GO! EASTERN OREGON MAGAZINE | INSIDE
Wednesday, May 11, 2022
154th Year • No. 19 • 18 Pages • $1.50
MyEagleNews.com
LEARNING THE ROPES
Blue Mountain Eagle, File
Grant County offi cials are considering whether to join a proj-
ect to build a publicly-owned fi ber optic network to provide
high-speed internet access.
County mulls
broadband
expansion
By STEVEN MITCHELL
Blue Mountain Eagle
CANYON CITY —
Grant County offi cials are
mulling the pros and cons
of having a publicly owned
fi ber internet infrastructure.
Last month the Grant
County Digital Network, an
Oregon municipal corpo-
ration formed under ORS
190 that includes the county,
John Day and Seneca, was
awarded a $1.8 million com-
munity broadband grant to
build a publicly owned fi ber
line to the courthouse, air-
port, fairgrounds and other
community facilities.
Nick Green, John Day’s
city manager and the digital
network’s executive direc-
tor, said the project would
take roughly six months to
complete.
During the Wednesday,
May 4, session of Grant
County Court, Eric Bush, the
county’s emergency man-
ager, told the court that while
Oregon Telephone Corp.
could not install broadband
fi ber to the Grant County
Regional Airport, it could
link the courthouse to its net-
work. He said the cost would
be a one-time fee of $150
plus $250 per month.
Bush said OTC could
run a point-to-point network
from the offi ce of the Grant
County Education Service
District, the network man-
ager and IT service provider
for the county. Bush said
OTC could also meet the
added network security stan-
dards that are required at the
airport and sheriff ’s offi ce.
Josh Walker, chair of the
Grant County Digital Net-
work, told the court that
one of the benefi ts of being
on the publicly-owned net-
work would be access to
an intranet — a self-con-
tained network that would
allow participating govern-
ment entities to communi-
cate among themselves even
if the internet goes down due
to a natural disaster or other
disruption.
The
publicly-owned
fi ber, he said, and the fi ber
to the county courthouse
through OTC is not an
“apples to apples” compar-
ison to the fi ber through the
Grant County Digital Net-
work’s fi ber infrastructure.
Bush said the redundancy
of an intranet is a nice capa-
bility to have and is some-
thing the county should
consider.
Other public entities that
would be on the shared net-
work in the county would
include the library, John Day
Industrial Park and — if
funded in the May 17 elec-
tion — the John Day-Can-
yon City Aquatics Center.
Robert Waltenberg, Grant
County Education Service
District superintendent, said
in an interview that when the
county had the emergency
operations center at the air-
port, the county paid Oregon
Telephone Corp. to install a
radio antenna on Holmstrom
Mountain to give the airport
a beefed-up wireless internet
connection.
However, he said, the
county needs to get away
from reliance on wireless
internet and convert to fi ber
optic lines. Fiber, Walten-
berg said, provides a much
more robust and reliable
connection.
“I think the question
before the court now is,”
Waltenberg said, “do you
want to lease fi ber from Ore-
gon Telephone Corp. that
has a cost year over year and
month over month? Or do
you want to build and own
your fi ber?”
Steven Mitchell/Blue Mountain Eagle
A rappeler dangles above the ground on Thursday, May 5, 2022, during the U.S. Forest Service’s national rappel certifi cation training
at the Grant County Regional Airport.
Elite fi refi ghters refresh their rappeling
skills in the skies above John Day
By STEVEN MITCHELL
Blue Mountain Eagle
H
elicopters hovering over
the Malheur National For-
est are a telltale sign that
fi re season has arrived in
Grant County.
Last week, the Grant County Regional
Airport was the jumping-off point for
essential training for a select group of
wildland fi refi ghters as the U.S. Forest
Service hosted its yearly rappel certifi ca-
tion training course.
Roughly 60 returning rappel-
ers from Oregon and Idaho dangled
from helicopters hundreds of feet in
the air to practice rappeling, a method
of descending rapidly using ropes and
climbing hardware. They also partici-
pated in mockups and reviewed emer-
gency procedures.
Adam Kahler, a national rappel spe-
cialist who started as a rappeler in Grant
County in the early 2000s, said the train-
ing from May 2-7 was one of two annual
recertifi cation events the U.S. Forest Ser-
vice hosts each year. There’s also a rookie
training in Salmon, Idaho.
Rappel-trained fi refi ghters are an elite
group. According to Kahler, there are just
Steven Mitchell/Blue Mountain Eagle
Rappel crews participate in Forest Service certifi cation training at the Grant County Re-
gional Airport on Thursday, May 5, 2022.
300 Forest Service rappelers nationwide.
Last week’s training was for veteran
rappelers. Some, Kahler said, were com-
ing back for their 15th year, while oth-
ers were coming back for their second or
third season.
The training session, he said, is a
chance not only to come back and do
crew training but it also provides an
opportunity for multiple crews — rappel-
ers, helicopter spotters, and pilots — to
work together again.
See Rappel, Page A18
See Broadband, Page A18
Smith trial postponed again
By STEVEN MITCHELL
Blue Mountain Eagle
CANYON CITY — A trial for
the former Grant County sheriff ’s
deputy accused of assault, attempted
rape and child neglect set for Mon-
day, May 16, has now been post-
poned to a later date.
A Circuit Court judge heard argu-
ments on Monday, May 9, to post-
pone the trial of Tyler Smith, who
was fi red from the Sheriff ’s Offi ce in
December 2019 after being brought
up on criminal charges.
One of Smith’s attorneys, Andrea
Coit, said Grant County’s law-
yer had delivered additional docu-
ments or materials the defense had
requested in a subpoena.
It was not clear what the county’s
Steven Mitchell/Blue Mountain Eagle, File
Tyler Smith, a former Grant County sher-
iff ’s deputy accused of assault, attempt-
ed rape and child neglect, appears in
Grant County Circuit Court on April 20,
2022, at a hearing to dismiss the charges.
legal counsel had turned over. How-
ever, she said, the defense needed
more time to evaluate the new mate-
rial before going to trial.
Smith’s trial, originally slated to
begin in late October, was abruptly
put on hold to give defense attor-
neys time to sift through hun-
dreds of pages of discovery materi-
als fi led just one day earlier by the
prosecution.
Smith’s defense team then fi led
a motion to dismiss the charges
against him, arguing that the pros-
ecution had been withholding evi-
dence that could exonerate him.
After two days of evidentiary
hearings on that motion, Coit fi led
an April 29 motion to continue the
trial based on what she argued were
ongoing discovery violations.
She contends that the most recent
violation was revealed during an
April 27 evidentiary hearing when
former Grant County Sheriff Glenn
Palmer testifi ed that he kept a sepa-
rate personnel fi le for Smith.
According to the motion fi ling,
in that fi le there is an audio record-
ing of Smith’s Loudermill hear-
ing — a due process right for pub-
lic employees to present their side of
the story before an employer decides
on discipline.
In the Loudermill hearing, Coit
argues, Palmer compelled Smith to
respond to the criminal allegations
against him.
Additionally, Palmer testifi ed
that there were notes that he took
from an interview he conducted with
Smith’s accuser about the criminal
allegations.
In her motion for a continuance,
See Smith, Page A18