LADY PROS BOUNCE BACK, SWEEP STANFIELD | PAGE A9
Wednesday, March 10, 2021
153nd Year • No. 10 • 16 Pages • $1.50
MyEagleNews.com
The Eagle/Steven Mitchell
The Moderna COVID-19 vaccine.
A shot in the arm
Grant County encouraging people
to join COVID-19 vaccine waitlist
By Steven Mitchell
Blue Mountain Eagle
The Eagle/Rudy Diaz
Jim Spell takes a box of pears March 4 at the Grant County Food Bank.
DELIVERING HOPE
Request for peanut butter leads to 15,000
pounds of food for Grant County Food Bank
By Rudy Diaz
Blue Mountain Eagle
A
simple request for peanut
butter turned into 15,000
pounds of food for the Grant
County Food Bank.
Grant County resident
George Sintay said peanut butter got
expensive, and the food bank was unable
to obtain the popular item from their pro-
vider. He knew, however, that his church,
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints, made their own peanut butter in
Texas.
He made a request to George Chad-
wick of La Grande, who is the local
leader of the church in Northeast Ore-
gon, and Chadwick secured a donation
from the church to the Northeast Oregon
Regional Food Bank.
Chadwick found the food bank was
in need of a boost and helped get an
entire shipment of food. The shipment
was delivered to the Northeast Oregon
Regional Food Bank to boost supplies
throughout the region.
Chadwick said his role in the large
donation was a minor one.
“The Stake (church leadership)
The Eagle/Rudy Diaz
George Sintay, left, and Jim Spell begin to unload 15,000 pounds of food delivered to
the Grant County Food Bank on March 4.
decided that the John Day Food Bank
would get 40% of the 38,000 pounds of
food,” Sintay said. “They said when the
truck comes it would come with more
than just peanut butter. It would come
with commodities that would be useful
anywhere, but the neat thing about the
peanut butter is that they sent strawberry
jam with it.”
Sintay rode along March 4 with John
Day Mayor Ron Lundbom, who donates
his time and resources to pick up the food
monthly for the food bank, and they came
back with 15,000 pounds of food.
“I was really pleased at the amount
of food we got, and President Chadwick
said he was dumbfounded at the amount
of food the region received,” Sintay said.
As the state’s supply
of the COVID-19 vaccine
increases, county health
officials anticipate receiv-
ing between 200 and 400
doses for the next couple
of weeks.
Kimberly Lindsay, the
county’s public health
administrator, said those
65 and older on the coun-
ty’s vaccine waitlist
received shots recently.
Lindsay said the Oregon
Health Authority encour-
aged the health depart-
ment to formally reach
out to people in groups six
and seven of Phase 1b of
distribution.
Group six consists of
adults between 45 and 64,
with underlying health
conditions, such as diabe-
tes, heart disease, obesity
and cancer.
The
group
also
includes seafood, agricul-
tural, migrant farm and
food processing work-
ers. OHA also lists wild-
land firefighters, those
impacted by wildfire and
seniors in low-income,
group and independent
living situations, as well
as anyone experiencing
homelessness, according
to OHA’s website.
Group seven, referred
to as frontline workers,
are defined by the Cen-
ters for Disease Control as
grocery, retail, restaurant
workers, kitchen staff,
bartenders, postal work-
ers, bus drivers and other
workers who are in fre-
quent contact with others.
Lindsay encouraged
anyone interested in the
vaccine to get on the wait-
list, but especially people
in groups six and seven.
‘False sense of safety’
After the county saw
an uptick in COVID-19
after a two-week lull in
Dr. Bailey
answers
questions
about vaccines
By Steven Mitchell
Blue Mountain Eagle
Grant County’s health
officer, and a longtime
physician at Strawberry
Urgent Care, Dr. Zach
Bailey
spoke to
the Eagle
Thurs-
day
to
talk about
s o m e
c o m -
mon con-
Dr. Zach
cerns and
Bailey
questions
about COVID-19 vac-
cines. This interview has
been edited for clarity and
space.
How do vaccines
work, and why are they
important?
The concept of vacci-
nation is that, when some-
one is exposed to a por-
tion of the virus, their
immune system recog-
nizes a foreign memory
of that virus. It can some-
times kill it off, some-
times even before they
become symptomatic.
Why should someone
who had the coronavirus
get vaccinated?
The vaccine has the
potential to give you
immunity in a way that
your body has not seen
before. And so, getting
the vaccine further pro-
tects you from catching
the virus a second time. It
is by no means a guaran-
tee, but it is an easy price
to pay when you consider
the pros and cons and the
risks and benefits.
Analogous to chick-
enpox, later on down
See Q&A, Page A16
See Food, Page A16
See Vaccine, Page A16
Oregon counties oppose new timber tax despite revenue potential
New severance tax
would amount to $25
per thousand board-
feet of timber, based
on current prices
By Mateusz Perkowski
EO Media Group
Oregon’s county govern-
ments are opposing a pro-
posed timber severance tax
due to its economic impacts
even though they’d stand to
get money under the proposal.
Lawmakers are consider-
ing re-imposing a 5% sever-
ance tax on the value of har-
vested timber to replace the
existing forest products privi-
lege tax, which is currently 90
Contributed photo/U.S. Forest Service
Logs are loaded onto trucks after a thinning operation. Oregon
counties oppose a new severance tax on timber despite the po-
tential to gain revenue.
cents per thousand board-feet.
Legislative analysts hav-
en’t yet calculated the finan-
cial impacts of House Bill
2379, which would impose
the severance tax, but it’s
expected to steeply increase
revenues and taxes on logs.
Based on current log val-
ues, the new severance tax
would amount to $25 per
thousand board-feet of timber,
compared to the current tax of
about $4 per thousand board-
feet — more than a six-fold
increase, said Roger Beyer,
lobbyist for the Oregon Small
Woodlands Association.
The Association of Oregon
Counties has come out against
HB 2379, despite the poten-
tial for counties to receive
25% of the new tax revenues
for wildfire and emergency
preparedness.
Though county govern-
ments require tax dollars to
provide crucial services, the
need for revenues must be bal-
anced against the economic
prosperity of their communi-
ties, according to AOC.
Rural areas have already
suffered from a downturn in
tourism and hospitality due
to the coronavirus pandemic,
the group said in submitted
testimony.
Meanwhile, the timber
industry is adjusting to Ore-
gon’s new corporate activity
tax and is preparing for stricter
regulations under a pending
agreement with environmental
groups and a state habitat con-
servation plan for protected
species, according to AOC.
“As a result, the last thing
our local governments need is
for the state legislature to pass
any new taxes on an indus-
try that can continue to oper-
ate and provide much-needed
family wage jobs with benefits
to their residents during these
difficult economic times,” the
group said.
Recent hearings on the
proposed timber tax overhaul
were largely dominated by
See Timber, Page A16