The Columbia
Press year
Celebrating
our 100th
1
50 ¢
503-861-3331
January 21, 2022
Vol. 6, Issue 3
Drive and dreams
bring honor for
Warrenton student
Problems in Planning
City struggles to get,
keep planning staff
By Cindy Yingst
The Columbia Press
Warrenton is having trouble getting
Planning Department directors to stay.
In the past five years, the city has had
six planners and interim city planners.
Planning Director Scott Hazelton re-
cently announced his resignation. He
has been with the city less than five
months.
“I find it extremely difficult having
rotating planning directors or none at
all,” said Lylla Gaebel, who has served
as a planning commissioner for two
years. “I never know where someone is
going to be coming from, and it leaves
planning commissioners acting on
their own a lot and going on what their
history is rather than having direction.”
Hazelton was preceded by Will Ca-
plinger, a former Clatsop County plan-
ning manager. Caplinger, who now
lives in Taiwan, worked for the city on
an interim basis.
Scott Hess, the city’s last planning
director, stayed with the city just six
months before leaving.
Hess had been preceded by interim
The Columbia Press
Hazelton Caplinger
Hess
Barnes
Cronin
Urling
Warrenton has
had problems keeping
its Planning Department staffed.
The department oversees building and
development in the city.
director Mark Barnes, who’d retired
as planning director of the city of
Cannon Beach.
Before Barnes was Kevin Cronin,
who served as community develop-
ment director for two years before
taking a job with the city of Mount
Angel.
Skip Urling, whom Cronin re-
placed, retired in March 2018 after
five years with the city.
“We’ve had some really, really tal-
ented people come through” Gaebel
said. “I’m really sorry to lose this lat-
est (director); he seemed to really be
on board.”
Hazelton has been living at the Mo-
tel 6 because he couldn’t find perma-
nent housing, he said. His support
See ‘Planning’ on Page 3
Warrenton High School
senior Alejandra Lopez
Nestor will represent the
state of Oregon in this
year’s United States Senate
Youth Program.
Alejandra
and
Caro-
line Xingyan Gao of Al-
bany were selected from
among the state’s top
Alejandra
student leaders to be part of
Lopez
Nestor
the 104 students who make
up the national student delegation.
The two will join U.S. Sens. Ron Wyden
and Jeff Merkley in representing Oregon
during the 60th annual U.S. Senate Youth
Program’s Washington Week, to be held
March 6-9. They’ll also receive $10,000 col-
lege scholarships.
“I was very surprised to hear that I had won
since I thought being one of two people in
the entire state chosen for the United States
Senate Youth Program was unimaginable,”
she said.
Alejandra grew up the child of immigrant
See ‘Senate’ on Page 8
Setup for supply shortages in place long before the pandemic, economist says
By Emily Halnon
University of Oregon
There has been a lot of talk about problems with
the supply chain during the pandemic.
But factors for the logjam were in place well
before COVID-19 hit, according to University of
Oregon economist Keaton Miller.
Problems started back in the ‘80s, when fi-
nal-goods manufacturers adopted a “just in time”
approach to storing inventory on site, Miller said.
Companies like Toyota decided it wasn’t a smart
business move to have warehouses full of parts
well before they were needed for the final build
of the car. They didn’t want to pay to store excess
car doors or windshield wipers when they could
instead streamline their production with more ef-
ficient timing of supply deliveries.
This operational strategy triggered a shift to-
ward more specialization and efficiency in the
supply chain, where every link of the chain got
more precise. But while businesses may have ex-
perienced cost savings from enhanced efficiency,
it also increased the fragility of the system.
“Essentially, this created multiple points of fail-
ure,” Miller said. “The supply chain became more
susceptible to breaking down due to a disruption.”
Two such disruptions were the tariffs imposed
on China during the Trump administration and
the coronavirus.
“The pandemic hit and screwed everything up
on both the supply side and the demand side, for
Courtesy University of Oregon
certain goods,” Miller said.
Shelves in one big box store were completely decimated as
See ‘Supply chain’ on Page 4 supply chain issues affect food sales.