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About Heppner gazette-times. (Heppner, Or.) 1925-current | View Entire Issue (July 17, 2013)
SIX - Heppner Gazette-Times, Heppner, Oregon Wednesday, July 17, 2013 BOARDMAN FIRE SEEKS CREZ FUNDS •Continuedfrom PAGE ONE truck to fight potential fires. Aerial trucks have long ex tension ladders and hoses capable o f reaching the higher buildings. He gave as an exam ple the new 85-foot-high building at the Tillamook Cheese Plant. He also said that, with the construction of the new data centers, the electrical and HVAC services are being placed on the roofs of the buildings. This takes them away from the fire suppression systems inside a building, offering new challenges to fighting fires at these facilities. “ With this new con struction there could be some problem s for us,” Rogelstad told the CREZ board. “ We are going to need some assistance to make sure we can provide protection to the Port and to the city.” He said the classifica tion rating, which insur ance companies use to set insurance rates, has already dropped down from a four. “ We love the growth but we are going to need some help,” he said. On the personnel side, Rogelstad said he is not getting as many community volunteers to serve on the department as he used to. ' He said several reasons contributed to the drop-off, including the fact that many of the workers do not live in Boardman anymore, busi nesses are not as willing to let their employees leave work to go on fire calls, and the department competes with other volunteer activi ties such as Little League coaching for the potential pool o f volunteers’ free time. He also cited increased training needed by volun teers to fight fires, saying the Occupational, Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has tightened its rules for volunteer firefight ers. “ We now need four people on the ground before we can go inside a build ing when we roll up on a fire,” Rogelstad said as an example. He also said the number of training hours necessary to be a volunteer fireman has increased dramatically from years past. It was brought out that Boardman is not the only location experiencing the volunteer pinch, with volunteer fire fighters down by 60,000 all across the United States. On funding, Rogelstad said if the new enterprise zone businesses were not exempt from property tax es, he would be receiving .75 per thousand dollars of valuation on the new con struction. However, other factors muddy the waters when determining how much tax money the department has lost w ith the CREZ exemp tions, including Measure 5 and compression, which caps property tax rates. Rogelstad also pointed out that property valua tions on new business and industrial construction are coming in at sometimes 30 percent of the construction costs, which puts the tax revenues at a low level. “Sixty percent we can live with, but not 30,” he said. With an annual budget of $1.1 million, Rogelstad said the rural fire district is receiving $800,000 per year in tax revenue and this is just not enough. He pointed to Hermis- ton, which has a tax rate of $1.20 per thousand and is also having troubles. I le said an earlier effort to get Boardman voters to approve a special bond is sue to help the fire depart ment failed, and he does not know if another effort would succeed. “Nobody wants to pay more taxes, including me,” he said. “But we can’t run on 1990 dollars and provide this level of services. I am paying 100 percent of my employees and I need to find other revenue. I should have six employees in order to do it right.” He said the new aerial truck, which takes a year to receive after ordering, will cost around $1 mil lion and could be funded at $100,000 per year on a lease purchase deal. CREZ board member and Port M anager Gary Neal told Rogelstad he wants him to keep the board apprised of the departments needs. Neal also discussed the possibility o f exempting the fire district from future deals involving the enter prise zone, thus assuring tax income from the new construction. “ We have in our dis cussions always tried to identify the fire department as an accepted effected dis trict,” Neal said. “Discussion comes up all the time with fire chiefs about what restricts fund ing,” Rogelstad said, "and the three main ones are Ur ban Renewal in the valley, strategic investment plans and enterprise zones.” “Our challenge is with special districts and whether they are going to be effect ed,” Neal said of the CREZ board’s discussions. “State programs (such as enterprise zones) we have to live with. 1 would like to see the state make up the difference because the locals always carry the bur den when the state is push ing for new business.” Neal has said in the past that, because there are so many enterprise zones If I «5 a r: a i IR E DISTRICT ____ Boanlman Rural Fire Protection District Chief Marc Rogelstad says the increased activity at the Port of Morrow is putting strain on his department. throughout the state, in order for the Port to be competitive in attracting new business, it has to use its own enterprise zone and tax incentives to full advantage. Neal especially takes exception with the Oregon Department o f Revenue practice of coming in w ith low ering valuations on large industrial projects in the county. He said the department takes the valuation out of the hands of local assessors and. "Quite frankly we (lo cal counties) are the ones who take it when the state comes in and lowers valua tions. We lose the value and the tax revenue,” Neal later told the Gazette. He said in many in stances companies such as utilities rebuild their facili ties to near-new condition w ith new turbines, but are not revalued at a higher rate, and still get the older straight-line depreciation for tax purposes. Both N eal and Ro gelstad agree, however, that enterprise zones and their property tax exemptions are here to stay. “Enterprise zones are something we are going to have to live with,” Ro gelstad says. The board also brief ly discussed a m eeting planned on July 25 at 7 p.m. at the Port of Morrow Wells Springs room. The recreation district has invited all the taxing districts in the Columbia River Enterprise Zone II to “ .. begin a conversation regarding Enterprise Zone negotiations,” according to a meeting notice from the recreation district. his sandwich, put the sauce container on the dashboard and then was busy thinking about the afternoon and the work to be done. Soon the younger guys on the crew couldn't hold back anymore and started laughing out loud. The sauce had run all down into the dash. “It took me awhile to live that one down. That pickup