesday, May 22, 2019
151st Year • No. 21 • 20 Pages • $1.00
BlueMountainEagle.com
Votes next year
could determine
pool’s future
Preparing for disaster
City submits application
for planning
grant
Hanners
By Richard
Blue Mountain Eagle
Contributed photos
ABOVE: Several emergency vehicles are parked ready to go in the Galena
training exercise. LEFT: Dozens of staff and volunteer emergency services
people from various agencies gather for an evaluation after the fi re drill and
evacuation exercise in Galena.
Search and rescue coordinates
interagency fi re evacuation drill
By Angel Carpenter
Blue Mountain Eagle
Dozens of staff and volunteers
from various emergency services
agencies swooped in to “rescue” sev-
eral Galena residents May 11 during a
mock fi re emergency.
Grant County Sheriff’s Offi ce
Search and Rescue Coordinator Dep-
uty Dave Dobler, who organized
the event, said everything went as
planned.
“We had a good turnout with our
SAR team, and this was critical to
the success of this exercise,” he said.
“SAR worked well with the other
Dobler, volunteers make
numerous improvements
By Richard Hanners
Blue Mountain Eagle
agencies and worked swiftly and pro-
fessionally to achieve our operational
goals in a systematic and professional
manner.”
The residents of Galena were said
to have “played along” well in their
roles of people experiencing a real
wildfi re emergency.
A long list of other participants
joined the local team, including the
county Air Search, Amateur Radio
Emergency Service, Emergency
Communications Agency (911 Dis-
patch) and Emergency Manage-
ment, as well as head of Firewise
December was a busy month for the Grant County
Sheriff’s Offi ce’s Search and Rescue team, with six
days on missions in brutally cold con-
ditions and two days with debriefi ng
after a tough mission on Fields Peak.
Deputy Dave Dobler, the coun-
ty’s Search and Rescue coordinator,
updated the county court on the team’s
achievements and presented grant and
fundraising proposals May 8. Dobler, Dave Dobler
who joined the sheriff’s offi ce eight
months ago, also provided a detailed list of SAR
needs.
See Drill, Page A10
See Improvements, Page A10
John Day area voters likely won’t see
a ballot measure to create a new service
district for operation of a public swim-
ming pool or a bond election for the
funds to build a new swimming pool
until next spring.
New information about the Gleason
Pool emerged during the John Day City
Council’s discussion about a planning
grant application May 14.
The council agreed to apply for a 2019
Oregon Parks and Recreation Depart-
ment planning grant worth up to $40,000.
The city budgeted up to $40,000 for
matching funds for the grant, City Man-
ager Nick Green told the council.
Service district
Planning grants can be used to deter-
mine and document a project’s viability,
including information on the public need
and benefi t, types of amenities, locations,
activities and likely users, Green said.
Alternatives are analyzed and a recom-
mendation is made on the best alterna-
tive, he said.
In this case the city, which owns Glea-
son Pool, and a steering committee com-
posed of stakeholders interested in the
pool’s future have been evaluating state
law on county service facilities as an
option for operation of an aquatic facil-
ity, Green said.
Oregon Revised Statutes Chapter 451
authorizes a county to establish mas-
ter plans and service districts for a wide
range of purposes, including public recre-
ation facilities. The Grant County Court
could approve a master plan for a service
district that supports a recreation facility
that includes land outside the jurisdiction
of cities in Grant County, Green said.
See Vote, Page A10
State revenue forecast dramatically higher than expected
Lawmakers debate how to
spend $770 million windfall
By Mark Miller
Oregon Capital Bureau
Oregon has come into an unexpected windfall,
and now it’s up to lawmakers to fi gure out what
to do with it.
Personal and corporate income tax collec-
tions during the 2019 tax fi ling season were dra-
matically higher than state economists expected,
according to a report released May 15. While
much of that money will go back to taxpayers
next year in the form of Oregon’s unique “kicker”
rebate, the new forecast gives legislative bud-
get-writers about three-quarters of a billion dol-
lars more to work with as they decide how Ore-
gon will spend its money over the next two years.
They aren’t getting too excited, though.
“It may seem strange, but the revenue forecast
does not change the method in which we’re bud-
geting,” said state Rep. Dan Rayfi eld, D-Corval-
lis, who co-chairs the budget writing committee.
“We are still looking at reduction options. We are
still being cautious and prudent about how we
spend the resources that the state has.”
Decisions on agency spending touch practi-
cally every Oregonian.
Between general and lottery funds, state econ-
omists project that Oregon has $24.8 billion to
spend over the next two years. That’s up about
$770 million from the previous forecast.
Ken Rocco, legislative fi scal offi cer, advises
lawmakers on how much their spending ideas
would cost the state. His offi ce concluded the
state would need to spend about 14% more than
the current two-year, $21 billion budget just
to keep in place services now being provided,
because of the impact of infl ation, pay raises and
cost hikes in supplies and services.
That calculation doesn’t take into account the
larger cash reserves that Rayfi eld and his fellow
co-chairs, Sens. Betsy Johnson, D-Scappoose,
and Elizabeth Steiner Hayward, D-Beaverton,
want the state to have by the end of 2021. It also
doesn’t include any new programs or projects
that the Legislature approves or jobs it adds.
“I think we’re probably much closer to being
able to fund the current service level, but that
doesn’t mean that the co-chairs, for every agency,
they’re going to do that,” Rocco said. “They’re
still looking at making some current service level
reductions.”
That hasn’t stopped key people in the Capi-
tol from tossing out ideas for how the newfound
$770 million should be spent.
Gov. Kate Brown said she expects some of the
extra money to go toward mitigating tuition costs
for community colleges and universities, as well
as investing in foster care and law enforcement.
“I have some key investments that I think need
to be made,” Brown said.
Brown and House Speaker Tina Kotek,
D-Portland, have also suggested putting some
of the windfall into affordable housing, a prior-
ity they share.
“The more we can do for housing with the
additional resources, we should try,” Kotek said.
But Rayfi eld and some of his fellow Democrats
in the Legislature are leery of any new spending
that would have to be covered in future budgets.
See Forecast, Page A10
