Food cart rolls into Monument
NEWS
MyEagleNews.com
By JUSTIN DAVIS
Blue Mountain Eagle
T
hirty-year-old
Kegan Forrester
made a bold
move on Aug. 1,
when he opened
a mobile food cart in Monu-
ment, a town that boasts fewer
than 150 residents.
So far, his gamble appears
to be paying oﬀ .
His establishment, the Rim
Rock Grill, boasts a restau-
rant-style menu with everything
from bacon, eggs and toast for
breakfast to ribeye steak for din-
ner. The building itself is a full
camp trailer that has been cut
open at the end, extended and
reframed like a house.
Forrester said the reason
for the construction method
was to have more room and
make the vehicle feel like a
restaurant. “I didn’t want a
food cart, I wanted a restau-
rant,” he said. “I wanted to do
a restaurant menu. … I didn’t
want like a hotdog or barbe-
cue, I didn’t want to zone in
on just one thing.”
Another unique feature
of the Rim Rock Grill is the
facade of the establishment
itself. Forrester ditched the
typical look of a food cart,
instead going with a rustic
SALEM — State regu-
lators say it’s a coincidence
some home insurance policies
were revoked or became more
expensive after the rollout of
Oregon’s ill-fated wildﬁ re risk
map.
Insurance decisions that
adversely aﬀ ected landown-
ers were made independently,
since none of the companies
operating in the state report
the map aﬀ ecting their actions,
according to state insurance
regulators.
The allegations arose from
the “great deal of misinforma-
tion about the state wildﬁ re
risk map and its connection
to insurance,” said Andrew
Stolﬁ , insurance commis-
sioner with the state’s Depart-
ment of Consumer and Busi-
ness Services.
In early summer, a state-
wide map identiﬁ ed 80,000
properties facing high or
extreme ﬁ re risk in the wild-
land-urban interface, which
meant they were subject to
looming defensible space
regulations.
An outcry from landown-
ers convinced the state Depart-
ment of Forestry to withdraw
the wildﬁ re risk map roughly
a month later, vowing to come
up with a revised version after
reviewing data and communi-
cating with the public.
Some critics said the map
caused them to lose home
insurance policies or pay heft-
ier premiums, but a state gov-
ernment survey of insurance
companies has failed to sub-
stantiate those complaints.
Not a single insurer
reported raising rates or refus-
ing to renew policies due to
the map, according to a for-
mal data call to which compa-
nies were required to respond
by law.
“Insurers are in the risk
identiﬁ cation business and
have for years used their own
tools, including their own risk
maps, in their decision-mak-
ing,” Stolﬁ told lawmak-
ers during a recent legislative
hearing.
Any cost hikes or policy
cancelations were based on
private and unrelated conclu-
sions about rising ﬁ re dangers,
which simply occurred around
the same time, he said.
“We’re seeing our insur-
ers respond to that risk,” Stolﬁ
said.
Though it’s believable
insurers truly weren’t inﬂ u-
enced by the map, that actu-
ally highlights the eﬀ ort’s
shortcomings, said Dave Hun-
nicutt, president of the Ore-
gon Property Owners Asso-
ciation, which advocates for
landowners.
“If I were the state, I
wouldn’t be bragging about
it,” he said. “There’s no reason
for the insurance companies to
A7
Grant County Neighbors
NAME: Kegan Forrester
AGE: 30
RESIDENCE: Monument
OCCUPATION: Owner/operator of
The Rim Rock Grill in Monument
ETC.: The Rim Rock Grill, run from
Forrester’s home, is Monument’s only restaurant
wooden look that makes the
place feel more like a tradi-
tional restaurant and less like
a cart on wheels.
Forrester was born in
Monument and stayed there
throughout most of his youth
before moving away during
his junior year of high school.
He stayed away for a number
of years before returning to
Monument in 2020.
