A14
NEWS
Blue Mountain Eagle
Wednesday, December 29, 2021
Year
Continued from Page A8
Grant School District
Superintendent Bret Upt-
mor said his district, like oth-
ers around the state, had been
working on a plan to return
to in-person learning in the
fall when the state took deci-
sion-making power away from
local schools. Uptmor said
local education leaders were in
a better position to decide how
to conduct classes safely than
state offi cials in Salem.
Parents railed against the
mandate at an Aug. 3 school
board meeting, with some say-
ing they would pull their kids
out of school if masks were
required. Casey Hallgarth,
superintendent of the Prai-
rie City School District, also
expressed his dismay at the loss
of local control over COVID
safety measures in schools.
The Grant County com-
missioners wrote a letter to the
governor asking her to return
control of masking decisions to
local school districts, although
County Judge Scott Myers also
noted during a County Court
session that the county didn’t
have the power to simply take
that control from the state.
On Aug. 4, the Grant County
Court held its fi rst meeting to
talk about a plan to make a
number of rural Oregon coun-
ties part of Idaho. A county bal-
lot measure that passed with
just over 60% of the vote in
the May election requires the
county commissioners to meet
three times a year “to discuss
whether it is in the best interest
of Grant County to promote the
relocation of the Oregon-Idaho
border.”
In a special election on Aug.
17, a proposed property tax
levy to help fund the John Day
Police Department went down
in fl ames due to low voter turn-
out. The measure actually drew
more yes votes (284) than no
votes (169), but it fell short of
the special election’s double
majority requirement because
fewer than half the city’s regis-
tered voters cast a ballot, so the
result didn’t count.
SEPTEMBER
An eff ort to recall County
Judge Scott Myers fi zzled after
it failed to garner enough peti-
tion signatures to make the bal-
lot. Josh Walker of Seneca fi led
Bennett Hall/Blue Mountain Eagle, File
Didgette McCracken, one of the founding board members of Grant County Cyber Mill, sits in the
nonprofi t’s fi rst location in Seneca on Nov. 19. The Seneca Cyber Mill off ers public access to high-
speed internet service for area residents.
a prospective recall petition
with the Secretary of State’s
Offi ce in June, accusing Myers
of everything from “fi nancial
mismanagement” to “refusal
to collaborate.” The petition
would have needed 578 valid
signatures from registered
Grant County voters to qualify
for the ballot, but no signature
sheets were turned in by the
Sept. 8 deadline.
A push to end cooperative
sports agreements between
the Grant School District and
out-of-district schools came to
naught after the Grant School
Board was deluged by opposi-
tion to the move.
The board had appeared
poised to do away with the
agreements after receiving
an Aug. 18 letter from Grant
Union High School’s vol-
leyball, basketball, wres-
tling, track and cross country
coaches urging them to end the
co-ops amid a fl urry of students
leaving the district, with most
of them going to Prairie City.
But after parents and stu-
dents pushed back with pas-
sionate testimony in support of
sports co-ops, the school board
wound up expanding the pro-
gram, voting unanimously to
allow a cooperative agreement
with Prairie City for baseball in
2022.
The John Day/Canyon City
Parks and Recreation District
announced plans to put a bond
measure on the ballot next year
to help fund construction of a
new aquatic center at the Sev-
enth Street Sports Complex in
John Day. Plans for the $6 mil-
lion project call for a six-lane,
25-yard competitive pool with
an 8,000-square-foot building
to house a lobby, offi ces and
locker rooms.
The city has received a $2
million state grant to go toward
the project, meaning the bond
measure would look to raise
roughly $4 million. District
offi cials say they’re hoping to
have the ballot measure ready
in time for the May election,
but the November election is
also a possibility.
Grant County Commis-
sioner Sam Palmer announced
his campaign to unseat Ore-
gon’s senior senator. Palmer,
in his fi rst term on the Grant
County Court, is seeking the
Republican nomination for the
U.S. Senate seat currently held
by Ron Wyden, which is up for
election next year.
In an interview, Palmer
told the Eagle that, if elected,
he would work closely with
local offi cials and push for
stronger measures to pre-
vent catastrophic wildfi res,
tighter immigration controls,
and more eff ective mental
health and addiction treatment
programs.
