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About Hermiston herald. (Hermiston, Or.) 1994-current | View Entire Issue (March 16, 2016)
COMMUNITY WEDNESDAY, MARCH 16, 2016 HERMISTONHERALD.COM • A3 VOLUNTEERS IN SHORT SUPPLY FOR LOCAL GROUPS By JADE McDOWELL HELP WANTED Staff Writer When the announcement came that Umatilla’s Land- ing Days were being scaled back signi¿ cantly this year due to lack of volunteers, it signaled a growing prob- lem. “We usually have be- tween 30 and 40 volunteers and last year we got about 15,” Umatilla Chamber of Commerce director Karen Hutchinson-Talaski said. After the committee said they would cancel Uma- tilla’s signature summer event if they didn’t get more volunteers for 2016, they didn’t get much of a response. As a result, the plan is to forgo hosting vendors and most daytime activities, even though the parade and fireworks show with live music will go on. Landing Days is not the only event that has been scaled back or can- celed altogether in recent years because new vol- unteers haven’t stepped up to replace ones that are burning out. Hutchin- son-Talaski estimated the ages of the Landing Days Committee to be between 40 and 80 and said they all “wear multiple hats” in the community. “We aren’t spring chickens anymore and this is a lot of work,” she said. She said it’s not un- common in communities to see the same people stepping up to volunteer for everything. The prob- lem is that they often get spread too thin and even- tually decide they need to step back from some ac- tivities so they can give 100 percent to others. It can be hard finding some- one to replace them. Hermiston went through a similar problem with the Festival of Lights that used to brighten the Umatilla County fair- grounds each December. STAFF PHOTO BY JADE McDOWELL Hermiston Senior Center volunteers Harry Trump, Rose Hamilton and Harry Stevenson serve spaghetti at the center’s meal program. After the county stopped providing manpower for the event in 2010 a group of volunteers came to- gether to keep the lights on, but ran out of steam in 2013 when they couldn’t find enough helpers. Af- ter another unsuccessful attempt to find enough volunteers for 2014 they canceled the festival again, and in 2015 the county donated the lights to the city of Hermiston. Other organizations continue on, but still find themselves short of vol- unteers. The Hermiston Warming Station some- times closes its doors even when the tempera- ture is below freezing be- cause there are not enough volunteers to keep it open through the night. Marci McMurphy, di- rector of CAPECO’s Area Agency on Aging depart- ment, said CAPECO has a difficult time finding volunteers to pack boxes at the food warehouse, help around the office or offer financial mentoring to clients. “The generation that’s now aging was very much into giving back ... as they’re aging now they’re becoming the ones who need help,” she said. Young people seem to be experiencing a resurg- ing interest in volunteer work, she said, but their schedules often conflict with when agencies need the most help. McMurphy said it might help people to know that CAPECO will take volunteers who just want to commit to one hour a month or want to help out with a single project without commit- ting to doing any more once it’s over. “With peoples’ busy schedules, the last thing they want to do is be tied down,” she said. At the Hermiston Se- nior Center, Virginia Bee- be said it’s not uncommon to have to ask one or two people showing up for a meal to throw on an apron and help serve everyone else first. “We’re always short on volunteers,” she said. Julie Harris-Rosner said the problem was that the younger seniors tend- ed to be busy helping care for grandchildren or ag- ing parents or continuing to work well past what used to be retirement age. “Our really, really good volunteers are now in their nineties, and they’re dy- ing,” she said. “We’re left with the eighty-year-olds.” Gary Reisland, 69, was there Thursday to deliver Meals on Wheels, a vol- unteer position he said he has held for about 30 years. He said he and his wife used to be involved in a long list of organiza- tions but have had to cut back their volunteering to mostly Meals on Wheels and the Red Cross, be- cause their health no lon- ger permitted more. The good news is some organizations are find- Here are a few places to start if you’re looking to volunteer: 1) City committees. City councils rely on the legwork and recommendations of multiple committees to make decisions, and many of them face a near-constant parade of vacancies. Contact your city hall or check their website to i nd out about committee vacancies or opportunities to volunteer for activities conducted by those committees. 2) Schools. Local school districts are always looking for volunteers to help out in the classroom, chaperone i eld trips, read to children or serve on a committee. If you don’t have a child or grandchild’s classroom to volunteer in, contact a principal or school district oi ce to i nd out where volunteers are needed most. 3) Nonproi ts. It’s a rare nonproi t organization that isn’t in need of more volunteers. A few that are frequently looking for more help include Meals on Wheels, the Agape House, CAPECO, the Warming Station, ing ways to boost partic- ipation. A year ago, core members involved with the Hispanic Advisory Committee in Hermis- ton started pushing hard for people attending the meetings to step up and volunteer more. Chair- man Eddie de la Cruz said the message was heard, and today there are a va- riety of new faces helping take charge of programs like the one that provides Spanish translators at par- ent-teacher conferences. “I kept talking to them and saying it can’t be Ed- die, Eddie, Eddie all the time,” he said. “I can’t do it all myself.” When people like Hec- tor Ramirez and Claudia Jimenez stepped up, he Desert Rose Ministries, Domestic Violence Services, Salvation Army, Boy Scouts of America, Girl Scouts, PAWS, Relay for Life and various local churches. 