TWO GRANT UNION GRAPPLERS PLACE FIRST AT STATE | PAGE B1
Wednesday, March 2, 2022
154th Year • No. 9 • 22 Pages • $1.50
MyEagleNews.com
Sign stirs
up bridge
brouhaha
in John Day
By BENNETT HALL
Blue Mountain Eagle
VOTERS WILL DECIDE
ON POOL BOND
Rudy Diaz/Blue Mountain Eagle, File
Gleason Pool in John Day has been closed
for two years. A $4 million bond measure on
the May 17 ballot would help fund construc-
tion of a new aquatic center to replace it.
$4 million ballot measure headed to May 17 election
By BENNETT HALL
Blue Mountain Eagle
JOHN DAY — A pool bond is headed for the
May 17 ballot.
The John Day-Canyon City Parks and Recre-
ation District board voted 4-0 on Tuesday, Feb. 22,
to put a measure on the ballot that would raise up
to $4 million for the construction of a new aquatic
center at the Seventh Street Sports Complex in
John Day.
The decision was made during a joint meeting
with the John Day City Council. The resolution
approved by the board also authorized accepting a
$2 million state grant to go toward the pool’s esti-
mated $6 million construction cost and applying
for an additional $750,000 in grant funding.
In addition, the resolution approved an inter-
governmental agreement that states the district
will be responsible for operating and maintaining
the aquatic center while the city will be responsi-
ble for covering utility costs.
The City Council approved a companion res-
olution that included the same intergovernmental
agreement by a 6-0 vote.
Only voters who live within the district’s
boundaries will be eligible to vote on the bond
measure, which would add an estimated 70 cents
per $1,000 of assessed valuation to property tax
bills in the district. For the owner of a property val-
ued at $150,000, that would mean an extra $105
a year in property taxes for the life of the bond,
which is expected to be 20 years.
The district includes the cities of John Day
and Canyon City as well as unincorporated areas
around both communities. The boundary extends
almost to Mt. Vernon on the west, nearly to
See Pool, Page A11
“WE’RE STILL DOING THE VALUE ENGINEERING. WE’RE CALLING (THE WARM
WATER POOL) FUTURE, BUT FUTURE MAY BE PRESENT IF THAT GRANT IS
AWARDED.”
City Manager Nick Green
In the wake of the fi re
Firefighters, company
sort through aftermath of
Shearer’s Foods disaster
By ERICK PETERSON
East Oregonian
HERMISTON — The day after an explo-
sion and fi re at Shearer’s Foods, Hermiston,
smoke still rose from the scorched ruins.
Umatilla County Fire District No. 1 fi re-
fi ghters, having spent a late night at the
scene Tuesday, Feb. 22, returned at 10 a.m.
Feb. 23, sorting through rubble to put out
remaining hot spots. Fire offi cials said they
expected to remain working at Shearer’s
“for a while,” stating they were not quite
sure when work would be complete.
Jimmy Davis, operations chief for the
district, said he was weary, and he was not
the only one who felt this way.
“Our guys are exhausted,” he said.
A hard day at Shearer’s Foods
Davis said the work was especially dif-
Erick Peterson/East Oregonian
fi cult on the fi rst day of the fi re because Tony Castro and Jason McCary of Emerald City State-
the inside of the building collapsed. When wide set up fencing on Thursday, Feb. 24, 2022, around
the wreckage of Shearer’s Foods, Hermiston, two days
See Fire, Page A12 after an explosion and fi re destroyed the facility.
Where have all the drivers gone?
Shortage frustrates
trucking industry,
ag producers
By GEORGE PLAVEN
Capital Press
PORTLAND — Jason
Nord poked his head out
the window of a hulking
Freightliner 18-wheeler as
he practiced backing the
rig between rows of orange
cones at the Western Pacifi c
Truck School in Portland.
The exercise required
the rookie driver to use
skillful maneuvers to coax
the truck and its trailer into
a slot that simulated a ware-
house loading dock. One
by one, students took their
George Plaven/Capital Press
Harold Worth, an instructor and assistant manager at
Western Pacifi c Truck School, guides Jason Nord during
a driving exercise.
turn behind the wheel while
instructors on the ground
off ered guidance.
After previously work-
ing in construction, Nord,
41, said he can make more
money as a trucker. He
enrolled in the school to
get the hands-on experi-
ence and training necessary
to apply for his commercial
driver’s license.
