GO! EASTERN OREGON MAGAZINE | INSIDE
Wednesday, February 9, 2022
154th Year • No. 6 • 18 Pages • $1.50
MyEagleNews.com
Seeking common
Eagle fi le photo
John Day Police Department.
City reacts
to county
policing plan
By BENNETT HALL
Blue Mountain Eagle
JOHN DAY — Grant County’s response to John
Day’s law enforcement funding proposal got its fi rst
public discussion last week, but it didn’t happen at a
meeting of the Grant County Court.
Instead, it happened at a work session of the John
Day City Council.
On Oct. 13, a day after the council voted unani-
mously to suspend the cash-strapped John Day Police
Department, City Manager Nick Green attended a
meeting of the Grant County Court to make a pro-
posal: The city would give the county $300,000 a
year from its general fund for law enforcement ser-
vices in exchange for the same amount from the
county’s road fund for street improvements in John
Day to spur housing development.
County Judge Scott Myers said he wanted the
proposal in writing. A written version of the proposal
was submitted to the county on Nov. 8.
The County Court has yet to discuss the city’s
proposal in a public meeting.
Myers has said that, before the county court has
that discussion, the city should decide whether to
transfer to the county a three-year, $375,000 fed-
eral Community Oriented Policing Services grant.
City offi cials are still waiting to hear back from
federal offi cials about whether the COPS grant is
transferable.
Since the John Day Police Department was sus-
pended, the duty of enforcing the law within the
city limits has fallen on the Grant County Sheriff ’s
Offi ce, which has four patrol deputies to cover the
entire county. Sheriff Todd McKinley has repeat-
edly told both the City Council and the County Court
that he needs additional deputies to provide adequate
coverage.
Since mid-December, County Commissioner Sam
Palmer has met to discuss the issue of law enforce-
ment funding informally with Sheriff Todd McKin-
ley, City Councilors Gregg Haberly and Heather
Rookstool, and community member John Rowell.
On Jan. 21, the county counsel emailed a detailed
proposal for law enforcement coverage to the city
attorney, which only became public after Green put
it on the agenda for a work session during a special
meeting of the City Council on Feb. 1.
Palmer attended the meeting and participated in
the work session, engaging in a public discussion of
the proposal with the city councilors.
The county’s proposal, which is based on a ser-
vice agreement between Deschutes County and the
city of Sisters, would give the Sheriff ’s Offi ce three
additional deputies to provide coverage in John Day.
(At full strength, the John Day Police Department
had four sworn offi cers.)
To cover the cost of that coverage, the city would
pay a minimum of $282,400 a year, assuming it is
GROUND
Stakeholders committee lays out desired conditions
for USFS Blue Mountain management plan
By STEVEN MITCHELL
Blue Mountain Eagle
G
roups that have long been at
odds on forest management
issues have reached a consensus
on goals and desired conditions
that will frame how the U.S. For-
est Service drafts land management plans on
three national forests in Northeast Oregon
and Southeast Washington.
At a meeting on Jan. 25, the access sub-
committee of the Blue Mountains Inter-
governmental Council — or BIC for short
— submitted its fi nal rule and desired condi-
tions to the full council.
The Forest Service formed the BIC,
made up of county offi cials, tribal members
and other stakeholders from the Blue Moun-
tain region, after the agency’s proposed 2018
management plan revision fi zzled in the face
of intense public scrutiny.
The three national forests covered by
the management plan — the Umatilla, Wal-
lowa-Whitman and Malheur — are collec-
tively known as the Blue Mountain Forest
and make up a third of Oregon’s national
forest land.
“I THINK WE MADE
HUGE PROGRESS
WITH THE BIC ON
UNDERSTANDING
EACH OTHER.”
Craig Trulock
Malheur National Forest supervisor
Each forest has its individual resource
and management plans, with desired condi-
tions and goals spelled out. While the plans
do not dictate project-level decisions, the
desired conditions will form a foundation
for the broader guidelines surrounding key
issues such as forest access, elk security, for-
est health and grazing when the Forest Ser-
vice begins the process of revising its man-
agement plan for the Blue Mountain Forest.
Craig Trulock, Malheur National Forest
supervisor, said he is not sure when the revi-
sion process would begin. However, he said
a proposal has been forwarded to U.S. Forest
Service headquarters in Washington, D.C.,
to put a team together to begin drafting the
revision.
From the beginning, Trulock said, the
9idea was to seek compromise and solutions
on as many issues as possible.
“I think we made huge progress with the
BIC on understanding each other,” Trulock
said.
The Forest Service’s 2018 management
plan revision, which was drafted before
Trulock was named Malheur’s supervisor,
received intense backlash. The plan called
for an increase in thinning dry upland forests
to improve wildfi re resilience while dou-
bling the current timber harvest and desig-
nating 70,500 acres of new wilderness.
The Eastern Oregon Counties Associ-
ation, to which Grant belongs, listed eight
main objections, including economics;
access; management area designation; pace
and scale of restoration; grazing; fi re and sal-
vage logging; coordination between agen-
cies; and wildlife.
The counties argued the agency’s plan
would close roads and limit livestock graz-
ing while failing to thin enough of the woods
to boost timber jobs or lower the risk of large
wildfi res.
See Plan, Page A12
Blue Mountain Eagle, File
A view of Strawberry Mountain in the Malheur National Forest.
See Police, Page A12
Survey says: Voters split on pool bond
By BENNETT HALL
Blue Mountain Eagle
JOHN DAY — Vot-
ers are split down the mid-
dle over whether to approve
a bond measure to pay for a
new aquatic center at the Sev-
enth Street Sports Complex, a
recent survey shows.
Some 35% of respondents
said they would defi nitely vote
yes for a bond measure to raise
up to $4 million for a new com-
munity pool in John Day, while
34% said they would defi nitely
vote no. When voters who say
they would probably vote a
certain way or are leaning in
that direction are factored in,
the tallies add up to 51% in
favor to 45% against – a mar-
gin of just 6 percentage points
Courtesy of Opsis Architecture
This conceptual drawing shows what the proposed aquatic cen-
ter at the Seventh Street Sports Complex might look like.
– with 4% undecided.
The John Day-Canyon City
Parks and Recreation Dis-
trict is proposing to build a
six-lane, 25-yard outdoor pool
with locker rooms and offi ce
space to replace the 64-year-
old Gleason Pool, which has
been closed for two years and
is slated for demolition.
The preliminary cost esti-
mate for the project is $6 mil-
lion, and $3 million in state and
city funding is already commit-
ted. The district needs to raise
another $3 million to $4 mil-
lion, depending on fi nal cost
estimates, to complete the
aquatic center, and it plans to
put a bond measure on the bal-
lot this year.
To gauge the level of pub-
lic support for the project, the
city commissioned a survey
by FM3 Research of Oakland,
California, at a cost of $25,000.
According to parks and rec
district board member Lisa
Weigum, FM3 attempted to
contact every registered voter
within the district’s boundaries,
which encompass the cities of
John Day and Canyon City as
well as a large amount of unin-
corporated land around both
communities.
The fi rm reached out to vot-
ers by telephone, email and
text, as well as sending out
postcards to street addresses
and PO boxes. A total of 467
district voters participated in
the survey, which was con-
ducted by telephone and online
between Nov. 29 and Dec. 27.
FM3 estimates a margin of
error between 4.5% and 6.7%
at the 95% level of confi dence.
Weigum said the district
board was pleased with the
level of participation in the
survey.
“I was really excited to see
we had 467 people respond,”
she said. “For a community
our size, the number of people
responding was pretty high.”
A deeper dive into the data
See Pool, Page A12