smelled like barbe cue sauce to the day we sold it," he remembers. However, it was well known with the young guys on his crew that you don't mess w ith him in the morn ing. “You pretty much don’t talk to him before he has his coffee,” one of his crewmen told the Gazette-Times. But McDowell always kept a good relationship w ith the people around the co-op district, especially those in the country onto whose property he often had to go to fix things. “It's part PR; you have to get to know people,” he says. And even though the co-op has the legal right to go onto properties and fix the power lines, Mc Dowell liked to keep a good relationship with the landowners. “Most of the time they are okay about us going on their property. Usually if you stop and talk to them and let them know what we are doing, we get along with them,” he recalls. Some o f the biggest changes M cDowell has seen during his career are better wire material, larger poles and the shorter span between poles. He says all have cut down on the needed repair work. Ice on the power lines causing damage has also been a problem for the re pair crews, and more buried lines have alleviated some of these problems, he says. And now that those days of rolling out of bed at 2 a.m. to drive icy foggy roads when the power goes out are over. Bill and Meri lee are having more time to travel, and especially spend time with their new grandson, Henry, seven months old, who lives in Eugene with his mom and dad, Danielle and Brian Burnside. The couple also enjoys going to Mariners baseball games and visiting relatives. MCDOWELL RETIRES «*. & 9 : m u ■ War i ' j & ■ * L ■*»>' '* y •• ‘ A recent picture of McDowell (right) on the job with Russ Brannon. -Continuedfrom PAGE ONE “I liked getting peo ples' lights back on when there was a problem," says McDowell. 59, who re cently retired after working for Columbia Basin since graduating from Davenport High School in Washington in 1972. He recalls one of the toughest times when an ice storm knocked down 680 poles and left 2,000 people without power. Of course, then there was the time he had his picture in the paper around the time of the Condon kite festi val, holding the remains of a kite he had dug out of a transformer at Fossil, and reminding people of the dangers of kite-flying around power lines. “Linemen have rescued three kites this week from pow er lines in Condon and a ball o f string from bushings and jumper on a transformer in Fossil,” the article said. “The lineman conducted an Ohms resis tance test on the string and found that it would conduct electricity,” the article said, warning of the dangers. It isn 't necessary to warn McDowell of the dan gers of the job he has held for the past 40 years. “You have to be con stantly aware o f safety out there,” he explains. Sometimes chided for being a bit slow on certain job, he says he always em phasized safety. “I always wanted ev eryone to come home at night," he says about work ing around power lines that can have up to 115,0000 volts of electricity running through them. “A lot of times people drive by and see one guy standing around when we are working. But that guy is the safety observer, he is watching everything while people are working, mak ing sure everything looks okay.” Not only is the electric ity a concern, but the crew is also working with booms, trucks, tools and, yes, dyna mite. When asked if there is a lot of rocky ground in the Columbia Basin Electric area he says, “No, not a lot of rock; one big rock.” So, it was sometimes necessary to use blasting material to get a hole down the required six feet for a power pole, and each blast could react differently de pending on the condition of the rock and soil. He was asked to blast some rock for a non-CBEC project up by the high school several years ago and, while the Morrow^ ^County FAIR RODEO blast went fine, a few rocks did go where they were not expected. M cD ow ell actually comes from a family of linemen. His father worked as a lineman for 30 years. McDowell took the job with Columbia Basin in 1972, straight out of high school, and lived in Condon work ing as a “groundsman” for five years. “A groundsman drives trucks, takes equipment to the guys and other jobs,” McDowell explains. In 1979, he and his wife M erilee moved to Heppner, where he began his apprenticeship. Meri lee told him that when he received his journeyman's lineman's card they could start a family. He received his card in 1982 and their daughter Danielle was bom that same year. He started out for fore man Billy Gentry and then later moved up to be a fore man himself, overseeing a crew of between three to five men. There were lots of days, and nights, of bad weather and hard work, but Mc Dowell says it was always good to keep a sense o f hu mor with the younger guys while out on the job. “You have to able to keep it light and have a good time to do this job,” he says while relating the story of the barbecue sauce. It seems the crew was eating in the pickup on a particularly hot day down by Jordon Grade near lone. He had put some sauce on ry - High School sports physicals planned Heppner High School has scheduled sports physi cals for Tuesday, Aug. 6, and Thursday, Aug. 8, at Pioneer Memorial Clinic. Boys’ physicals will be ITS The HePPner Gazette-Times will _ i k . a q t be publishing its special fair & A L IV iw O 1 rodeo edition August 7. F A IR « To submit articles or R O D E O . special t0 Place edition an ad call, in the stop TIME! by or email megan at The Heppner Gazette-Times 188 W Willow Heppner, OR 541-676-9228 or megan@rapidserve.net Deadline to be included in the Special Fair Edition- July 31 TJ9 HÇÆ3P! M U R R A Y S 17th A N N U A L BEER a W IN E TASTING THURSDAY, A U G U ST 6 :0 0 p . m . - 1 0 :0 0 15 th p . m . M O R R O W C O U N T Y F A IR G R O U N D S , CIVIL WAR THEME ^ W ear voi r duc ks or beavers gear ! , on Aug. 6 from 1:30-5 p.m. on a walk-in basis. Girls’ physicals will be on Aug. 8 from 1:30-5 p.m. on a walk-in basis. Sports physicals are required for any student who has not had a physical in the past year, including first year junior high par ticipants and sixth graders playing at the junior high level, and transfer students who do not have a copy of a physical completed in the past year. The form for the physi cals can be found at http:// osaa.org/forms/PhysicalEx- amination-2010.pdf. Stu dents must bring this form with them to the physical. Players under the age of 18 must have their forms signed by a parent. GREAT ENTERTAINMENT LINE I P All news & advertising J of L is d s a y T iller \ F olly ■ B rady G oss deadline: BBQ D IM E R AVAILABLE! MONDAY @ 5 P.M. * I
