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About Hermiston herald. (Hermiston, Or.) 1994-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 24, 2018)
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2018 HERMISTONHERALD.COM • A3 NEWS Local partnership sends surplus potatoes to food banks By JADE MCDOWELL STAFF WRITER The local agricultural community came together last week to send thousands of pounds of potatoes to Oregon food banks. In the past, the spuds would have gone to waste, tilled over after they served their purpose as a test plot at the Hermiston Agricultural Research & Extension Cen- ter. But four years ago the experiment station decided to start partnering with local producers and the nonprofit Farmers Ending Hunger to put them to good use in food boxes for families in need. “It’s a great program,” said John Burt, executive director of Farmers End- ing Hunger. “It takes a lot of people to make it happen.” The program starts with test plots at HAREC, paid for by grants from the Ore- gon Potato Commission and tended by the experiment station. HAREC director Phil Hamm said while some produce grown at the exper- iment station couldn’t be used for human consump- STAFF PHOTOS BY E.J. HARRIS Potatoes are bagged then stacked on pallets Wednesday at the Walchli potato processing facility outside Hermiston. At right, sorted potatoes travel down a conveyor belt for boxing. tion after being subjected to experiments, the pota- toes harvested Wednesday weren’t experimented upon. Instead, area growers each send 300 tubers to be planted at HAREC. There, plant pathologist Kenneth Frost evaluates them for dis- ease, and contacts growers if he finds any issues. Hamm said because the acres are a mixture of potato varieties, it doesn’t work to send them all to a french fry plant, for example, but each individual potato is good for eating. “This is a good use of potatoes that are absolutely OK, just not for a commer- cial setting,” he said. Last Wednesday, Stahl Farms donated the labor and equipment to harvest the potatoes, which were loaded onto trucks provided Rep. Greg Smith talks PERS, carbon tax with city council By JADE MCDOWELL STAFF WRITER The Oregon legisla- ture is going to have to take some hard votes next year to address the Pub- lic Employee Retirement System’s unfunded obliga- tion, according to Rep. Greg Smith. “We have to deal with an issue that none of us cre- ated,” he said. The representative for District 57 spent an hour with the Hermiston City Council on Monday, answering their questions about the upcoming legis- lative session and how the League of Oregon Cities’ six legislative priorities might fare. While cities would like to see more money spent to address issues such as men- tal health care and homeless- ness, Smith said the state’s $22 billion obligation to PERS presents some chal- lenges. The state has a bill due, he said, and it’s time to pay it. Smith said he believes the best way is to issue pension bonds, which would stabi- lize the bill for government entities such as schools. He likened it to a family that gets in over its head in credit card debt and goes to the bank to refinance their debt into a single payment. The refinance may make it easier on the family to get a han- dle on their problem, but they still need to figure out a way to either increase their income or cut their expenses to free up money to start paying off their debt. In practical terms for the legislature, that means rais- ing taxes or cutting spend- ing. Voters won’t be happy about new taxes, but they also won’t be happy about cuts to public safety, health care or education. “It’s going to be hard,” Smith said. “The question is whether the legislature has the fortitude to make those hard decisions.” PERS reform falls under the League of Oregon Cit- ies’ second highest prior- ity of cost containment and revenue reform. The other part to that priority — prop- erty tax reform — is one that Smith said told coun- cilors they shouldn’t count on being tackled in the 2019 session. A repeal of Mea- sure 5, which caps property tax revenue for cities, would take a vote of the people. Smith said he had no prob- lem voting to refer the ques- tion to voters but didn’t see a majority of the legislature being willing to do so. One revenue reform Smith said he felt sure would take place in the 2019 session is implementation of a carbon tax. However, Smith said he had a feel- ing the money raised by tax- ing carbon-producing busi- nesses for emissions would go toward the Department of Environmental Quality to fund more regulations and monitoring, not into educa- tion or the PERS liability. While Smith doesn’t sup- port that idea, he said it’s important for legislators in the minority to come to the table for discussions on leg- islation they don’t support in order to “make it less intrusive” for