A4
NEWS
Blue Mountain Eagle
Monument
School reopens
By Rudy Diaz
Blue Mountain Eagle
Doors at Monument School Dis-
trict reopened Monday.
The district worked closely with
the Grant County Health Depart-
ment to determine that students
could return to on-site learning after
two weeks of distance learning.
“Being able to resume in-person
instruction is very
exciting,”
said
Monument Super-
intendent Laura
Thomas. “None of
us went into edu-
cation to sit behind
computer screens
Laura Thomas
or instruct students
over the phone.
We all missed the energy and excite-
ment the students bring to the atmo-
sphere of the school.”
Thomas said she and the Grant
County Health Department looked
at the case counts in the community
when making the decision to reopen.
“While we wanted the students
back in the school as soon as pos-
sible, we didn’t want to do it at the
health risk of students, families,
staff or the community,” Thomas
said.
Thomas said, when the dis-
trict needed to transition to dis-
tance learning, they took plans they
already had, made a few adjust-
ments and transitioned into a dis-
tance learning model the next day.
She said the transition was smooth
and the whole process seemed to
work great for students, families and
staff members alike.
“I want to thank the students,
families and staff for their dedica-
tion to our students’ education,”
Thomas said. “Without these three
groups working together, our dis-
tance learning model would not
have worked as well as it did. With-
out the continued partnership from
families, staff,and the community,
we could not do all we do for the
students.”
Wednesday, January 27, 2021
Grant County to get repeater towers
each year for the next seven years
By Steven Mitchell
Blue Mountain Eagle
Grant County’s Office of Emer-
gency Management tapped funding to
erect a new radio repeater tower each
year for the next seven years.
Paul Gray, the county’s emergency
manager, said the funding would
come from Secure Rural Schools Title
III, which ensures funding for wild-
fire protection, firefighting and edu-
cation. Gray said additional funding
would come from the state’s Home-
land Security grant program. He said
Homeland Security grant amounts
vary in proportion to population.
Gray said Long Creek, which had a
tower go down, will be the first city in
the county to get one. He said the city
had their tower go down a couple of
Eagle file photo
Paul Gray, Grant County emergency manager.
months ago, and they were able to get
it back up and running temporarily.
He said the total cost for the
repeater in Long Creek will be
roughly $50,000.
He said the repeaters should be
operational for the next 20 to 50
years.
“Communications is a priority
in public safety,” he said. “No mat-
ter if you’re in a city like Portland,
or in a frontier community. I think
it’s a little worse for us because you
have many areas that are not neces-
sarily publicly owned in a frontier
community.”
He said the towers would be
managed under Emergency Man-
agement instead of individual agen-
cies. He said fire, law enforcement
and other agencies would be using
the towers, making sense to have the
repeaters under one contract.
Currently, he said, the county has
two law enforcement repeater tow-
ers, but six or seven sites that need
one.
John Day updates rates for the new year
By Rudy Diaz
Blue Mountain Eagle
John Day’s water, sewer
and system development
charge rates were updated in
the first John Day City Coun-
cil meeting of the new year.
The John Day City Coun-
cil passed several resolutions
on Jan. 12 that raised each
rate by different amounts.
The base monthly water rate
was increased by $1 while the
monthly sewer rate was raised
$12.
The total 2021 system
development charges for new
construction went up $87.
John Day City Manager Nick
Green said the 2021 rates
were increased by the rate of
inflation, which was contem-
plated when the ordinance
was adopted for SDC’s in
2019. The increase also con-
The Eagle/Rudy Diaz
The John Day City Council discusses sewer rates Jan. 12.
siders the additional load
placed on the system by new
developments.
“This increase is intended
to reflect our increase in the
cost of materials used to per-
form system expansion and
reimburse estimated expendi-
tures to our utility accounts,”
states the agenda for the
meeting.
Green said most residents
will not pay this because this
will apply for commercial
developments, which tend to
be less price sensitive, and
people connecting from out-
side the city limits to either
water or sewer systems.
The sewer and water rates
have both steadily increased
each year by a dollar for
several years, but this year,
the sewer rate took a bigger
leap to help the city qualify
for additional financial sup-
port from the United States
Department of Agriculture for
the new wastewater treatment
plant.
In October, Green said the
increase in rates will allow
the USDA to consolidate the
city’s higher-interest debt, the
loans from the property pur-
chase and bridge loans for the
rest of the construction into a
40-year-loan with a 1% inter-
est rate.
“If we don’t do this, then
the financing that we already
negotiated would be returned
and work will stop,” Green
said on Jan. 12.
The
increase
was
approved by the Budget
Committee in May, but sev-
eral council members on Jan.
12 expressed concerns that
the increase feels sudden.
John Day Councilor Paul
Smith said the conversation
has been ongoing for the last
10 years as the rate slowly
increased.
Mayor Ron Lundbom said
now that there is a better idea
as to the dollar figure for the
project, which happened last
year, they know how much to
raise the rates.
“We have been trying to
do it slowly, and if the treat-
ment plant process were two
more years down the road,
you’d be looking at half that
jump right now,” Councillor
Dave Holland said.
The city council also dis-
cussed a resolution to update
land use, development per-
mit and approval fees in John
Day, which were last updated
in 2005. The discussion will
be brought back in a future
council meeting.
“I don’t hear a lot of com-
plaints about the fee structure,
and we’re not proposing big
increases either,” Green said.
“I just want to talk through it
and talk the pros and cons.”
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