Image provided by: Morrow County Museum; Heppner, OR
About Heppner gazette-times. (Heppner, Or.) 1925-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 8, 2010)
EO publisher speaks to Tea Party group By David Sykes Tom Brown, pub lisher o f the East Oregonian new spaper in Pendleton, was the featured speaker at M onday’s Willow Creek Tea Party meeting. Tea Party members q uestioned B row n, who has been publisher since April, about several issues including the newspaper’s VOL. 129 NO. 48 8 Pages Wednesday, December 8, 2010 Morrow County, Heppner, Oregon Heppner Christmas event planned for Dec. 16 H eppner’s Christ mas event for this year is planned for December 16. The evening will kick o ff w ith the annual parade of lights at 5:30 p.m. Parade entrants will meet at Green Feed at 5 p.m. to line up. Anyone wishing to enter the parade can pick up an entry form at the Heppner Chamber office. A fter the parade a spaghetti m eal will be served from 6-7:15 p.m. at the Elks Lodge. The cost is $7 for adults and $5 for children. A $10 rew ards card will be given for every meal purchased. M usical entertainment will be pro vided during dinner. Pictures with Santa will be taken on the stage at the Elks Lodge. The cost is $5 per picture. A c t i v i t i e s w ill move upstairs at the Elks Lodge from 7:15-9:30 p.m. where you can drop rewards card in to sp ecific prize containers. Find “Scrooge” and see if you can get him to hand over a reward card or two. Cookies, coffee, and punch will be served. Also during this time will be the introduction of the foreign exchange students and their host families. The evening will wrap up with drawing for reward card items and the announcement of the Christ mas raffle item winners. This year’s raffles include an 8GB iPod Touch and a 40” W estinghouse Flat Screen TV (1080P LCD HDTV). Raffle tickets are one for $1 or six for $5. Man arrested for Irrigon robbery The Morrow Coun ty Sheriffs Office on Thurs day, December 2, arrested Dillion Joseph Dilley, 21, for Robbery I. A t 1 2 :4 0 a .m . MCSO received a report of a robbery at Bakes Restau rant and Lounge in Irrigon. The caller stated that a male in a plaid hoodie jacket, black jea n s threatened a bartender, brandishing a broken beer bottle. M C S O D e p u ty Scott Carter was in the area and located the suspect near the restaurant. The deputy interviewed the suspect and subsequently took him into custody for Robbery in the First Degree. Deputy Carter recovered $330 in the sus pect’s pocket. Dilley was trans ported and lodged in the Umatilla County Jail with bail set at $50,000. ZeaChem meets key financial milestones in biorefinery construction endorsement o f John Kit- zhaber over Chris Dudley for g overnor in the last election. Tea Party mem bers felt D udley w ould have represented Eastern O regon better than K it- zhaber, who had close ties to the Portland metro area and won election by taking seven counties all in the western part o f the state. Dudley was a solid winner in all eastern and southern Oregon counties. B ro w n s a id th e paper made the endorse m ent because K itzhaber had m ore ex perience in politics and that out of the two candidates he was the only one who a ccep ted the paper’s invitation to be interviewed by the editorial writers. “We asked Dudley several times but he never did come in and talk to us,’ Brown said. Brown also gave a brief history o f his back ground. He was born in Boise and then went to high school in M adras w here he was editor o f the White Buffalo school newspaper. From there he atten d ed O regon State U niversity where he graduated in 1969 with a degree in journal ism. He went on to get his m aster’s degree before he went to work at newspa pers in Montana and New H am p sh ire for over 20 years before coming out of retirement to be publisher and editor of the East Or egonian. He explained that the East Oregonian is not affiliated with the Orego nian in Portland, but does own several other papers in Oregon, including ones in John Day, Astoria, Wal lowa and Hermiston. The paper chain also owns the a g ric u ltu ra l n e w sp a p e r Capital Press, based in Sa lem. He said it was good that the new spaper was independently ow ned by the Forrester family. “It is a great thing to have local ownership o f newspapers,” he said. He pointed out that two thirds of the newspa pers in America are publicly owned companies. O th e r q u e s tio n s EO publisher Toni Brown, center, spoke at the Willow Creek Tea Parts meeting Monday night. -Photo by David Sykes asked o f Brown included why the new spaper was not more balanced in the political views expressed in its news coverage. “How would we stack up against someone being liberal or conservative?” Brown re sponded. “I would say we are an independent voice,’ he said. “ I w o u ld n ’t say we are conservative or lib eral.” Tea P arty m em ber Sam Hombeck said he thought the newspaper was too pro-environm entalist, such as favoring the move to reinstate the w olf popu lation in Oregon, and also had an anti-logging stance, w hich H ornbeck said is against the best interests of the natural resource busi nesses in Eastern Oregon. Some others asked B ro w n how th e p a p e r chooses w hich political cartoons to run in the news paper. Brown said the EO does not have a cartoonist on staff but purchases the cartoons from a service and then picks the ones that “get people to think. They also get people pretty emo tional,” he said. He added that the paper’s national and international news comes from the Associated Press, o f which the EO is a mem ber. As far as the fu ture o f newspapers in the internet age, Brown said he thinks newspapers will survive because, for one reason, they are easier to read. He says a person can cover more news quicker w ith the print version than one