OCTOBER 20, 2017 • VOL. 41, ISSUE 21
WWW.CANNONBEACHGAZETTE.COM
COMPLIMENTARY COPY
Th ree
fi nalists are
chosen for
city manager
Candidates come from
Arizona, Florida and the
Oregon Coast
By Brenna Visser
Cannon Beach Gazette
BRENNA VISSER/CANNON BEACH GAZETTE
Cat Wollen kisses her dog Pandemonium at Cannon Beach’s fi rst public dog blessing ceremony Oct. 4.
Blessing of the animals
Dogs and owners come to Cannon Beach
to celebrate Feast of St. Francis
By Brenna Visser
Cannon Beach Gazette
O
n a sunny October morning, about 50 dogs and
their owners gathered in Sandpiper Square for the
fi rst-ever public blessing of the animals ceremony.
The congregation at Cannon Beach Communi-
ty Church, like many churches around the U.S., have had
this celebration for years within chapel walls. The blessing
happens every Oct. 4 in honor of the Feast of St. Francis
of Assisi. Church members bring in animals for faith lead-
ers to bless to commemorate the life of St. Francis, who
is the Catholic Church’s patron saint of animals and the
environment.
But this year, church member Cat Wollen wanted to or-
ganize the ceremony in public as a way for the church to
reach out to the community through the love of animals.
“I named my dog ‘Pandemonium’ because when I got
him my life was in pandemonium,” Wollen said. “But he’s
the one who helped put me back together.”
Wollen shared the idea with Emmas Lindsay, the owner
of Dogs Allowed in Cannon Beach, and her pastor, David
Robinson, who together arranged the program. People and
their dogs sang worship songs, and after the blessing each
dog received a St. Francis charm.
The Christian faith has always been a part of Wollen’s
life, but a period of depression and personal life challenges
tested it, she said. Part of how she found her way back to
her religion was through the support her dog provided her.
To Wollen, there are many entry points into the faith.
Wollen wants to be inclusive, and if the way she can do
that is through a pet, then so be it, she said.
“My faith has always been vital to me, but why I love
it is because it is about love and kindness and mercy,” she
said. “And honestly, that’s what animals do for you.”
Lindsay said she hopes to work with Wollen next year
to expand the ceremony to include more people, but was
happy to see the reaction of those who did attend.
“It’s been a dream of mine to have a public celebration
like this,” she said. “I have no doubt it will continue to
grow.”
The search for Cannon Beach’s new city
manager is now down to three fi nalists.
The candidates, announced at a spe-
cial meeting Tuesday, were chosen by city
councilors in executive session last week
from a pool of six semifi nalists. They come
from as close as Nehalem and as far as Ari-
zona and Florida.
The process to fi nd a new city manager
started four months ago after Brant Kucera
left the position for a job in Sisters. Thir-
ty-three people applied for the post , 14 from
Oregon.
“The level of management experience
the applicants had was impressive,” Mayor
Sam Steidel said.
One of the candidates, Bruce St. Denis
of Longboat Key, Florida, was also in the
running with Kucera to be the city manag-
er of Sisters. St. Denis is a manager at the
Development Planning & Financing Group,
a private development company in Tampa .
He previously served as the town manager
for Longboat Key for 15 years, and holds
a master’s degree in management from the
University of South Florida.
The other out-of-state fi nalist, Peter
M. Jankowski, served as town manager of
Cave Creek, Arizona, for three years. He
holds a juris doctorate from the Franklin
Pierce Law Center and has worked more
than 20 years in municipal government as a
town manager in Massachusetts and Maine.
He also served as a state representative in
New Hampshire.
Jankowski left Cave Creek because the
C ity C ouncil decided not to renew his con-
tract for another year, according to a city
press release.
Kevin Greenwood, the one local candi-
date, lives in Nehalem and has 13 years of
upper-level local government experience on
the Oregon Coast. He holds a master’s de-
gree in public administration from Portland
State University and has worked as the city
manager of Garibaldi and general manager
of the Port of Garibaldi for fi ve years each.
See Finalists, Page 6A
Tackling tourism: Counties seek a balance to preserve resources
By Brenna Visser
Cannon Beach Gazette
COLIN MURPHEY/EO MEDIA GROUP
PAID
PERMIT NO. 97
ASTORIA, OR
PRSRT STD
US POSTAGE
Overcrowding and lack of suffi cient parking are some of
the concerns with increased tourism on the North Coast .
