A10
NEWS
Blue Mountain Eagle
Wednesday, May 22, 2019
Drill
Continued from Page A1
Communities Irene Jerome.
Other assistance came
from Interagency Fire Dis-
patch, Department of For-
estry, Forest Service, Bureau
of Land Management, Ore-
gon Office of State Fire
Marshal and Oregon Emer-
gency Management.
Additionally,
Blue
Mountain
Hospital
Home Health and Hos-
pice, Grant Soil and
Water Conservation Dis-
trict and Long Creek Fire
Department lent a hand.
“It was great to have
four SAR rigs take part
in the exercise and joined
by Sgt. Dan Komning,
USFS John Soules and
BLM Ranger Jeff Weis,”
Dobler said. “It is good
Eagle file photo
The John Day City Council will apply for a grant to pay
for professional planning assistance to determine the
future of public swimming pool in Grant County.
Contributed photo
Staff and volunteers from various emergency management services agencies gather for a
‘hot wash’ evaluation after the Galena fire evacuation exercise.
so see the list of partici-
pants ... working together
to make our communities
safer
and our team
of
emergency
responders.”
first
Improvements
Continued from Page A1
“The categories of missions SAR
has conducted and will likely conduct
will require more specialized training
and equipment,” he told the court.
Dobler said he expected to see more
recreational visitors in Grant County as
the Central Oregon areas have become
more populated. He also noted that his
SAR team spent three months planning
and preparing for the May 11 evacua-
tion exercise around Galena.
The SAR team responded to numer-
ous flooding threats in April, including
three days for Canyon Creek, one day
in Mitchell and one day in Mt. Vernon.
A recent mission was providing mutual
aid for a lost hiker in the Black Canyon
Wilderness on April 20.
The team also presented informa-
tion to students at Humbolt Elementary
in May.
Dobler listed improvements to
the SAR program since he took over.
These included monthly meetings with
detailed agendas, monthly trainings
focused on basic SAR skills, increased
communications between SAR team
members, closer coordination with
various partners such as air search and
amateur radio operators, better commu-
nication with 911 dispatch, increased
SAR recruitment and new efforts to
find revenue sources, such as fundrais-
ers and grants.
Equipment needs cited by Dobler
include a four-by-four off-road
Forecast
Continued from Page A1
“You
use
one-time
money for one-time pur-
poses,” Rayfield said.
Sen. Chuck Riley, D-Hill-
sboro, who sits on the Sen-
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Vote
Continued from Page A1
The county court would be the governing body of
a county service district, Green said. The governing
body would begin by deciding which facilities would
be constructed, maintained and operated, and how the
construction, maintenance and operation would be
financed.
Financing could be accomplished by a variety of
methods, including assessments on property in the ser-
vice district, sale of bonds, ad valorem taxes, a local
option tax or any combination of these methods, Green
said.
The planning grant would be used to pay the non-
profit Special Districts Association of Oregon Advisory
Services LLC to help guide the city through the pro-
cess, Green said.
If the city’s grant application is unsuccessful, the city
could continue the process on its own, Green said. The
city has already spent money on consultants and acquir-
ing new parkland as part of the overall pool project, he
said.
Pool costs
The Eagle/Angel Carpenter
Grant County Search and Rescue volunteer Kim Kell shares tips with elementary
students on how to stay safe if they become lost.
wheeled or tracked vehicle, off-trail
snowmobiles, a lightweight litter for
steep slopes, a lightweight rescue sled
for snow, rope rescue equipment, hand-
held radios, iPads for mapping or mis-
sion planning and additional medical
gear, including an automatic external
defibrillator. He noted that Forest Ser-
vice and Bureau of Land Management
personnel use iPads for maps.
Dobler told the court he’s been
ate Finance and Revenue
Committee, responded cau-
tiously to Brown’s wish list.
“Those are all good
things, and yeah, OK, sure,
we can always use money
in those places,” Riley said.
“But I’m a bit of a real-
ist and understand we’re
going to have that (eco-
nomic) downturn. We need
to make sure that we have
everything covered for that
downturn.”
Riley and his committee
chairman, Sen. Mark Hass,
D-Beaverton, want to put as
much as they can into the
state’s reserves.
“In
public
finance,
when you have a tempo-
rary phenomenon — a his-
toric windfall — the posi-
tion is you sock it away,”
Hass said after reviewing
Wednesday’s report.
Oregon has run up about
$27 billion in PERS debt.
