A8
NEWS
Blue Mountain Eagle
Wednesday, December 29, 2021
2021
Continued from Page A7
George Chadwick, leader
of the Mormon Church’s oper-
ations in Northeast Oregon,
found that Grant County’s food
bank was in need of a boost
and helped get the county’s
donation.
The state agreed to set-
tle a Grant County-based law-
suit aimed at halting corona-
virus relief money for Black
Oregonians.
Great Northern Resources,
a John Day logging company
that listed Tad Houpt and Grant
County Commissioner Sam
Palmer as agents, fi led a law-
suit alleging race-based dis-
crimination after being denied
funding from the coronavirus
relief fund set up to help Black-
owned businesses.
Under the settlement terms,
Great Northern received
$45,000, plus up to $186,000
in fees for its attorneys.
Palmer told the Eagle in
December of 2020 that he
was not involved in the law-
suit, while Houpt declined to
comment.
APRIL
State
health
offi cials
reported that three COVID-
19-related deaths were linked
to an outbreak at a Prairie City
nursing home, Blue Mountain
Care Center.
Courtesy of Opsis Architecture
This conceptual drawing shows what the proposed aquatic center at the Seventh Street Sports
Complex might look like.
Oregon Health Authority’s
data showed that 31 cases were
associated with the outbreak.
The county’s public health
administrator, Kimberly Lind-
say, noted that the total number
of cases and deaths in the out-
break included some involving
people outside the facility.
Rebekah Rand, Blue Moun-
tain Health District’s direc-
tor of emergency services, and
Lori Lane, health information
manager, said there was no
way to determine how the virus
entered the care center.
Amid reports that care cen-
ter employees had fl outed
coronavirus guidelines, Derek
Daly, the CEO of BMHD, told
the Eagle that he hoped staff
members were following them
but could not mandate what
they do off the clock.
As COVID cases continued
to soar, the Centers for Dis-
ease Control and Prevention
reported that Grant County had
the highest rate of infections
per capita in Oregon and the
worst vaccination rate in the
state. The county’s infection
rate was 625 per 100,000 peo-
ple, while the vaccination rate
was 17.4%.
Later in the month, the
county got some excellent
news when Monument grad-
uate Skye Fitzgerald, a fi lm-
maker, earned his second
Oscar nomination for his latest
documentary, “Hunger Ward.”
To end the month, the Ore-
gon Department of Fish and
Wildlife reported a 9.5%
increase in wolves statewide,
with 10 in Grant County, up
from seven the previous year.
John Day ODFW district
biologist Ryan Torland told
the Eagle that the agency did
not believe that this was the
total number of wolves in the
county. Instead, it was what
they considered a minimum
population.
MAY
Tensions
fl ared
over
COVID-19 — and so did mis-
information. After Gov. Kate
Brown’s executive orders des-
ignating an “extreme risk”
and banning indoor dining
at restaurants in 15 counties,
including Grant, to slow a
spike in COVID-19 infections,
several residents urged Grant
County leaders to publicly pro-
claim the county would not
comply with the restrictions.
Despite echoing many of
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AUGUST
Local control emerged as a
major issue for Grant County
residents in August after Gov.
Kate Brown reversed course
on her June 30 executive order
handing over public health
decisions to counties amid a
resurgence of COVID-19.
As the rapidly spreading
delta variant sent COVID case
counts soaring, the governor
issued a fl urry of new execu-
tive orders mandating masks in
K-12 schools, inside state build-
ings and, fi nally, in all public
indoor spaces in the state. Those
moves quickly drew fi re from
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JULY
Grant County entered July
in the grip of one of the worst
droughts on record. The dry
conditions prompted Gov.
Kate Brown to issue an emer-
gency drought declaration.
According to the National
Integrated Drought Informa-
tion System, it was the dri-
est year in 127 years, with
2 to 2½ inches less rain the
average.
Nearly two-thirds of the
county at that point was expe-
riencing extreme drought
conditions. Pastures were
brown and barren, hay yields
were low, and producers were
selling off cattle to avoid the
high cost of supplemental
feed and forage.
Shaun Robertson, pres-
ident of the Grant County
Farm Bureau, told the Eagle
that every rancher he talked
to told him conditions were
the worst they’d ever seen.
