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About The Columbia press. (Astoria, Or.) 1949-current | View Entire Issue (April 20, 2018)
T he C olumbia P ress Crab Fest Guide Inside! 1 50 ¢ C laTsoP C ounTy ’ s i ndePendenT W eekly n eWsPaPer 503-861-3331 April 20, 2018 City crafts plan to complete its biggest projects The Columbia Press A street near you could be repaved, the city’s dog park will be improved and the police department will get two new patrol cars. Warrenton city commissioners and department heads sat down for a work session Tuesday evening to decide what major projects will be funded in the 2018-19 fiscal year. The Capital Improvement Plan cov- ers major projects that will be com- pleted in the next five years. Howev- er, only projects with assured funding are included in the coming year. “I’m an idea guy, so we’ll start out doing that,” Mayor Pro Tem Rick Newton said in opening the meeting. Mayor Henry Balensifer was out of town, but participated in the meeting through a phone connection. Two of Newton’s suggestions were “Welcome to Historic Hammond” signs at the entryways to the small town, which is now fully incorporated into the city of Warrenton, and mak- ing better use of the electronic reader board in front of the fire station. Among the highlights in the com- ing year: L iBrary • Library automation with soft- ware, cataloging tools, web hosting, See ‘Projects’ on Page 2 Cindy Yingst/The Columbia Press A bus and large pickup shimmy by each other at Ninth and Main streets. Vol. 2, Issue 16 House of frustration Homeowner blames city for excessive fees and delays B y C indy y ingst The Columbia Press It’s a rule of thumb when building a house: increase the budget and double the esti- mated completion time because something is bound to go wrong. Dale Adams of Ham- mond had no idea how wrong things would go. Adams, who makes Above: Dale Adams his living as a crabber, stands in front of the built his new home off house that has been King Salmon Street a source of frustra- three years ago. The city tion and, he says, required him to spend high city fees. $120,000 to extend Left: Adams and his utilities down the gravel crabbing crew work road to his property, he on a net outside his said. home. He claims city officials Cindy Yingst told him other vacant The Columbia Press properties on his street were on wetlands and not buildable, so he had to carry the burden himself. But now those properties are being built up around him and he’s received noth- ing from those who are tying into the utility lines he paid for. He claims three city employees – none of whom still works for the city -- colluded to get as much developer fee money from him as possible. A bevy of delays and inspections dragged out the building pro- cess. “They were kicking me around like a beach See ‘Frustrated’ on pg 10 Warrenton ponders what to do when good elk go ‘bad’ B y C indy y ingst The Columbia Press Elk are a curiosity for tourists and many residents, but no one should think of them as sweet, docile crea- tures, a state wildlife biologist told a group attending a town hall meeting. “Elk don’t understand the intention of a person,” said Herman Bieder- beck of the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. Nearly all the recent incidents in- volving negative elk-human interac- tions were due to improper behavior by a human, he said. Mayor Henry Balensifer called the April 12 meeting after receiving queries from locals wanting to know what the city is doing about elk. The issue became personal for Bal- ensifer when his wife, Kelsey, was running along a city trail when she was charged three times by a bull elk who pushed her into the brambles. People need to give elk a wide berth from late August to October, which is breeding season, when males can get aggressive, and again in the spring, when females have babies, said Sgt. Joe Warwick, an Oregon State Patrol officer in the fish and wildlife divi- sion. There were three incidents along the North Coast in the past year where situations involving elk rose to a pub- lic safety concern, Warwick said. The first involved a cow elk with a calf in the grass along a beach access in Gearhart. The elk charged several people walking to the beach. “The elk was acting within its natu- ral nature,” Warwick said. Eventually, the mother was tran- quilized and she and the calf were moved to a more suitable location out of the path of humans. But it took two Gearhart police officers, four state troopers, three ODFW employees and several Gearhart Public Works employees. A second incident involved a Ham- See ‘Elk’ on Page 12