OCTOBER
One of the biggest bomb-
shells of the year dropped on
Oct. 12, when the John Day
City Council voted unani-
mously to suspend the city’s
police department.
It wasn’t a complete sur-
prise, of course: The city had
been struggling for years to
fund the department, whose
annual budget is bigger than
the city’s entire property tax
base, and a proposed levy to
help pay for policing failed at
the ballot box in August.
Still, the end came sooner
than expected: The coun-
cil had talked about keep-
ing it afl oat till the end of the
year while it waited to hear
whether the city would receive
a $375,000 federal grant. But
when the grant announcement
was delayed, the council voted
to pull the plug, and the city’s
two remaining police offi cers
stopped taking 911 calls by
Oct. 14.
That put the burden of pro-
viding law enforcement in
John Day squarely on the Grant
County Sheriff ’s Offi ce, which
had just four offi cers to cover
the entire county, and touched
off a tug-of-war between city
and county leaders over law
enforcement funding.
The city proposed a fund
exchange: It would give the
county $300,000 a year for
three years to help pay for
law enforcement in exchange
for an equal amount from the
county road fund to pay for
street improvements in John
Day. To date there has been
no formal response from the
county.
Acting on an ethics com-
plaint fi led by the Blue Moun-
tain Eagle, the Oregon Gov-
ernment Ethics Commission
decided on Oct. 22 to launch an
investigation into whether the
Grant County School Board
broke the law during an execu-
tive session on Aug. 19. (Board
member Kelly Stokes, who did
not participate in the executive
session, was exempted from
the inquiry.)
The newspaper took the
unusual step of fi ling the ethics
complaint after the board can-
celed a public meeting to dis-
cuss requirements to return to
in-person schooling, includ-
ing the governor’s mandate
that staff be vaccinated against
COVID-19, then convened a
hastily called executive session
“to discuss confi dential infor-
mation.” Based on a reporter’s
observation of the proceedings,
the Eagle believed the board far
exceeded the legal basis it cited
for the closed-door session.
State law allows journal-
ists to attend executive ses-
sions, from which mem-
bers of the general public are
excluded, but not to report on
what is said unless the discus-
sion strays from the specifi c
parameters cited by the pub-
lic body to justify the closed-
door session. The ethics panel
has 180 days to complete its
investigation.
The Grant County Con-
servatives held a rally on Oct.
30 at the Grant County Fair-
grounds, where about 100
people gathered listened to
a dozen speakers rail against
all levels of government and
drum up support for conserva-
tive values and political can-
didates. The event served as
a fund-raiser for the group’s
fl edgling political action com-
mittee, GCC-PAC.
Among the speakers were
Paul Sweany, one of GCC-
PAC’s directors; Ethan Kow-
ing, a state trooper from John
Day who was placed on leave
after posting a video from his
patrol car protesting COVID-
19 mask and vaccine man-
dates; Sandie Gilson and Mike
McCarter, two of the leaders
of the Greater Idaho move-
ment; and Alsea School Dis-
trict Superintendent Marc
Thielman, a Republican can-
didate for governor.
NOVEMBER
November brought news of
uncooperative and downright
hostile behavior toward con-
tact tracers working to slow
the spread of COVID-19 in
Grant County. Public Health
Administrator Kimberly Lind-
say and clinic manager Jessica
Winegar discussed the prob-
lem in detail at the Nov. 10
session of the Grant County
Court.
Contact tracers increas-
ingly fi nd themselves the tar-
get of verbal tirades from
people who are deliberately
fl outing pandemic protocols
designed to protect the com-
munity from COVID-19, they
told the commissioners. One
contact tracer has been driven
to quit by the abuse, Lindsay
said, and another avoids going
out in public because of high
hostility levels.
November also brought
word that Dayville had
received enough federal fund-
ing to fi nish work on two
major capital projects. The
U.S. Department of Agricul-
ture Rural Development Pro-
gram awarded the city two
grants totaling $170,000 to
fi nish renovating the Day-
ville Community Hall, a cen-
tury-old structure that resi-
dents have spent years raising
money to repair.
