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Wednesday, September 22, 2021
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MyEagleNews.com
School board votes unanimously to keep co-op
By STEVEN MITCHELL
Blue Mountain Eagle
Blue Mountain Eagle/Steven Mitchell
Billy Colson, Prairie City’s athletic
director, principal and teacher, lis-
tens during last week’s Grant School
Board meeting.
JOHN DAY — On Wednesday,
Sept. 15, Grant School District offi -
cials voted unanimously to allow a
cooperative agreement with Prairie
City for baseball in 2022.
The school board had seemed
poised to do away with cooperative
sports agreements altogether after
receiving an Aug. 18 letter from
Grant Union High School’s volley-
ball, basketball, wrestling, track, and
cross country coaches urging them to
end the co-ops amid a fl urry of stu-
dents leaving the district — mainly
to Prairie City.
However, after multiple public
comments in favor of the coopera-
tive agreements, the board reversed
course.
Hayley Pomeroy, the mother
of Cyrus Workman, the lone Prai-
rie City student who plans on play-
ing baseball for Grant Union High
School in 2022, made an impas-
sioned statement to the board via
Zoom.
Pomeroy said she was born and
raised in Grant County and told the
board that her son was born with
congenital heart disease and could
not play football. The cardiologist,
she said, would not clear him to play.
However, she said, Workman was
OK’d by his doctor to play baseball
and basketball.
Without a cooperative agreement,
Pomeroy said, Cyrus would not get
to play baseball.
Pomeroy asked the board if they
would approve a policy that pro-
moted a “gang mentality.”
She said the coaches state in their
letter that the district should only
provide sports at Grant Union for
Prospectors.
“Is it because of geographical
territory?,” Pomeroy asked. “Is it
because Panthers wear orange and
Prospectors wear red?”
Pomeroy asked the board if the
proposal to end cooperative agree-
ments was to improve the board’s
“inability to retain students.”
She also asked if a coopera-
tive agreement was in place for the
softball team. If so, why is one not
in place for the baseball program?
Indeed, the board approved the soft-
ball team’s 2022 agreement.
“Is that not a confl ict with your
student rights and discrimination
policies?” Pomeroy asked the board.
“It’s OK for the girls, but not for the
boys.”
Cyrus’ grandfather Mike Work-
man said rural communities need
cooperative sports agreements to
help give young people opportuni-
ties they wouldn’t have otherwise.
Workman said the only consider-
ation he could see for not co-oping
See Co-op, Page A14
W HERE ARE THE
WORKERS?
Eagle fi le photo
Grant County Health Department
staff ers sort COVID-19 rapid tests last
year during a testing event.
Grant county
offi cials fear
vaccine staffi ng
backlash
By STEVEN MITCHELL
Blue Mountain Eagle
JOHN DAY — With roughly
a month before state COVID-19
vaccine mandates kick in Oct.
18 for some workers in Oregon,
county health and education offi-
cials said the county faces an
uncertain future when it comes
to staffing in some areas in Grant
County.
Grant County officials in health
and education have reached out to
staff ahead of Gov. Kate Brown’s
pending deadline for some worker
classes to get vaccinated or lose
their jobs if they cannot pro-
vide a valid medical or religious
exemption.
Kimberly Lindsay, the coun-
ty’s public health administra-
tor, told the Eagle that through-
out all of Community Counseling
Solutions, which oversees public
health in Grant County and Hep-
pner, just two of their staff of 200
people have said they would not
get the vaccine and will leave the
company after the deadline. One
of those staffers, she said, is from
Grant County.
That number could grow, how-
ever. Lindsay noted that there are
four weeks left before the deadline
and that she has only heard from
75% of her staff so far.
See Vaccine, Page A14
Alex Wittwer/EO Media Group
Restaurateur and business owner Tyler Brown poses for a photo inside Sumpter Junction, one of his restaurants, on Wednesday, Sept. 15, 2021. The restau-
rant has been closed since March 2020 following statewide shutdown orders that shuttered businesses across the state to fi ght the pandemic. Sumpter
Junction has yet to reopen due to a lack of workers.
Manufacturing, hospitality among worst hit industries
By JAYSON JACOBY, SAMANTHA
O’CONNER and ALEX WITTWER
EO Media Group
T
yler Brown’s family owns one restau-
rant in Baker City that hasn’t served a
meal since before the fi rst COVID-19
case was confi rmed in Baker County.
But the Browns’ challenges to
keep enough workers to run their two other
restaurants are so daunting that they can’t begin
to plan the reopening of the closed business.
That’s the Sumpter Junction restaurant, off
Campbell Street near Interstate 84. The Browns
closed the restaurant in March 2020. Inside
rest the memories of customers who once fre-
quented the restaurant, told quietly by a sin-
gle butter knife resting on the edge of a booth
table.
A newsstand is stacked high with Baker
City Herald issues blaring the headline “Coro-
navirus Closures.” They’re dated March 14,
2020. It was three days before Gov. Kate
Brown banned dining inside restaurants. It was
the last paper delivered to Sumpter Junction.
During much of the rest of that year, and
continuing into 2021, the number of customers
at Baker County’s various restaurants was lim-
ited due to the county’s COVID-19 risk level.
Those restrictions meant it wasn’t feasible
to reopen Sumpter Junction, Tyler Brown said.
Risk levels and restaurant limits ended
June 30, but Brown said it remains a struggle
to keep a suffi cient workforce to operate Bar-
ley Brown’s Brew Pub and Tap House, sepa-
rate establishments, both owned by the fami-
ly’s Windmill Enterprises LLC, on Main Street
in downtown Baker City.
In fact, Brown said the situation has wors-
ened in the past month or so since the gov-
ernor required people to wear masks in
most public indoor settings, including
restaurants.
Brown said he has lost a couple employees
who simply refuse to continue working while
required to wear a mask throughout their shift.
“I know it’s frustrating for everyone,” he said.
Wearing masks isn’t the only thing that dis-
courages workers, Brown said.
It’s also stressful for employees to enforce the
mandate with customers, some of whom refuse
to comply.
“It defi nitely wears on (employees),” Brown
said.
In addition, Brown said he recently had four
employees, all of whom are fully vaccinated, test
positive for COVID-19.
Although none had severe symptoms, they
had to miss work for 10 days, which forced a
reduction in his restaurants’ hours.
The surge in COVID cases driven by the
more contagious delta variant has aff ected other
restaurants in Baker City.
Dairy Queen, for instance, posted a sign on
its window stating that the restaurant would be
closed for two weeks, starting Sept. 3, due to
staffi ng shortages resulting from COVID-19.
Dairy Queen is slated to reopen, with regular
hours, on Sept. 18.
Some employers have attributed the work-
force shortage to expanded federal unemploy-
ment payments.
But even though those benefi ts ended in early
September, Brown said he’s not optimistic that
this will result in an infl ux of potential workers.
The scarcity of workers has had an obvious
eff ect on the restaurant sector, with many busi-
nesses, in Baker City and elsewhere, reducing
hours, and in many cases closing altogether on
some days.
Hungry for workers
Among Eastern Oregon counties, Baker
County saw the largest percentage decrease of
workers employed in the leisure and hospital-
ity industry, dropping nearly 17%, or 120 work-
ers, between July 2019 and July 2021. Harney
See Workers, Page A14