After the weather, tourism
has become one of the biggest
conversation starters on the
North Coast.
As the number of people
visiting the region grows, so
does the impact on the com-
munity. According to a study
done by Dean Runyan Asso-
ciates, tourists spent $779 mil-
lion in 2016, almost doubling
the $391 million recorded in
2000. More than 8,000 tour-
ism-related jobs were support-
ed by travel spending in 2016.
But with the economic
benefi t comes issues of over-
crowding . Trails are taking a
beating. counted More than
100,000 visitors were count-
ed at Haystack Rock just this
year. Insuffi cient parking in
places like Cannon Beach has
left communities feeling over-
whelmed.
To help address the con-
cerns , the Cannon Beach
Chamber of Commerce and
the Haystack Rock Aware-
ness Program have secured a
$20,000 rural tourism studio
grant from Travel Oregon, the
state’s largest tourism agency.
“Around here, sometimes
we have too much of a good
thing,” Court Carrier, the
chamber’s executive direc-
tor, said. “What can we do to
manage tourism better?”
A rural tourism studio is
a multi year project where
professionals from Trav-
el Oregon lead workshops
and offer guidance on how
to make tourism sustainable
— environmentally and eco-
nomically — for Clatsop and
Tillamook counties. T he grant
must be used to fi nance a tan-
gible change or product, like
connecting a trail system or
launching an environmental
education program .
A committee of about 30
industry leaders from private
businesses, state and national
parks, environmental groups
and visitors associations met
last week in Cannon Beach to
fi gure out how to expand tour-
ism without sacrifi cing the
area’s natural resources and
quality of life .
See Tourism, Page 6A
A historical look at the city’s Chinook and Clatsop tribes
How tribes
conveyed
history
By Nancy McCarthy
For Cannon Beach Gazette
Cannon Beach hasn’t al-
ways been a tourist Mecca or
even an arts colony.
Until the mid-19th century,
Cannon Beach, as well as the
rest of the North Coast, was
home to the Clatsop and Chi-
nook tribes.
“The Chinook and Clatsop
Indians were the fi rst residents
of Cannon Beach. They were
here probably for thousands of
years. For the most part, these
proud people are gone,” Robert
Moberg, retired Seaside attor-
ney and municipal court judge,
told those attending the Can-
non Beach Library member-
ship meeting Oct. 4. The meet-
ing also was one of the events
planned this year to celebrate
the library’s 90th anniversary.
Moberg, who is 1/16th Chi-
nook, is a descendant of Chi-
nook Chief Comcomly.
“It’s hard to imagine what
Cannon Beach was like 150
years ago,” Moberg said. “In
the 1850s, there were very few
Caucasian people here; one
book indicates there were only
four Caucasians in Astoria in
1850.”
Native Americans, how-
ever, “would have been num-
bered in the tens of thousands,”
having originally traveled
over a land bridge, he added.
“Clatsops and Chinooks were
probably composed of many
nationalities that arrived at the
mouth of the Columbia River
and the Chinooks, who lived
mostly north of the Columbia
River, were part of a “vast trad-
ing empire,” Moberg said.
While the tribes’ oral tra-
ditions extend back hundreds
of years, their written histo-
ry begins with the journals of
Merriweather Lewis and Lewis
Clark, who explored the local
area in 1805. The explorers
considered the tribes “quite ad-
mirable,” Moberg said.
“They described them as
‘mild with good sense, loqua-
cious and inquisitive, king
traders that held their own with
the expedition.”
Their major occupation,
Moberg added was “trade, not
war, although they were pretty
good at war.”
“Indians in this area had a
much greater standard of liv-
ing than most of those in most
of the United States,” Moberg
said. Their longhouses, made
Retired Seaside attor-
ney and municipal
judge Robert Moberg
displays a stone pestle
and mortar found in
the Columbia River
basin. Moberg, who is
part Chinook, believes
the mortar and pestle
was used by Indians
to grind food. He
displayed it during a
lecture at the Cannon
Beach Library.
NANCY MCCARTHY/
FOR CANNON BEACH GAZETTE
out of cedar planks, were
dug fi ve feet into the ground.
Sometimes, more than one
family lived in a longhouse.”
Slaves were kept, he added,
but they often were treated like
members of the family, staying
in the same longhouse.
“They were treated fairly
well, except, on occasion, if
the master died, they would
kill the slave and bury it with
the master.”
A good slave was worth
“as much as a horse or 10 to
12 blankets,” Moberg said.
See Tribes, Page 9A