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. He was interviewed to our community.”
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Their generous support of the Hermiston Herald NIE
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Complete dispersal of fleet, shop and misc.
Partial Auction Listing: 3 - Ford F450 Superduty
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