Pension costs are growing
as more public employees
looking for revenue sources that don’t
require a match from the county, such
as fundraisers and grants. The Oregon
Community Foundation can provide
grants up to $15,000, and grants from
the Firehouse Subs Foundation range
from $15,000 to $25,000, large enough
to cover the cost of the four-by-four
vehicle, Dobler said. He said he also is
looking at a USDA Rural Development
grant that could require a match.
reach retirement age. While
there’s no way for the state
to erase its debt with a sin-
gle move, the Legislature
could put some of the over-
age toward paying it down.
It’s “very likely” the
budget will include extra
money for the PERS fund
to help pay down the debt,
Kotek said Friday. That
would be an appropriate use
of the windfall, Hass and
Rayfield agreed.
Brown and Kotek also
floated a less likely idea:
diverting money from the
personal income tax kicker
itself.
At $1.4 billion, next
year’s kicker would be the
largest in state history.
Kotek has proposed
spending about half of it on
transportation initiatives,
including grants to replace
or refit old diesel engines
to reduce pollution, seis-
mic upgrades to the Inter-
state 205 bridge between
Oregon City and West Linn,
and a new program to build
electric vehicle charging
stations and other infra-
structure for low-emission
vehicles.
Brown hasn’t embraced
Kotek’s kicker proposal,
House Bill 3440. She said
Thursday that if the kicker
were diverted, it should be
for something that benefits
the entire state.
The Legislature usu-
ally leaves the kicker alone.
Oregon only cashes the
rebate out to taxpayers in
good economic times, when
tax collections over a two-
year period are at least 2%
higher than economists
expect.
Brown said she’d sup-
port using kicker money to
pay down more of the PERS
debt, if the Legislature can
cobble together a plan that
has bipartisan support.
“I think that is good fiscal
sense,” said Brown.
We are forever grateful for
those who have risked their
lives to protect our freedoms
Negotiations between the city of John Day and the
Oregon Parks and Recreation Department for the sale of
city park land adjacent to the Kam Wah Chung Historic
Site and Gleason Pool have not concluded.
Sale of the land would support the state’s plans to
build a world-class interpretive center at the historic
site. The council has recognized in the past that the new
interpretive center would boost the local tourism econ-
omy, but it also could mean closing the Gleason Pool
for good at the end of the 2020 season.
The Gleason Pool is 61 years old and the second old-
est public pool in Oregon. During a public informa-
tional meeting hosted by the John Day swim team April
2, John Day Councilor Dave Holland, the city’s former
public works director, addressed whether the pool could
be rehabbed economically.
Supply and drain pipes were likely steel or galva-
nized steel, he said, with a typical lifetime of 10-30
years. To replace rusted-out pipes, concrete decking,
pool buildings and even the pool bottom would need to
be demolished, he said.
Estimated costs for a replacement pool were pro-
vided at the April 2 meeting. The target figures are $4.5
million for construction of a new six-lane, 25-meter
outdoor pool with related buildings and about $100,000
per year for operation, maintenance and a future pool
replacement fund.
Election options
One option raised in the past as a way to increase
annual revenue to meet the target operating costs was
to expand the current John Day-Canyon City Parks &
Recreation District to include Mt. Vernon and Prairie
City. Board member Lisa Weigum, however, said at the
April 2 meeting that the Parks & Rec board was defi-
nitely opposed to that idea.
If the city was forced to take over the pool’s opera-
tion when the Parks & Rec contract ends in 2020, the
city might be forced to consider a local option levy in
order to meet the pool’s annual costs, Green said at the
April 2 meeting.
That would place an unfair burden on John Day tax-
payers, Mayor Ron Lundbom noted at the time. People
who don’t live in the city should pay higher pool fees to
make it fair, but that might deter outside-district users
from coming to the pool.
Green suggested to the city council May 14 that cre-
ating a service district including properties within 15
miles of the pool may be necessary to provide sufficient
annual revenue for a public pool. The planning grant
would support a careful evaluation of that option.
The best approach for the city is to put all the ele-
ments together, from master plan to financing mecha-
nisms, and present the package to the voters possibly as
soon as next spring, Green said. It’s smarter for the city
to take its time developing a pool plan rather than rush
something for this fall’s election, he said.
Councilor Paul Smith agreed, saying this was a pro-
fessional approach. Lundbom also agreed, noting that
if the city does all it can to keep a public pool in Grant
County and the voters turn down the service district and
construction bond, then at least the city had done its job.
120 E Main St.
John Day
541-575-0629
www.lensdrug.com
119347
Community Connection invites you
to Celebrate Older Americans Month
Monday - Thursday
7am- 6pm
Friday 8am - 5pm
Develop a
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Visit the John Day, Prairie City, or
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Apppointments
available
541-523-6377
541-963-6577
541-573-6377
541-576-2160