NEWS
Blue Mountain Eagle
School
Continued from Page A1
“This is an old school,” she pointed
out. “It was built long before (a poten-
tial school shooting) was a concern. We
have short- and long-term goals regard-
ing safety at the school. It’s ongoing,
and I think it will continue to be ongo-
ing. We’re going to have to be constantly
upgrading our systems to keep up with
security.”
Talk of securing schools has led some
critics to state that schools are start-
ing to look more like prisons and less
like places of learning for kids. Attles-
perger says the beauty of Humbolt is its
design. “The nice thing about the way
our school is set up is that if the outer
campus is secure, the kids can move
freely throughout the rest of the cam-
pus. The playground is in the middle of
the school. The way we’re confi gured,
we can still have a very secure perimeter
and move about freely.”
School shootings are a concern
everywhere, according to Attlesperger.
“I spent some time in Central Pennsyl-
vania and there was an Amish school
shooting. Somebody passing through,
and you think that something like that
could never happen. They don’t believe
in locking doors, they don’t have fences
around their schools. It just takes one
person drifting by.”
Attlesperger said she is in favor of
teachers being armed but not with any
type of lethal force. “Accidents hap-
pen,” she said. Tasers and other non-le-
thal weapons would be acceptable, but
Attlesperger said she doesn’t want to
introduce the option of lethal force to an
elementary school.
Another concern for Attlesperger is
the amount of things schoolteachers are
already responsible for that go beyond
their normal teaching duties.
“What we ask of teachers already is
draining. It takes every ounce of their
being to be the best that they can be all
day, every day for our kids. To put that on
them I would never ask. Which is why
we would like an SRO. They’re trained
for that. Their primary job function is
safety and security. That is not a teach-
er’s primary job function,” she said.
“It’s been a diffi cult couple years with
COVID, and I would never ask them to
do anything more. Teachers don’t clock
out at 5 o’clock. When they aren’t work-
ing with the kids they are planning for
working with the kids, and the kids are
always on their minds. It is a 24-hour,
seven-day-a-week job.”
Grant School District Superinten-
Sawmill
Continued from Page A1
said loggers under con-
tract to harvest Douglas fir
dent Bret Uptmor said anytime there is
an incident like Uvalde, school admin-
istrators across the nation are on “high
alert.”
“We don’t know how this will tran-
spire,” he said. “This happened so close
to the end of our school year. A lot of our
kids were focused on end-of-the-year
studies, sports and things like that. For
administrators, it means your eyes are
going everywhere. One, to make sure
that kids are doing what they need to do
to fi nish the year out, as well as to make
sure there is good safety in the buildings.
That is always our top concern. Are we
doing everything we possibly we can
to make sure when kids come to school
they are going to have assurances that it
is a safe environment for them?”
Uptmor said the district is already in
talks with the Sheriff ’s Offi ce to have a
resource offi cer and it is just a matter of
completing that process.
“The school board is on board,” he
said. “They want to have somebody rep-
resenting our law enforcement so that
sense of safety and security is pres-
ent. I believe that next year you’ll see
something in our schools. We wish we
could’ve gotten it done this year, but it
wasn’t in the cards.”
Uptmor is confi dent local law
enforcement would come to the aid of
schools if needed.
“Am I comfortable that we will have
good representation? Yes. My concern
always is, can they be there fast and be
present in a short amount of time at any
of our schools?”
Uptmor declined to comment on
the question of arming teachers with
lethal or non-lethal force as a deterrent
to school shootings, saying only that the
school board discussed the issue in 2018.
Uptmor said security measures are in
place in the district, but it’s impossible to
plan for every possible scenario.
“What I worry the most about is
we don’t know what other ways things
could happen. That is always what wor-
ries me. What we don’t know could hap-
pen,” he said.
“I’ll just add that I’m always very
impressed by our teachers, our staff , our
board and our school administration,
as well as right here in our own district
offi ce. We always have the safety of stu-
dents in mind. We may not always end
up with the same resolve when we talk
about how to do things, but we come
together as a team and we make it a safe
place for our kids. I think as a county we
do that, too, as superintendents. We’re
always talking and making sure we sup-
port each other. That’s a really import-
ant trait to have in a county this size,”
Uptmor said.
trees would no longer have
to haul the logs to Elgin
or Pilot Rock for milling.
With the rising cost of fuel,
he said, selling those logs
to Prairie Wood would be
JOHN ROEHM
CONSTRUCTION, INC.
General Contractor
LICENSED AND BONDED
RESIDENTIAL
Wednesday, June 8, 2022
Police
As for state troopers, Bigman added, during an
active shooter event, OSP troopers are trained to
respond immediately to the threat (as opposed to
Continued from Page A1
assembling a tactical team to enter a school building
with a shooter inside).
from an active shooter in a school or something else.
The reality, McKinley said, is that it could take a sig-
“I’m the one that’s expected to stop them and lay my nifi cant amount of time before the state’s SWAT team
life on the line so that no one else gets injured,” McKin- members arrive to provide backup. Local law enforce-
ley said. “This is what I’m doing. This is dangerous, ment — the short-staff ed Grant County Sheriff ’s Offi ce
and state troopers patrolling in the area — will be the
this is scary, but that’s what I’m here for.”
McKinley said what happened at Robb Elementary fi rst responders to arrive in shooter situations.
That’s all the more reason local law enforcement
School stepped up the sense of urgency to ensure that
local law enforcement offi cers are prepared to handle a needs to continue to receive SWAT training and have
the equipment, such as protective shields, to respond in
similar scenario.
He said the Sheriff ’s Offi ce would be bringing in an emergency, McKinley added.