can scanning for news links from an internet site. Brown said the EO does have a web site with news, and offers breaking news on that site for free. But he said if people want to go inside the site and get more expanded news they need to purchase a subscription to the site or a subscription to the print newspaper to gain access. Heppner lights up for Christmas Main Street Heppner was recently lit up for Christmas. Beth Dickenson and John Flaherty, staff members at Heppner High School; Larissa Gray, Amber Gray, Shelbi VViggers, Stephanie Schuler, Romana Pafkova, Tate Gentry, Mekenzi Hughes, Haley Struckmeier, Kyle Harrison, Brett Harrison, Justin Guiterrez, Garrett Robinson, Devin Robinson, Marou- cha Veerman, Louise Torell, Hannah Koelker, Justin Bailey, Conner Pappas, Frida Larsson, Anne Gokesch. Justin Yocom, Karoline Sundklakk, Tom Gould, and Joe Schmidt, students at HHS; and John Edmundson, community volunteer helped to light up the town. NOAA issues monthly climate summary for Heppner Project on schedule to begin production o f Cellulosic Ethanol in 2011 ZeaC hem Inc., a developer o f biorefineries for the conversion o f renew able biomass into sustain able fuels and chemicals, rec e n tly a n n o u n ced the accomplishment o f two key financial milestones in the construction o f its 250,000 gallon-per-year biorefinery in Boardman. First, the company has obtained a guaranteed m axim um price (G M P), under the Engineering, Pro curement and Construction (E P C ) a g re e m e n ts w ith engineering firm Bums & M cDonnell, for construc tion o f the core facility. The core facility will con vert sugars into acetic acid and then ethyl acetate, the chemical precursors, under ZeaChem ’s process, to the production o f ethanol. Sec ond, ZeaChem has secured full construction funding for the core facility. The $25 million grant from the U.S. DOE will be used to fund the independent front and back-end cellulosic pro cess components, enabling ZeaChem to produce fuel grade ethanol as well as in termediate chemicals from non-food related biomass. “ Since 1898 we have built a reputation of making our customers suc cessful with practical tech nology advancements and p red ic ta b le c o s ts ,” said John N obles, P resident, Process & Industrial Group at B urns & M cD onnell. “We look forward to help ing ZeaChem deploy their technology.” The core unit o f the biorefinery is currently under construction at the site location in Boardman and foundations are being poured. “ZeaChem has suc cessfully completed the fi nancial milestones to ensure that our biorefinery project can be completed on budget and on schedule,” said Jim Imbler, president and CEO o f ZeaChem Inc. “We look forward to beginning cel lulosic ethanol production in 2011.” ZeaChem will de velop com m ercial scale biorefineries upon success ful operations at the Board- man facility. According to pre liminary data received by NOAA’s National Weather Service in Pendleton tem peratures at Heppner aver aged slightly colder than normal during the month of November. The average tem perature was 39.8 degrees which was 1.3 degrees be low normal. High tempera tures averaged 48.8 degrees, which was 1.1 degrees be low norm al. The highest was 69 degrees on the 2nd. Low temperatures averaged 30.9 degrees, which was 1.5 degrees below normal. which is expensive. This The lowest was 0 degrees, can be easily avoided, don’t on the 24,h. put it off. There were 14 days For more informa- with the low tem perature tion call City Hall at 541 - below 32 degrees. There 676-9618. were two days when the • City reminds residents to insulate water meters The City o f Hep- pner Public Works Depart- ment reminds all Heppner resid en ts that it is y our responsibility to insulate your water meters to pro- tect them from freezing and breaking. Insulation material can be purchased at the local hardware store, If you fail to insulate the m eter and it breaks, the customer is responsible for replacem ent o f the meter Area pastors invited to submit Christmas messages The Heppner Gazette-Times invites area pastors to submit Christmas mes sages to be published in the December 22 edition. The deadline is Friday, December 17, at 5 p.m. Messages can be dropped off at the Gazette office, emailed to editor@rapid- serve.net, or faxed to 541 -676-9211. ALL NEWS AND ADVERTISEMENT DEADLINE: MONDAYS AT 5:00 P.M. high tem perature stayed below 32 degrees. P re cip ita tio n to taled 1.82 inches during November, w hich was 0.05 inches above normal. Mea surable precipitation -at least .01 inch-was received on 14 days with the heavi est, 0.43 inches reported on the 14,h. Precipitation this year has reached 14.35 inches, which is 2.17 inches above normal. Since Octo ber, the water year precipi tation at Heppner has been 3.10 inches, which is 0.64 inches above normal. Snow fall totaled 5.5 inches with at least 1 inch o f snow reported on three days. The heaviest snow fall was 2.5 inches reported on the 23rd. The greatest depth of snow on the ground was 3 inches on the 23"i. T he ou tlo o k for D ecem ber from NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center calls for near normal tem peratures and above nor mal precipitation. Normal highs for Heppner fall from 43.5 degrees at the start of December to 41.6 degrees at the end o f December. Normal lows fall from 27.9 degrees to 26.2 degrees. The 30 year normal precipi tation is 1.33 inches. The National Weather Service is an office of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Adm inistra tion, an agency o f the U.S. Commerce Department. YOUR REWARDS CARDS HERE! Holiday Hours: M onday - Friday- 8:00am - 5:30pm Saturday- 8:00am - 4:00pm C hristmas trees now IN STOCK G o o d s e l e c t io n o f N o b l e , G r a n d & D o u g la s F ir Morrow County Grain Growers I
