Heppner home burns
Bessie Wetzell Newspaper Library
Unixersity of Oregon
Eugene, OR 97403
Heppner, Lexington
and lone firefighters
responded to a house fire at
545 S. E. Court in Heppner
on Thursday, February 15.
The house, owned by Rick
Haga of Redmond, was
vacant. The fire went
unnoticed until neighbors
heard the windows blow out
and called in the fire at 7:17
p.m.
The first two engines
were on the scene at 7:22
p.m. but the house was
already fully involved. Five
firefighters from Lexington Aftermath of lire
Heppner Fire Chief Rusty
and two engines and seven responded to the scene.
Estes.
firefighters from lone also
The fire is still under
investigation, according to
VOL. 126
NO. 8
10 Pages
Wednesday. February 21,2007
Morrow County, Heppner, Oregon
Portland company called in to work on
city sewer treatment plant
The city of Heppner has
called in a Portland
Company Pacific Power Vac
to help clean out the digester
at the city sewer plant.
Sediment in the digester tank
has been building up over the
years so that it is now 8 ft
deep and is making the sewer
treatm ent plant run
inefficiently.
City Manger David
DeMayo says the material in
the tank is made up of human
waste, paper towels, plastic,
hair and grease and is the
consistency of a type of
brink. “You can take it in
your hands and break it
apart, but it’s hard to get out
of there,” DeMayo said.
Which is why the Portland
company was called in.
DeMayo said it would take
about a week for the
company to clean out the
tank.
Workers for the company
said last week that they clean
out all kinds of tanks, oil
messes and hazardous
materials. “That's what we
do,” said Chuck Dollar after
climbing out of the tank to
clean up. “We have worked
inside two million gallon
tanks.” he said.
The sewer plant needs
updating to keep the
sediment from building up
again says DeMayo. He said
a mixer should be installed
to keep the material loosed
up when it is settling, and
also a broken grinder needs
to be replaced to help the
sewer plant operatve more
efficiently.
The Grinder would cost
about $58,000, money the
city doesn't have DeMayo
told the Heppner city council
at its regular monthly
meeting last Monday night.
In other business at the
meeting Mayor Les Paustian
gave out 2 plaques of
appreciation.
The council also voted to
declare excess sewer and
water material as surplus.
Paul Yauger gives worker Chuck Dollar a hosing down
after he gets out of the tank.
Kilkenny
named
Oregon
Athletic
Director
Editor's Note: The
business,” said Lynn
following article appeared
in the February 76 edition
of The Register-Guard. The
article was written bx Greg
Bolt.
If college athletics is
more about profit and loss
than X’s and O’s, might
soon find himself in familiar
surroundings.
But just how easy is
it to take the skills that make
someone a success in the
private-sector business
world and create success in
the world of public-sector
collegiate sports? That's the
question that Pat Kilkenny’s
moves over the coming
months w ill start to answer.
Kilkenny, 54, was
named Wednesday as the
surprise choice to become
the University of Oregon's
next athletic director. A self-
made insurance mogul, he
built a small company into a
nationwide operation w riting
almost $1 billion in
premiums
a year.
Lfe
sold the
company
l a s t
summer
and. with
a nine-
figure
building bridges with faculty,
donors and fans.
To those in the
sports management world,
it's not an unimaginable leap.
It's no more unusual than the
CEO of a cereal company
taking a job as. say. the head
of an investment firm,
something that would hardly
raise an eyebrow in the
corporate world.
"If you know how to
run a business, you should be
able to learn the nuances of
the new one as long as you
surround yourself w ith the
right people and have the
resources," said Andy
Fellingham of Inter-
Collegiate
Athletics
Consulting in New York. “If
he's a good manager, he
should be a good manager in
the athletic department.”
That's a common
view among those who
watch college sports from
the outside or from a
business perspective. For
them, athletics is a business
- at most Division I schools,
a big business - and hiring a
businessman as athletics
director is no more unusual
than putting on a suit in the
morning.
And the skill sets
aren't that different: A
corporate CEO has to
massage the egos of big
investors,
motivate
employees and build
consensus among competing
personalities
and
departments, in addition to
putting black ink on the
bottom line. An athletic
director deals with big
donors, motivates staff and
coaches, and builds
consensus not only among
competing programs but
with the academic
community, and at the UO is
expected to put black ink on
the bottom line.
"Let's face it. it's a
m ulti-m illion
dollar
Lashbrook, a former athletic
director and now president
of Portland-based Sports
Management Worldwide.
"And often in education we
don't bring that acumen for
business.”
Lashbrook and
others say that more athletic
departments are seeking that
expertise. At the news
conference announcing
Kilkenny's selection, UO
President Dave Frohnmayer
said the university looked for
precedents and found that
both the University of
M ichigan and Purdue
University had made similar
choices. The University of
W isconsin is another
institution that tapped its
booster base for an athletic
director.
Business sense is just
one of the skills a pick such
as Kilkenny brings to the
table. In an arena ever more
dependent on outside
revenue, he also will be
judged on his success at
building the donor base and
landing the big gifts, starting
with the ones needed for a
new basketball arena.
In this. Kilkenny
starts out w ith an advantage:
He's rich. And if wealth
attracts wealth, he might be
the person the UO needs to
preserve its status as one of
the few big schools with a
self-funded
athletic
department.
“One of the
problems you see with
fundraisers at universities is
they bring in people who
have never had money, so
they don't know how to talk
to people who have money,”
Fellingham said. “And
people who have money talk
different than people who
don't have money. This guy
has money; he can talk to
people who have money.”
tout in lied page 2
payout in
the bank,
agreed to Pat Kilkenny
take the
UO job
pro bono. Kilkenny attended
the UO in the 1970s but did
not graduate, though he still
Setiment built up in city's treatment tank
bleeds Duck green and
yellow.
Now he'll have to
show that his passion for
Duck athletics and his
business smarts give him
what it takes to run an
operation that demands both
financial and athletic
Heppner Mayor Les Paustian above right presents former success,
as well as a
mayor Tim VanC leave (left) and former councilmemher Tom statesmanlike
skill at
Wolff (right) with a plaque of appreciation for their time
served in city goverment.
executive session following the
The council instructed the regular meeting.
city manager to offer the The session concerned
material to Lexington and litigation against the City by
B L O W O U T S A L E NeVI g, used’
lone. It was of no use or Moore
Construction,
value to the City of Heppner. contractor on last year s big
The council also went into city water upgrade project.
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