PREVIEWS: DAYVILLE/MONUMENT FOOTBALL AND VOLLEYBALL | PAGE A7
The
Blue Mountai
Mountain
EA
EAGLE
Grant County’s
’ newspaper since 1868
Wednesday, September 11, 2019
Final Innovation
Gateway plan presented
around the city. Green said
most visitors don’t know the
John Day River even flows
A final concept plan for through John Day. Several
John Day’s Innovation Gate- people warned about sign
way project was presented clutter, and Levi Manitsas
to a joint meeting of the city suggested using a mobile
council, planning commis- phone app to help visitors
sion and two advisory com- find their way around.
mittees Aug. 27.
The Innovation Gateway
Following a tour of the concept plan also includes
former Oregon Pine mill and a new hotel with 60-100
other parts of the project site, rooms to be built just west of
Ken Pirie, an urban planner the yellow sawmill building.
with Walker
During
dis-
cussion about
M a c y ,
overlay zoning
recapped
for the proj-
the project’s
ect area and
history and
height restric-
presented
tions, Weigum
the resulting
expressed
plans.
sharp concerns
Concept
about
aes-
thetics being
plan
by
The three
The Eagle/Richard Hanners impacted
main Inno- John Day City Councilor such a large
vation Gate- Gregg Haberly, left, and building.
way compo- city planning commissioner
We i g u m
nents were Tim Unterwegner at the city also objected
restoration council meeting on Aug. 27. when Green
of the John
noted
that
Day River,
larger setbacks
an integrated parks plan and would be needed along the
extending Seventh Street river if the city sells lots in
from Bridge Street to Patter- the project area. She noted
son Bridge Road, Pirie said. that she served on the city
Inter-Fluve of Hood council when it voted to pur-
River came up with the idea chase the Oregon Pine mill
of modifying the channel- site and she believed the
ized John Day River where council intended to use the
it ran through historic gold site for public land.
mine dredge tailings into a
She said she was strongly
meandering stream, Pirie opposed to zoning the proj-
ect site so it could be sold
said.
The Seventh Street exten- in pieces. Green responded
sion would serve as an emer- that protecting the land with
gency route, an expansion of some type of conserva-
the city’s street grid and as tion measure could be very
a parkway for recreational expensive.
purposes, he said. The city
Social benefits
applied for about $15 mil-
lion in federal grant funding
Several committee mem-
to finance the Seventh Street bers raised concerns about
extension and other road whether the Innovation
projects. City Manager Nick Gateway project benefited
Green said the city could everyone in the city equally.
Attendee Rob Raschio
learn about the grant award
noted that the city’s housing
in five to six months.
Green suggested an arch- crisis was especially hard
way be placed over Highway on lower income working
26 near Patterson Bridge families. The city needed
Road but noted the Oregon improved housing stock and
Department of Transporta- more affordable housing,
tion generally doesn’t sup- he said, and a conversation
port permanent structures about this issue needed to be
over state highways. A ban- started.
ner strung across the road-
Weigum agreed, not-
way was an alternative, he ing that the project focused
said.
on specific demographics
Attendee Lisa Weigum and tourism. She approved
noted that banners often of supporting the tourism
get weathered and begin to industry, but she didn’t want
look tacky. Following addi- to see some city residents
tional comments on the idea, left behind.
Mayor Ron Lundbom sug-
Councilor Gregg Haberly
gested asking members of said focus should be turned
the local artist community on the city’s drug prob-
lem. He called for enforc-
for ideas.
Pirie said small wayfar- ing the laws and ending
ing signs would be needed free handouts. He also sug-
gested crime was more com-
mon in the city’s high-den-
sity, low-income housing
projects.
Lundbom
suggested
benefits from the Innova-
tion Gateway project would
trickle down to the rest of
the city. Residents in mobile
home parks and low income
apartment complexes would
eventually be able to buy
their own homes, he said.
Raschio agreed that a sys-
temic drug problem existed
in John Day, but many resi-
dents who need better hous-
ing are not criminals. If the
city wants to create a sus-
tainable community, lower
income residents need to be
included.
Matt Hastie, a project
manager with Angelo Plan-
ning Group who spoke on
By Richard Hanners
Blue Mountain Eagle
See Plan, Page A16
151st Year • No. 37 • 16 Pages • $1.50
MyEagleNews.com
SUICIDE PREVENTION
GUN OWNERS AND
MENTAL HEALTH
PROFESSIONALS
WORKING
TOGETHER
A culturally sensitive
way to talk about suicide
By Carol Cruzan Morton
For the Bend Bulletin
uicide rates are rising, and the role of guns
is stark, unavoidable and contentious. So it
may be remarkable that some health profes-
sionals have taken the unusual step of part-
nering with gun owners in firearm-friendly
strategies for saving lives.
