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About The Blue Mountain eagle. (John Day, Or.) 1972-current | View Entire Issue (April 20, 2022)
AGRIBUSINESS SPRING 2022 | INSIDE Wednesday, April 20, 2022 154th Year • No. 16 • 14 Pages • $1.50 MyEagleNews.com A greater level of empathy WHAT IS A MAMMOGRAM? A mammogram is like an X-ray of the breast. It can detect breast cancer up to two years before the tumor can be felt by a doctor. 3D mammography, or digital breast tomo- synthesis, generates a stack of 1 mm slice images (“layers”) of breast tissue. Steven Mitchell/Blue Mountain Eagle Hannah Wall, a Prairie City High School student, organized a Dig Pink volleyball game for her senior project after a cancer scare when she was 13 years old. The event raised $3,000 to help purchase a 3D mammography machine for Blue Mountain Hospital. Instead of viewing the complexities of a patient’s breast tissue in one fl at image, a ra- diologist can examine the tissue one layer at a time. As a result, fi ne details are more clear- ly visible, no longer hidden by overlapping tissue. A near-miss with breast cancer inspires fundraising eff ort By STEVEN MITCHELL Blue Mountain Eagle A Prairie City High School stu- dent became passionate about fi ghting breast cancer through early detection after fi nding a lump on her breast. While the growth was non-cancer- ous, Hannah Wall, a senior at Prairie City High School, was still fi red up — so much so that she raised $3,000 last fall for the Dig Pink campaign to help fund a new 3D mammography machine at Blue Mountain Hospital for her senior project. In 2018, after recognizing what turned out to be a benign tumor, Wall — who was 13 at the time — had to have “YOU HAVE A HEALTHY KID AND THEN ALL OF A SUDDEN SHE’S LIKE, ‘MOM, I HAVE A LUMP,’ AND IT WAS OF A SIGNIFICANT ENOUGH SIZE THAT YOU COULD SEE IT THROUGH THE SKIN.” Heather Wall, Hannah’s mother surgery to remove the lump. The experience left a lasting impres- sion on Hannah and on her mother, Heather, as well. For her part, Heather said the experi- ence was “terrifying.” “You have a healthy kid and then all of a sudden she’s like, ‘Mom, I have a lump,’ and it was of a signifi cant enough size that you could see it through the skin,” Heather said. Both Hannah and Heather remember that day. The family was carving pumpkins for Halloween. Hannah said she got pump- kin guts all over her shirt, and when she went to change, her mother came up to her and said, “What is that?” From there, Hannah and Heather said, a month went by where the family did not know what they could be facing. “It was very nerve-racking,” Hannah said. She said doctors had to do exams, and as soon as the lump was detected on an ultrasound, they called a specialist in Bend. During that time, Hannah said, she kept what she was going through between just her and her family. “I wanted to tell my friends what I was going through, but I knew that it would make me more nervous if I did,” she said. See Empathy, Page A14 Law enforcement dominates budget talks By STEVEN MITCHELL Blue Mountain Eagle CANYON CITY — Law enforcement funding took center stage at Grant Coun- ty’s second budget meet- ing on Wednesday, April 13, with suggestions for fi ll- ing the fi nancial shortfall in the Sheriff ’s Offi ce rang- ing from cutting a non-man- dated county department to fl oating a bond measure. Sheriff Todd McKin- ley told the county’s bud- get committee — which consists of the three Grant County Court members Steven Mitchell/Blue Mountain Eagle Grant County Sheriff Todd McKinley addresses the coun- ty’s budget committee on Wednesday, April 13, 2022. and three citizens — that he needs to add three patrol deputies and one secretary. Citizen budget member Amy Kreger asked McKin- ley how he would fund the budget request if the roles were reversed. McKinley told Kreger that he did not have the bud- get committee’s insight. “I don’t sit and look at the county’s budget and say, ‘I’d like to have this depart- ment’s funds,’” McKinley said. Kreger said she did not want to bring up the “ele- phant in the room,” but asked if the county was still in talks with the city of John Day about a law enforce- ment services contract. McKinley said he did not know to what extent the county and the city were still talking, but he said the dis- cussions were still ongoing. That said, McKinley added, he does not know if there is going to be a contract. The county’s draft bud- get included a $300,000 contribution from John Day to cover the cost of bringing on three more patrol dep- uties to the Grant County Sheriff ’s Offi ce — despite the John Day City Coun- cil’s earlier rejection of the county’s fee-for-service proposal. John Day and Grant County offi cials have been at loggerheads since Octo- ber, when the John Day City Council voted unan- imously to suspend oper- ations of the city’s police force and off ered to pay the county $300,000 a year to hire three sheriff ’s deputies to provide law enforcement services in the city limits. During a heated ses- sion of Grant County Court, John Day City Manager Nick Green laid out a pro- posal for the county to give the city $300,000 a year from its road fund to pay for street improvements to serve new housing develop- ments in John Day, on the theory that housing starts in the city would broaden the tax base for the entire county. Although the Grant County Court has not for- mally deliberated on the city’s proposal, court mem- bers have been steadfast in their opposition to the idea See Budget, Page A14 Justin Davis/Blue Mountain Eagle OTC Connections truck on Monday, April 18, 2022, in John Day. OTC extends high-speed fi ber lines By JUSTIN DAVIS Blue Mountain Eagle JOHN DAY — Oregon Telephone Corp. is gearing up to bring high-speed fi ber optic inter- net lines to the communities of Monument, Seneca and Long Creek after a nearly three- year planning process involving the city of John Day and Grant County Digital. The project is being funded by an $8 mil- lion US Department of Agriculture grant that requires a 25% match. The match funds come in the form of a $1 million investment from Oregon Telephone in conjunction with another $500,000 grant from the city of John Day and a separate $500,000 loan from the city. The loan carries a 5% interest rate that will be forgiven if the project is completed in 24 months. Ore- gon Telephone projects the work will be done by the end of the construction season this year. Oregon Telephone Corp.’s Marcus Bott says the project was initially smaller in scale but eventually went on to encompass other small communities within the county. “We had plans to go just to Long Creek,” he said. “We were going to build that ourselves. The city had some goals they were looking at, so the USDA opened up a grant application that would allow us to meet our goals.” Later meetings with Grant County Digital — a government consortium that involves the county and the cities of John Day and Seneca — revealed some overlapping goals that led to bringing all those ideas together into one proj- ect with a larger scale. Meanwhile, $1.8 million in federal COVID relief funding will help patch holes within John Day’s fi ber optic network by extending fi ber optic out to the airport, industrial park, the new Innovation Gateway business park, and Iron- wood Estates. It will also connect critical com- munity facilities in John Day to a common, shared network, capable of providing inter- net service between educational institutions and fi rst responders in the event of a disas- ter, according to John Day City Manager Nick Green. Some of the money will pay for interior renovation of the future John Day CyberMill. Oregon Telephone already provides high- speed internet service in John Day, Prairie City, See Internet, Page A14