Work on the hall includes
shoring up the roof trusses,
putting on a new roof, install-
ing new electrical wiring,
blowing insulation into the
walls and completely rebuild-
ing a rickety 1950s addition.
USDA Rural develop-
ment also came through with
$79,800 to complete the fund-
raising to build a new fi re hall
for the town’s volunteer fi re
department. The old one had
to be torn down after a fi re
truck backed into it in June
2020, damaging the building
beyond repair.
Both projects should be
fi nished next year.
The county’s fi rst Cyber
Mill opened Nov. 16 inside a
former restaurant in Seneca,
off ering free (at least for now)
access to high-speed internet
service. Fast, aff ordable inter-
net access can be hard to come
by in the town of 165, one of
the more remote communities
in Grant County.
The facility is the brain-
child of the nonprofi t Cyber
Mill Grant County, which
plans to open two more loca-
tions next year in Prairie City
and John Day. The project is
part of a larger push to extend
broadband internet access
throughout the county.
The Grant County Digital
Network Coalition, a govern-
ment consortium that includes
the county and the cities of
John Day and Seneca, is using
a $1.8 million state grant to
support Cyber Mills in its
member cities and help fund
Oregon Telephone Co.’s push
to extend fi ber optic cables
from John Day to other Grant
County communities.
On Nov. 18, the Justice
Department’s Offi ce of Com-
munity Oriented Policing Ser-
vices announced that John
Day had been approved for
a three-year, $375,000 grant
to help pay the salaries of
police offi cers. The only prob-
lem was that the city had sus-
pended its police department
in mid-October.
The news touched off a
debate about whether the city
should accept the grant and
reboot its police department,
even though the money would
not solve the department’s
long-term funding issues,
or seek federal permission
to transfer the money to the
Grant County Sheriff ’s Offi ce,
which has been forced to
assume responsibility for law
enforcement services in John
Day since the police depart-
ment was mothballed.
DECEMBER
Like so many other cher-
ished community traditions,
the Carrie Young Memo-
rial Dinner and Auction was
forced to go virtual in 2020
due to concerns about spread-
ing COVID-19. But, also like
many of those other gather-
ings, it came back in person
in 2021 as restrictions were
eased.
This year’s shindig brought
several hundred people to the
John Day Elks Lodge for a
spaghetti feed and silent auc-
tion to honor Young’s mem-
ory by raising money to pro-
vide Christmas presents and
simple necessities such as
groceries and heating oil for
elderly Grant County resi-
dents. According to prelimi-
nary fi gures, the 2021 edition
brought in just under $50,000,
a new record.
As the year drew to a close,
Grant County recorded its
17th COVID-related death.
The Grant County Health
Department announced that
the most recent fatality was
a 91-year-old man who died
at Blue Mountain Hospital in
John Day on Dec. 4 after con-
tracting the disease.
Grant County continues to
have one of the lowest vacci-
nation rates in Oregon, hov-
ering at around 50% of the
adult population compared to
the statewide average of about
80%.
John Morris, an outspoken
critic of plans to build a new
community swimming pool in
John Day, fi led an appeal of a
conditional use permit for the
project granted by the John
Day Planning Commission.
Morris claims the commis-
sion was biased and prejudi-
cial in voting to grant the per-
mit because he was not given
the same opportunity to pro-
vide testimony as the 15 peo-
ple who spoke in favor of the
proposed aquatic center.
In a recent interview, Mor-
ris told the Eagle he’s still
not sure whether he’s for or
against the new pool, but he
feels the city and the John
Day/Canyon City Parks and
Recreation District “have not
been up front with the public”
about fi nancial details of the
$6 million project.
We appreciate your business & support.
Babette Larson,
Broker, GRI
Office: 541-987-2363
ddwr@ortelco.net
Lori Hickerson,
Principal Broker, GRI
Office: 541-575-2617
ljh@ortelco.net
Sally Knowles,
Broker, GRI
Office: 541-932-4493
sknowles@ortelco.net
www.dukewarnerrealtyofeasternoregon.com
S273143-1
Your professional Real Estate choice in Grant County
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