A16
NEWS
Blue Mountain Eagle
Gas
Continued from Page A1
Russian suppliers, or approxi-
mately 600,000-800,000 bar-
rels per day, according to J.P.
Morgan. In comparison, the
U.S. produces nearly 12 mil-
lion barrels per day domesti-
cally, according to the Amer-
ican Fuel and Petrochemical
Manufacturers trade associ-
ation. Still, the U.S. is a net
importer of oil.
It has left many at the
pump wondering why exactly
gas prices have risen so
dramatically.
“The U.S. does not get a lot
of oil from Russia,” said Marie
Dodds, director of government
and public affairs at AAA Ore-
gon/Idaho. “Only about 3%
of our imported oil (8% of
our imported oil and refined
products) last year came from
Russia, but Europe gets a lot
of oil from Russia, roughly
25%, so any time you take a
big chunk of supplies away, it
sends prices higher. It’s basi-
cally supply and demand, as
we learned back in Economics
101. When you have a major
global producer of oil, Russia,
and its product is taken off the
global markets, all of the sud-
den you have to look around
and figure out where that oil is
going to come from.”
Two records, two years
At the start of the COVID-
19 pandemic, oil prices fell to
their lowest level in history,
reaching negative values in
April 2020. That spurred pro-
ducers to cut output as oil tank-
ers sat outside ports, unable
to offload their oil shipments.
In the U.S., thousands of oil
workers were laid off, and the
number of active drilling rigs
plummeted from 700 in Janu-
ary 2020 to approximately 200,
according to reporting by The
New York Times.
Prices for gas in spring 2020
went down drastically, with gas
prices falling below $2 a gallon
nationally for the first time in
decades.
“In the spring of 2020 it was
incredible; we saw demand
for oil and gas fall to dramati-
cally low levels that we hadn’t
Wednesday, March 16, 2022
seen since the 1960s,” Dodds
said. “And now here we are,
two years later, and people
are returning to their normal
routines, going back to work,
going back to school. We are
consuming more gas around
the globe, but the production is
not back where it was pre-pan-
demic. Production hasn’t kept
up, so that’s the main driver of
higher prices.”
As the price of gas rises,
manufacturing businesses are
faced with the tough choice of
having to increase prices to off-
set transportation costs. Patrick
Raimondo, plant manager for
Behlen Country, Baker City,
said the company is waiting for
a few weeks to decide how to
handle the cost increases.
“As of right now we’re hold-
ing off on doing any surcharges
for our customers,” Raimondo
said. “As these prices increase,
it is going to affect us down the
road, just from the additional
costs. We’re just trying to see
how it goes over the next cou-
ple of weeks and having con-
versations and open communi-
cations with our customers just
to make sure we’re all on the
same page.“
A global economy
The U.S. has continued to
bring oil rigs back online. By
January 2021, 374 rotary rigs
were operating in the United
States, according to the EIA.
By Dec. 31, in response to ris-
ing prices, that number rose
to 586. That’s still a far cry
from the 700 rigs operating
pre-pandemic.
In Russia, ongoing sanc-
tions have locked the country
out of foreign banks and goods
and have caused the Russian
ruble to plummet to nearly half
its value at the beginning of
this February.
According to J.P. Morgan,
almost 70% of Russian oil is
struggling to find buyers even
though it is being offered at a
record $20-per-barrel discount
in comparison to national oil
suppliers, as of March 8.
“What happens halfway
around the world can and does
also have an impact on oil
prices,” Dodds said. “There’s
much more at play than just
what’s happening in the U.S.”
Cattle
Police
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Continued from Page A1
whose $450,000 annual budget out-
stripped the city’s total property
tax revenues (around $300,000 a
year) by a wide margin. A proposed
local option levy to cover the fund-
ing gap failed at the ballot box last
August when low voter turnout fell
short of the election’s double-major-
ity requirement.
In October, the City Council
voted unanimously to suspend the
Police Department and offered to pay
the county $300,000 a year to hire
three sheriff’s deputies to provide
law enforcement services in the city
limits. The proposal also called on
the county to give the city $300,000
a year from its road fund to pay for
street improvements to serve new
housing developments in John Day,
on the theory that housing starts in
the city would broaden the tax base
for the entire county.
While the County Court never for-
mally deliberated on the city’s pro-
posal, court members made it clear
that the idea of linking county road
fund money to police services was a
nonstarter.
In January, through its attorney,
the county made a counteroffer that
called for the city to pay $371,000 a
year for the county to hire three dep-
uties to patrol the city. (The offer
included a lower annual rate if the
city was able to transfer the three-
year, $375,000 COPS grant to the
county in partial payment.)
At the March 8 City Council meet-
ing, councilors agreed that more law
enforcement services were needed
— since the John Day Police Depart-
ment has been mothballed, the Grant
County Sheriff’s Office has been
patrolling the entire county with just
four deputies.
“It’s not getting any better,”
Rookstool said. “It’s only going to
get worse, because people are going
to start taking it into their hands —
because they have to.”
Rookstool advocated for find-
ing a way to provide the same level
of service John Day residents had
before, but the prevailing sentiment
among the City Council was strongly
opposed to a straight fee-for-services
model.
Several councilors pointed out
that other Grant County communities
had previously dissolved their police
departments and that no city is cur-
rently paying the Sheriff’s Office for
law enforcement coverage. (Prairie
City had such an arrangement until
recently but is no longer paying for
sheriff’s patrols. Canyon City halted
such payments years ago.)