At ﬁ rst, Forrester was driv-
ing back and forth from Mon-
ument to John Day, where he
worked as a welder. But high
gasoline prices were a prob-
lem, and the lack of a restaurant
in Monument was an opportu-
nity. So Forrester decided to
get out of the welding business
and into the food business.
“I got tired of not having a
resource in town, so I was like,
State: Fire map didn’t
aﬀ ect insurance
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Capital Press
Wednesday, October 5, 2022
rely on the state map.”
State regulators should take
a page from insurance compa-
nies and develop a map that
accurately assesses ﬁ re risks,
Hunnicutt said.
The withdrawn map erro-
neously lumped properties
together even if they were
managed diﬀ erently, he said.
“It was based on computer
modeling and never ground-
truthed,” Hunnicutt said.
Homes that had been hard-
ened against ﬁ re and sur-
rounded by defensible space
were classiﬁ ed at the same risk
level as neighboring proper-
ties overgrown with ﬂ amma-
ble vegetation, he said.
Though landowners could
appeal their classiﬁ cation, they
could only argue the state had
misapplied its own criteria
to the area, he said. Eﬀ orts to
make a speciﬁ c property more
resistant to ﬁ re weren’t consid-
ered relevant.
“Even if you cut all the
trees and paved the whole
site, you’d never get out of the
extreme classiﬁ cation,” Hun-
nicutt said.
Insurance companies, on
the other hand, “actually have
skin in the game,” so they ana-
lyze the risks more precisely,
he said.
Hunnicutt sits on the state’s
wildﬁ re programs advisory
council and has recommended
that regulators emulate the
approach insurance companies
take.
“If you’re going to regulate
how people use their property,
that regulation should be based
on accurate data,” he said.
He also believes the coun-
cil’s proceedings should be
better publicized and taken
on the road, to engage with
the views of community
members.
“It seems like nobody
knows who we are or what we
do,” Hunnicutt said. “There are
a lot of these issues we could
help the public understand.”
Public meetings to discuss
the wildﬁ re risk map were
scheduled during the sum-
mer, but threats of violence
prompted state oﬃ cials to can-
cel a meeting in Grants Pass in
late July.
‘I’m going to build something
and maybe hire one of the
high-schoolers to run it,’ and
then it’ll give the community
something and I won’t have to
cook dinner every night,” he
said. “Kind of the best of both
worlds.”
Rising fuel prices left For-
rester without much money at
the end of the month follow-
ing daily commutes to John
Day, which kicked his restau-
rant plans into high gear.
“We buckled down and got
it ﬁ nished. We hired a high
school student. It didn’t work
out right away because she’s
playing sports and stuﬀ ,” For-
rester said.
One of the things Forrester
takes pride in is preparing all
the ingredients for his dishes
in-house.
By Justin Davis/Blue Mountain Eagle
Kegan Forrester sits in the service window of the Rim Rock Grill in Monument on Friday, Sept. 30, 2022.
“All my pulled pork, all
my meat — that stuﬀ is all
done in-house,” he said. “We
smoke our own corned beef,
we smoke the pulled pork,
we smoke the chicken for our
street tacos.”
All of those things, from
the facade to the preparation
of the food, contribute to For-
rester’s main goal, which is to
make you feel like you’re at a
restaurant and not a food cart.
His ultimate goal is for the
Rim Rock Cafe to turn into a
well-known foodie destina-
tion similar to the Dayville
Cafe.
The reception from the
community has been great so
far, according to Forrester.
“It’s been awesome. We love
it. I hope the community and
people continue to support us
and whatnot, because they’ve
been amazing,” he said.
“I hope it doesn’t slow
down to the point that it’s not
sustainable, but as of right
now they’ve been great.”
The Rim Rock Grill is
open daily from 7:30 a.m. to
8 p.m. The restaurant can be
contacted at 541-934-2551
and can be found on Facebook
@TheRimrockGrill.