“We need our local people to be able to be the
trainers from the state’s Department of Public Safety
ones that make a diff erence
Standards and Training for
instead of waiting hours
an active shooter training
“WE NEED OUR LOCAL
for that kind of response,”
with students and teachers
at a school within the county PEOPLE TO BE ABLE TO BE the sheriff said. “If you’ve
got something going on in
that requested the training.
THE ONES THAT MAKE A a school, we need to be the
McKinley said other fi rst
responders from agencies in DIFFERENCE INSTEAD OF ones that deal with it.”
the school’s district would
also take part.
WAITING HOURS FOR THAT First line of defense
During the Wednesday,
The Sheriff ’s Offi ce
KIND OF RESPONSE. IF
June 1, session of County
plans to have a school
resource offi cer stationed YOU’VE GOT SOMETHING Court, McKinley said he
knows that things are a little
at Grant County schools
GOING ON IN A SCHOOL, diff erent in Grant County.
this fall, which McKinley
he said, after
believes will be a deterrent
WE NEED TO BE THE ONES However,
watching what happened
to a potential shooter.
in the Uvalde shooting and
McKinley said the offi -
THAT DEAL WITH IT.”
talking to school offi cials
cer will be someone the
Sheriff Todd McKinley
from around the county, he
kids can build a strong rap-
has huge concerns for the
port with and feel comfort-
able enough to go to for help instead of someone who is safety of local schools.
That concern, he said, brings up the staffi ng short-
there to catch them committing a crime.
“I don’t like it when people see us and say, ‘I want age at the Sheriff ’s Offi ce.
Since the John Day Police Department was shut
you to scare my kid,’” McKinley said. “We’re not there
down in October, enforcing the law within the city lim-
to scare your kid. We’re here to help your kid.”
The “scared straight” approach, he said, is the wrong its has fallen primarily to the Grant County Sheriff ’s
Offi ce, which has just four patrol deputies covering the
kind of policing.
“I want them to respect us,” he said, “and see us as entire county. McKinley has repeatedly told both the
John Day City Council and the County Court that he
somebody they can come to.”
needs additional deputies to provide adequate coverage.
Coordinated response
The John Day City Council off ered to pay the
The Oregon State Police has a special weapons and county $300,000 a year to hire three deputies to pro-
tactics team with members scattered across the state vide law enforcement services in the city limits. But
that would respond with tactical assistance to Grant that proposal also called on the county to give the city
County law enforcement agencies in an active shooter $300,000 a year from its road fund to pay for street
incident. According to the OSP web page, the SWAT improvements to serve new housing developments in
team has 24 tactical members, 12 crisis negotiators and John Day, on the theory that housing starts in the city
would broaden the tax base for the entire county.
two medics.
While the County Court never formally deliber-
Capt. Stephanie Bigman, OSP’s media and public
relations representative, said in an email that she pre- ated on the city’s proposal, court members have made it
ferred not to give out specifi c locations and numbers of clear that the idea of linking county road fund money to
police services is a nonstarter.
SWAT team members.
The city and county still have not come to an agree-
Bigman said each case is evaluated based on the cir-
cumstances. Still, she said, generally a local jurisdic- ment on law enforcement funding. Nonetheless, Grant
tion would request SWAT team assistance through the County’s draft budget included a $300,000 contribution
chain of command and the SWAT commander, in con- from John Day.
One way or the other, McKinley said, the Sheriff ’s
junction with OSP Operations, would determine if OSP
Offi ce needs more staff .
SWAT is needed.
“It’s not like we’re asking for the moon,” McKin-
“Usually,” she said, “we can have the offi cer in
charge on the phone with a SWAT commander within ley said. “There just needs to be a few more people that
stand between evil and and the innocent.”
a few minutes.”
a better option all around.
“We will fill that void,”
Westbrooks said in her
email. She said local log-
gers and landowners can
contact the company to
learn more.
Prairie Wood also hopes
to collaborate with the
Malheur National Forest
and other public agencies
on “important” forest res-
toration projects.
Currently, Trulock said,
Prairie Wood does not have
a contract with the For-
est Service, but the mill’s
mothballed cogeneration
plant could provide a mar-
ket for biomass coming off
the forest.
The biomass, which
is essentially small logs,
branches
and
bushes
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Blue Mountain Eagle
Prairie City for more than
30 years and employed
upwards of 100 people
who worked two different
shifts, shuttered in 2008
amid a housing market
crash that led to a lack of
available sawlogs.
D.R. Johnson restarted
the mill in early 2009 but
shut it down permanently
by the end of the year.
The cleanup of the mill,
which sits at the west end
of Prairie City, concluded
in 2019.
Since then, much of
the mill equipment has
remained, along with the
co-gen plant.
In Friday’s email, West-
brooks added that the com-
pany had been hoping to
reopen the mill for years
as the family had always
wanted to return to Grant
County.
“We are excited to be
back and bring much-
needed jobs back to the
area,” she said, “reduce
wildfire risk and promote
forest health.”
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that would otherwise get
burned up in the forest or
left on the ground, could
be ground and burned in
the cogeneration plant to
generate heat and electric-
ity, Trulock said.
Prairie Wood plans to
restart the co-gen facility
after it obtains the proper
permits.
Jim Hamsher, Prai-
rie City’s mayor, told the
newspaper that after he
posted the Prairie Wood
Products press release on
his personal Facebook
page he received upwards
of 10 phone calls for more
information about the mill
and how to get hired.
The Prairie City mill
was purchased by the
D.R. Johnson Lumber Co.
in 1976. Two years later,
the family-owned com-
pany added a stud mill
and planer. Then, in the
late 1980s, the company
installed a co-generation
power plant.
The sawmill, which
operated successfully in
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S283676-1
139101
A10