rural Oregon when it inevitably passes. Eighty percent of legisla- tors live within an hour’s drive of the capitol, he said, and are writing bills from that perspective. Smith feels an obligation to his district to make sure Eastern Ore- gon is included in discus- sions so that he can negoti- ate changes to the bill that will mitigate harm to rural Oregon. “If you pound the table, they say ‘That’s nice, now go sit over there,’” he said. It’s a lesson many fresh- man legislators have to learn, and Smith said East- ern Oregon is mostly repre- sented by freshman legisla- tors right now, with longtime rural representatives such as John Huffman leaving The Dalles and Ted Ferrioli leav- ing John Day. “That really puts us at a disadvantage,” he said. District 57 is well-posi- tioned, however, because Smith serves on a long list of influential committees. Most significantly, he is vice chair of the House Reve- nue Committee and co-vice chair of the Joint Committee on Ways and Means. That means Smith has influence on both the revenue-rais- ing and the spending side of the legislature — some- thing that he said is almost unheard of in Oregon. As for the LOC’s other priorities, Smith said the number one priority voted on by city councils — men- tal health — is also on the legislature’s mind and would definitely come up in the upcoming session. “As a state we are going to pay for people’s men- tal health care, the ques- tion is how are we going to pay for it?” he said. “Are we going to do it wisely and compassionately?” He said he supported Umatilla County’s desire for an expansion at the county jail to better deal with inmates who are dealing with mental health issues. As for other priorities that are more specific city con- cerns, Smith said he would get together with city leaders in his district during the ses- sion and talk about how he could best support those pri- orities. One example of that was the LOC’s sixth priority of preserving cities’ ability to contract with a third party on building inspections. The legality of that has been called into question. City manager Byron Smith said if that isn’t addressed Hermis- ton would no longer be able to do the city of Umatilla’s inspections. During the work ses- sion councilors brought up various other concerns and questions on topics such as forest health. by Medelez Trucking. The trucks took them to Wal- chli Potato to be processed, washed and packaged and sent to a storage facil- ity owned by farmer Steve Walker. Hamm said they didn’t have a total yet, but it was definitely more than 100,000 pounds of potatoes. Farmers Ending Hunger, which started in Umatilla County, facilitates donations of fresh food from Oregon farmers to the Oregon Food Bank. Burt said Wednes- day’s effort with the test potatoes was a little different than the normal donation, but it was worth the effort. Some of the potatoes went to CAPECO in Pendleton to be distributed locally, and the rest was picked up by the Oregon Food Bank to be dis- tributed to a network of food banks throughout the state. “We will leave as much locally as possible,” Burt said. Hunger is an issue throughout Oregon. Accord- ing to the Oregon Food Bank, 14 percent of Orego- nians are “food insecure,” meaning they don’t have reliable access to a sufficient quantity of nutritious food. Of those 552,900 Orego- nians, 194,070 are children. The food bank distributes food through 1,200 differ- ent sites around the state and Clark County, Washington. Food is kept in 21 regional food banks, with CAPECO serving as one for north- eastern Oregon. Food comes from corporate and individ- ual donations, and Farmers Ending Hunger is one of the top donors. The nonprofit donated 26 million pounds of food crops between 2006 and 2017. Hermiston surgeon shot in Kennewick by the Benton County Prosecutor’s Office but An orthopedic sur- was not arrested. Good Shepherd’s geon from Good Shepherd Medical Center is recover- Communications Direc- ing after he was shot twice tor Nick Bejarano said in a prepared state- by his son on Oct. ment that the hospi- 13 in Kennewick. tal encouraged Har- According to the rison’s patients to Tri-City Herald, contact his office Dr. Patrick Har- for information rison was shot in about their care the collarbone and plans. stomach, and was “We are sad- taken to a hospital Patrick Harrison dened by the unfor- in Kennewick. tunate set of cir- Harrison’s son Hunter, 20, told police cumstances surrounding that he was defending Dr. Harrison,” Bejarano his mother after a fight wrote. “Dr. Harrison is between his parents turned a highly skilled ortho- physical. According to the pedic surgeon who has Herald, Hunter Harri- enhanced the orthopedics son called a neighbor and program by bringing new dialed 911 after firing the techniques and procedures shots. 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