4) Umatilla-Morrow Head Start. The local Head Start oi ce relies on a network of volunteers to read to children, assist teachers in the classroom, help prepare meals in the kitchen, plant a garden, work as Court Appointed Special Advocates, do main- tenance or work in the oi ce. Contact the oi ce to get the proper paperwork and sign up for a background check. 5) Hospitals and nursing homes. Hospitals are often looking for volunteers to help out everywhere from the gift shop to transporting patients who can’t make it to the hospital on their own. Nursing homes take volun- teers willing to visit residents and do activities with them. 6) Service Clubs. For those looking to take their volunteerism to the next level, Umatilla County of ers more than 12 service clubs — many with chapters in several cities — that residents can join. said, that helped get the ball rolling. Each new person who came on board brought with them new ideas for recruiting volunteers and a new network of contacts who they could convince to help out. De la Cruz said he has also talked to people about being responsible vol- unteers, and encourages them to treat any board or committee they serve on as seriously as they do their job, instead of frequently skipping meetings. He said it takes work to recruit and train responsible volunteers, but it can pay off like it did for the His- panic Advisory Committee. “We have had quite a change,” he said. City will add new paved trail, waves goodbye to roundabouts By JADE McDOWELL Staff Writer The Hermiston city council approved an agree- ment Monday that will cre- ate a new section of trail parallel to Highland Ave- nue. The eight-foot-wide paved trail for walking and bicycling will stretch from Riverfront Park to Southwest 11th Street on the south side of Highland, continuing a larger trail project that runs from Good Shepherd Medical Center to the park. “This is exciting,” May- or David Drotzmann said. “It’s going to be a nice ad- dition to the community.” Originally the city was going to pay for the project and seek some reimburse- ment from the Oregon De- partment of Transportation through a grant. But city planner Clint Spencer said when ODOT looked at the project, they liked it so much they adopted it into their Statewide Transporta- tion Improvement Program and said they would pay for 77 percent of it. According to the agreement the coun- cil approved Monday night, that leaves Hermiston with about a $150,000 bill for the remainder. Spencer said the timeline for the project depends on how long it takes to acquire the needed rights of way, but construction will likely take place in early 2017. On Monday the council also adopted an amendment to the Transportation Sys- tem Plan, which calls for a signal at the Hermiston Foods truck entrance north of the Wal-Mart Distribu- tion Center on Highway 395. The signal will help han- dle the expected increase in traf¿ c based on a planned Ranch and Home store at that location. On Feb. 22 the council opened a public hearing on the amendment, which at that point included a recom- mendation from ODOT that the words “or a roundabout” be included in the plan’s pro- posed traf¿ c signals along south Highway 395. But the council and several citizens who testi¿ ed that night were unanimously against the idea of roundabouts on the highway. City staff went back to ODOT with the feedback, and the department with- drew its request for round- abouts. “The public process worked,” Drotzmann said. The ¿ nal amendment ad- opted by the council Mon- day did add the new signal to the city’s longterm trans- portation plan but did not include any language about roundabouts. Small park named for its creator On Monday residents of the neighborhood behind Pizza Hut watched as the council agreed to name the park at 80 Beech Avenue as Greenwood Park. The city’s smallest park has often been referred to as Northside Park, or some- times Candy Cane Park, but parks and recreation di- rector Larry Fetter said he couldn’t ¿ nd any record of the space ever receiving an of¿ cial name. The parks and recreation committee met with the park’s neighbors four times over the past few months to discuss updating the design of the park, which includes a small playground and bas- ketball court, and replacing the old equipment. Out of those discus- sions came a consensus that the park should be named Greenwood Park after long- time neighborhood resident Greenwood Woodrow Lus- ter. Fetter said that accord- ing to a history he pieced together from city records and recollections from Hermiston residents, Lus- ter went to the city in the early 1970s and asked if he could build a park on a derelict lot the city owned near his house. He got the Hermiston Jaycees and members of his church to clean up the lot and install used playground equipment donated from Dun Rollin Mobile Home Park. Luster’s granddaughter Jackie Linton still lives in the neighborhood today, and has been participating in the meetings between the parks and recreation com- mittee and residents. She said it was a great honor to see the park named after her grandfather. “My grandfather loved Hermiston,” she said. “... He’d grin ear to ear and say, ‘Hermiston sure is grow- ing.’” Luster worked for Rohr- man Ford, 8nion Paci¿ c and Hermiston Sanitary Disposal in addition to serv- ing as pastor for Church of God. He died in 2010 at the age of 87. 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