“Everybody
knows
we’re short truck drivers,”
Nord said of the industry.
For years, the truck-
ing industry has suff ered
a debilitating shortage of
drivers. With the arrival of
the COVID-19 pandemic,
that shortage has mush-
roomed into a crisis. The
American Trucking Asso-
ciation estimates the driver
shortage peaked this year at
81,000 — up from 51,000
pre-pandemic.
With fewer trucks on the
road and port bottlenecks
plaguing the supply chain,
See Drivers, Page A11
JOHN DAY — For years, the city of John
Day has tried to keep commercial vehicles
from using the Third Avenue Bridge over
Canyon Creek with a sign the reads “No
Trucks” and another that reads “Weight Limit
15 Tons.”
But that doesn’t mean the span is in immi-
nent danger of collapsing under the strain of
a fully loaded 18-wheeler. As it turns out, the
bridge can handle considerably more weight
than its posted limit.
In fact, according to the most recent Ore-
gon Department of Transportation safety
inspection report on the bridge, it is rated to
support up to 67 tons, or 134,000 pounds —
more than four times the posted limit.
What’s going on here?
According to City Manager Nick Green,
the “Weight Limit 15 Tons” sign is part of a
strategy to save the city — and local taxpay-
ers — money on bridge repairs.
“The Public Works Department put that
sign up there to discourage commercial vehi-
cles from using that bridge,” he told the news-
paper. “The city’s preference is for them to
use Bridge Street.”
Sometimes, Green explained, heavily
laden trucks headed for the Grant County
Fairgrounds will use Third Avenue, which
puts a certain amount of wear and tear on the
city-owned Third Avenue Bridge. If they take
Bridge Street instead, the big rigs don’t have
to cross any bridges to reach the fairgrounds.
The issue came to light after the Blue
Mountain Eagle published a letter to the edi-
tor from local resident Jon Meiling in its Feb.
23 edition, under the headline “City Leaders
Ignore Bridge Safety Issue.”
Meiling expressed concern that the city
was failing to enforce the commercial vehi-
cle ban, creating the possibility that the bridge
could fall down under the weight of a fully
loaded tractor-trailer rig.
“The Third Avenue Bridge has a sign that
reads No Trucks and a 30,000-pound weight
limit. Yet the city offi cials allow overweight
trucks to cross that bridge on a daily basis
with blatant disregard for the safety of the cit-
izens of John Day,” he wrote.
“The infrastructure of that bridge can-
not carry an 80,000-pound load, let alone a
100,000-pound load.”
Green responded to Meiling in an email,
which he shared with City Council members
and the Eagle, noting that the span’s 67-ton
load rating is more than adequate for the
heavyweight trucks Meiling worries about in
his letter.
“The bridge is safe. It can certainly han-
dle those loads,” Green wrote. “We post it at
15 tons to encourage larger trucks to re-route,
but we’re not in a position to cite trucks that
violate that rule, and violation of the rule does
not pose a safety hazard to the bridge or our
residents.”
In the email, Green points out that an
ODOT inspection report from last August,
which he also shared with the newspaper,
rates the condition of the bridge’s deck and
substructure as good (7 on a 10-point scale)
and its superstructure as satisfactory (6 out of
10).
The report goes on to state that the pre-
stressed concrete bridge, built in 1989, suff ered
some damage that required patching in 2014
and that the abutments need to be monitored
for scouring by gravel in the creekbed.
Apparently, the city strategy to reduce wear
on the bridge by rerouting heavy trucks is as
old as the bridge itself. Green said former Pub-
lic Works Director Dave Holland told him the
“Weight Limit 15 Tons” sign was installed at
the same time as the bridge.
In response to an inquiry from the Eagle,
an ODOT offi cial confi rmed that the 67-ton
load rating for the bridge is still in eff ect, so
it has “plenty of capacity for traditional legal
vehicles.”
Jon Rooper, a senior load rating engineer
with the state agency’s bridge engineering sec-
tion, added that, as the bridge’s owner, the city
of John Day is well within its rights to post a
lower weight limit than the rating allows.
“There is no rule that says they cannot,”
Rooper said. “In fact, we have many local
agencies in the state that post bridges for less
load than needed in order to preserve historic
structures or to prevent truck traffi c from using
a specifi c route.”