In Central Oregon, researchers worked with a fam-
ily doctor and rural firearm owners to develop a suicide
prevention message that respects the cultural values and
rights of gun owners.
The resulting brochure they developed and tested
evokes national patriotism, with a bald eagle against a
U.S. Constitution and flag.
“We believe firearms are an American way of life —
a constitutional right and a necessity in order to protect
ourselves and our families,” says the text. “And with this
RIGHT to bear arms comes RESPONSIBILITY.”
The Oregon pamphlet lists warning signs of suicide
and offers advice for friends and family to take action to
protect their loved ones who are going through a “rough
patch.” The language, attitudes and action steps mimic
the informal customs among gun owners, the research-
ers learned.
“One of the things we discovered was that firearm
owners were having conversations about suicide pre-
vention,” said Elizabeth Marino, an anthropologist
at Oregon State University-Cascades in Bend, who
designed the studies. “All this time, this work was
going on outside of the knowledge and collaboration
with public health.”
“They have people they’re worried about,” added
Susan Keys, who retired from OSU-Cascades and is
a public health program development consultant who
helped lead the project.
“All we’re after is keeping people safe,” said Laura
Pennavaria, a family doctor and chief medical officer of
St. Charles Health System in Bend who helped develop
the materials.
The Bend team is rolling out an online training course
for Oregon doctors and other health care professionals
that teaches health care professionals how to identify sui-
cidal behavior. Similar efforts have emerged in states
with high and rising suicide rates across the country, pri-
marily as local responses to suicides. The Oregon pro-
gram arose independently to help local doctors talk to
patients at risk of suicide in rural communities.
Public health professionals in locations across the
country have partnered with gun owners to develop
safety training and suicide prevention messages targeted
to gun shops, shooting ranges and citizens with con-
cealed carry permits.
The partnerships are uneasy alliances between peo-
ple who disagree about solutions to gun violence, such
as legislation. However, those same people have a com-
mon goal: reduce suicides by reducing access to guns. In
the United States, two out of every three deaths by fire-
arm are suicide.
Involving firearms owners in developing suicide pre-
vention messages and training may be flying largely
under the radar, but proponents of the strategy dream of
a day when the idea of friends keeping friends at risk of
suicide away from guns has the same cultural resonance
as friends not letting friends drive drunk.
For now, the Bend team knows its gun safety message
sits well with rural Oregon gun owners.
S
BREAKING THE SILENCE
In April, newsrooms across the state launched an unprec-
edented collaboration to put a spotlight death by suicide.
The goal was to not only highlight a problem that
claimed the lives of more than 800 people last year, but
also examine research into how prevention can and does
work and offer our readers, listeners and viewers resourc-
es to help if they — or those they know — are in crisis.
This September, during National
Suicide Prevention Month, we
are following up with more sto-
ries, as part of our “Breaking the
Silence” media initiative.
This collaborative reporting
project stemmed from an earlier
conversation about media cov-
erage of suicide, facilitated by
Lines for Life, a regional nonprof-
it focused on suicide prevention.
The journalism of each newsroom has been independent,
guided by local editors and best suited for their local
communities.
Our hope, however, is that by working collaboratively
and promoting one another’s work, this group effort will
allow us to shine a brighter light on this problem.
Pennavaria became involved when patients began
talking to her about their suicidal thoughts after a student
shot himself at Bend High School. She was struck by a
study that reported 64% of people who die by suicide had
contact with their primary care provider within a year of
death and 45% had contact within one month. The study
included Oregonians.
Most people who kill themselves with firearms have
no major suicide risk factors in their medical records,
such as mental health issues, substance abuse, or previ-
ous suicide attempts, found postdoctoral researcher Jen-
nifer Boggs and her colleagues at the Institute for Health
Research at Kaiser Permanente Colorado in Aurora.
Even for people at risk of suicide or who had
attempted suicide in the past month, only one-third had
notes in their medical records of firearm discussions with
patients, Boggs and her colleagues found in a follow-up
study.
Standard public health approaches to gun safety may
backfire and alienate the people they intend to help.
See Suicide, Page A16
ONLINE RESOURCES
• Counseling Access to Lethal Means
(CALM) training: sprc.org/resourc-
es-programs/calm-counseling-ac-
cess-lethal-means
• American Foundation for Suicide
Prevention and National Shoot-
ing Sports Foundation’s Suicide
Prevention Toolkit: nssf.org/safety/
suicide-prevention-toolkit
• Harvard University’s Means
Matter program: hsph.harvard.edu/
means-matter
• Central Oregon Suicide Prevention
brochure: oregonfirearmsafety.org
• Utah Suicide Prevention Co-
alition PSA-Gun Range: vimeo.
com/175761640