On July 13, the John Day
City Council voted unani-
mously to overturn the city’s
ban on retail marijuana sales.
The repeal paved the way for
more grow sites and dispen-
saries in town, but there are
still restrictions on where
such operations can go. A city
ordinance prohibits a dispen-
sary or grow site within 1,000
feet of an educational facility,
library, park, youth facility or
other dispensary.
By year’s end there still
were no dispensaries oper-
ating within the city limits,
although two cannabis retail-
ers — Rocky Mountain Dis-
pensary and Burnt River
Farms — had announced
plans to set up shop in town.
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in June and charged with
20 new sex-related charges
stemming from incidents that
occurred between 2015 and
2020.
Brogan McKrola, 22,
faces a lengthy prison term
if convicted on all of the new
Measure 11 charges, which
carry a minimum sentence
of at least six years with no
possibility for any sentence
reduction.
In November, McKrola’s
plea hearing was rescheduled
to Jan. 24.
Roughly 1,500 people
turned out to commemo-
rate the 100th year of Grant
County’s ‘62 Days Celebra-
tion, marking the discovery
of gold in Canyon Creek in
1862.
Colby Farrell of the Whis-
key Gulch Gang, which orga-
nizes the event, said at the
time that it looked like it
would be the county’s fi rst
social gathering with eased
COVID restrictions.
“This is really important
that it could be the kickoff
event in getting back to nor-
mal,” he said. “It’s a chance
to get together fi nally after
all this time and get back to
being a community.”
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N
E
the valid opinions expressed in
a letter signed by County Court
members that went to the gov-
ernor, many of the arguments
made in the county relied on
misinformation.
County
Commissioner
Sam Palmer incorrectly cited a
Stanford University study stat-
ing masks were detrimental to
long-term health.
However, according to
Stanford’s senior manager of
media relations, Lisa Kim, the
study’s author, Baruch Vain-
shelboim, had no affi liation
with the university when the
journal Medical Hypothesis
published the article.
“Stanford
Medicine
strongly supports the use of
face masks to control the
spread of COVID-19,” she
said.
She said Vainshelboim was
a one-term, one-year visiting
scholar in 2016 for “matters
unrelated” to the 2020 article
about face masks.
Palmer, a registered nurse,
said the study looked like oth-
ers he sees in medical journals
he reads to stay current with
changes in medicine.
“Maybe I should have done
a little more homework,” he
said. “But I’ll own what I did.”
Palmer issued an apology
to Myers, Hamsher and Grant
County’s residents for quoting
the debunked study.
Still, as a “health care
advocate,” Palmer said he
does not believe masks are the
answer to curbing the spread
of COVID-19.
Dr. Jeremy Kamil, an asso-
ciate professor of microbi-
ology and immunology at
the Louisiana State Univer-
sity Health Sciences Cen-
ter, disagreed with Palmer’s
assertion.
“The preponderance of
public health data is over-
whelmingly in favor of how
effi cacious masks are at pre-
venting the spread of fl u and
other respiratory viruses,” he
said.
Two hundred people
attended a town hall at the
Grant County Fairgrounds on
May 12 to express their frus-
trations with statewide lock-
down measures to mitigate the
spread of COVID-19.
Dubbed a “nonpartisan
eff ort,” the event organiz-
ers stated in a mailer their
goal was to let the county’s
elected offi cials know where
the community stood on Gov.
Kate Brown’s COVID-19
mandates.
Almost unanimously, the
crowd voted for Grant Coun-
ty’s commissioners to adopt
Baker City’s Resolution No.
3881, which calls for the dec-
laration of an economic, men-
tal health and crime crisis due
to the governor’s COVID-19-
related lockdowns and state of
emergency.
In his view, organizer Bill
Newman said the resolution
does not have enough teeth,
but will carry more weight as
an offi cial position.
“From the bottom of my
heart,” he said, “I think it’s the
right thing to do.”
A few weeks later, organiz-
ers with Community Counsel-
ing Solutions and other county
agencies abandoned a plan to
buy a hotel and convert it into
transitional housing after an
emotional — and at times hos-
tile — public meeting in the
Trowbridge Pavilion at the
Grant County Fairgrounds,
where those in attendance
voted down the project 75-50.
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