Shearer’s won’t rebuild in Hermiston
the company in getting the
site ready to market for other
potential users.
Morgan said the site still is
a good one due to its proximity
to state freeways, Interstate 82
and Interstate 84.
“It also has a dedicated rail-
spur onsite, has large-scale
water on-site and all of the
necessary power and gas are
on-site,” he said. “So we’re
hopeful that we’ll be able to
work with the company to
understand their long-range
disposal plans for the property,
and then work with our local
agricultural production and
processing community to ﬁ nd
out what the potential market
is for reuse of the site in a way
that beneﬁ ts all of our agricul-
tural producers in the region.”
According to the Shearer’s
Foods website, the Hermiston
plant, which opened in 2010,
was the company’s only pro-
duction facility in the Paciﬁ c
Northwest. The Ohio-based
company’s other locations are in
Ohio, Texas, Arkansas, Virginia,
Iowa, Minnesota, Arizona, Penn-
sylvania and Ontario, Canada.
MARCO GRAMACHO
Hermiston Herald
HERMISTON — Shear-
er’s Foods announced it will not
rebuild its Hermiston plant after
a ﬁ re in February destroyed the
facility.
Shearer’s estimated earlier
this year that it would take 15 to
18 months to rebuild the plant.
“It was a diﬃ cult deci-
sion not to rebuild in Hermis-
Erick Peterson/Hermiston Herald
ton because of our dedicated
employees and all the support A toppled section of the Shearer’s plant stands Monday, April
we’ve received from the com- 4, 2022.
munity over the years,” Shear-
er’s Foods Chairman and CEO Center was the site of a job fair reemployment by now.”
Bill Nictakis said in a press in mid March.
By July, he said, the coun-
release.
“We had an amazing turnout ty-wide unemployment rate
“As Shearer’s continues to of 42 businesses oﬀ ering posi- was at an all-time low of 3.8%,
grow, we have decided that it is tions to the displaced workers,” down from the 4.1% in Feb-
in the company’s best interest Morgan remembered.
ruary at the time of the ﬁ re.
to focus our resources on max-
Shearer’s Foods also is Prior to that, he said, the lowest
imizing production at our other encouraging employees will- unemployment rate on records
facilities.”
ing to relocate to apply at other dating back to 2005 in Umatilla
Hermiston Assistant City locations.
County was 4.1% in November,
Manager Mark Morgan said the
Morgan said it obviously 2019 just before the pandemic.
move not to rebuild will have lit- unfortunate and distressing for
Hermiston is looking to
tle eﬀ ect on the city’s economy. the individual workers the ﬁ re meet with Shearer’s oﬃ cials
“The plant closing doesn’t displaced, but “it is positive to to identify what their long-term
impact Hermiston from a prop- see that they were displaced plans are for the property itself,
erty tax perspective because the into a job market that is operat- and how the city can assist
plant was not located within the ing in a way that most of them
city limits,” he said. “However, have likely been able to ﬁ nd
Shearer’s was the only customer
taking potable water from our
regional water system.”
Morgan said Hermiston was
anticipating receiving $210,000
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CROCODILE
(PG)
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(R)
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In the 1930s, three friends witness a murder, are framed for
and uncover one of the most outrageous plots in
on Friday, Sept. 23, it notiﬁ ed it, American
history.
employees of the decision ear-
lier last week.
SMILE
(R)
witnessing a bizarre, traumatic incident involving
Shearer’s closed the Herm- After
a patient, Dr. Rose Cotter starts experiencing frightening
iston plant indeﬁ nitely after occurrences that she can’t explain.
a boiler explosion and subse- BROS
(R)
quent ﬁ re destroyed the facility. Two men with commitment problems attempt a relationship.
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has worked with community
organizations to help them ﬁ nd
employment in the meantime.
The Hermiston Community
See Bob Quinton for
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293 N. Broadway/ Burns (541) 573-12006
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