Bennett Hall/Blue Mountain Eagle
John Day City Councilor Heather Rookstool talks about police funding while fellow Councilor Dave Holland, center, and
Grant County Commissioner Sam Palmer, left, listen during a March 8, 2022, council meeting.
“I don’t want to see our entire tax
base being spent that way anymore,”
Councilor Dave Holland said.
“We’re willing to help, we’re
willing to participate, we just don’t
want to pay for two or three officers
by ourselves,” he added.
Instead, there was general sup-
port for increasing the sheriff’s bud-
get through a countywide funding
mechanism.
“I’ve stated my position from the
beginning,” Mayor Ron Lundbom
said. “I believe it should be county-
wide and everyone should pay for it.”
A county bond measure would be
one way to spread out the cost of law
enforcement funding, Palmer said,
but he expressed concern that many
voters might not be able to afford the
added property tax payment.
“If we pass it countywide, it’s less
of a burden on everybody,” Palmer
said. “But it’s still a burden.”
Rookstool argued that city and
county leaders need to stop sniping at
one another and come to the bargain-
ing table to resolve the issue.
“It might be time to refresh and
sit down and see if we can (partner)
together because we’re all one com-
munity,” she said. “We need to bridge
this gap. We need to work together.”
The discussion got testy when
City Manager Nick Green inter-
jected that the lack of funding for law
enforcement is a result of long-term
population declines, which have pre-
vented property tax revenues from
keeping pace with rising costs.
“I’d like to know what’s the coun-
ty’s plan” for addressing that issue,
he said.
“I don’t know if the county has a
plan,” Palmer responded.
“You’re a commissioner,” Green
shot back. “You’re elected to have a
plan.”
Councilor Shannon Adair stepped
in at that point.
“Rehashing all this is not really
helping,” she said.
But Adair also made it clear that
she thinks the County Court needs
to take stronger steps to address the
law enforcement funding issue.
“I want the county to get serious
… about coming up with a plan that
involves everyone in the county,”
she said.
In a follow-up interview, Palmer
said he planned to put the law
enforcement funding issue on the
agenda for the next County Court
meeting but added that the best place
for the county to address it might be
in budget discussions.
He also called Green’s con-
duct at the City Council meeting
unprofessional.
“That’s part of the reason we
don’t have a good working relation-
ship with the city,” Palmer said.
In other action at the March 8
meeting, the council:
• Appointed Chris Labhart to
fill the Position 1 City Council seat
left open by the resignation of Paul
Smith in January (see full story on
Page A3).
• Voted to apply for a $200,000
grant to make a variety of improve-
ments to Main Street businesses and
allocate up to $200,000 in city funds
from the Kam Wah Chung grant
for additional improvements along
Main Street.
• Voted to approve a design for
the Pit Stop property at the intersec-
tion of Main and Canton streets that
would include 11 parking spaces for
normal-sized vehicles (no oversize
parking), bike lockers, a public gath-
ering space with a fire pit and seat-
ing, and a covered area that would
have picnic tables and room for food
carts or other private vendors.
Meeting as the board of the city’s
urban renewal agency, the council
also approved spending $218,000 to
buy pipe for infrastructure improve-
ments at URA-funded housing
developments.
As part of the same motion,
the council approved taking out a
$1.85 million loan from the state to
fund infrastructure improvements
intended to get the housing devel-
opments off the ground, with the
money to be repaid from additional
property tax revenues created by the
construction of up to 100 new homes
in the urban renewal area.
The
improvements
would
include the east end extension of
Charolais Heights and Holmstrom
Road, plus the expansion of streets
and utilities for two housing devel-
opments, The Ridge and Ironwood
Estates Phase 2.
According to Carter, with
no evidence or leads to fol-
low up for law enforce-
ment, the incident remains a
mystery.
This was not the first cow
mutilation on his ranch, Car-
ter added.
Several years ago, Carter
said, he was almost sure one
of his cows had been muti-
lated. However, he added,
there was no way to say
with certainty because he
did not get to the carcass
quickly enough before flies
and other scavengers made
it impossible to determine
what happened.
He said a similar situ-
ation occurred in August
of 2020, which is why he
tries to inspect cattle deaths
closely when they occur.
Indeed, Carter’s situa-
tion is not unique. Accord-
ing to FBI records, since the
1970s, thousands of unex-
plained killings and muti-
lations of cattle have hap-
pened across the U.S.
Last
year
Wheeler
County had five cases while
Harney County has had four
in four years, with the pre-
vious two occurring in May
and June.
The cases, according to
the FBI reports, are simi-
lar to Carter’s case, where
a cow or a bull was found
dead in a remote area with
no signs of how someone
could have made it into the
area or onto private property
undetected. In most cases,
authorities have not found
footprints, tire tracks, or fin-
gerprints. There is little —
if any — spilled blood, and
there are no visible punc-
ture wounds, bullet holes or
strangulation marks.
In the thousands of cat-
tle mutilations that have
occurred since the 1970s, a
culprit has yet to be caught,
according to FBI records.
The bizarre nature of
the mutilation and com-
plete lack of evidence in last
month’s case make it all the
more baffling and frustrat-
ing for Carter.
The mutilations simply
do not make sense.
“It’s really odd,” Carter
said. “There’s just no logi-
cal explanation.”