LOCAL
A8 • HERMISTONHERALD.COM
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 13, 2019
Hermiston, Pendleton
don’t meet rent
burdened criteria
By JADE MCDOWELL
NEWS EDITOR
Photo contributed by Darla Irwin
Darla Irwin, second from right, presents a check from Club 24 to UCFD stair climb team Danny Hinton, left, Corey Gorham and
Gaige Phillips.
Club 24 members, staff to put in 43 hours
on stair climb machine for charity
By JADE MCDOWELL
NEWS EDITOR
A simple fundraiser idea
turned into a group work-
out challenge after Hermis-
ton Club 24 manager Darla
Irwin decided to help raise
money for cancer research.
Firefighters from Uma-
tilla County Fire District
1 were in Seattle on Sun-
day for the SCOTT Stair
Climb, which gets firefight-
ers around the country to
climb 69 flights of stairs in
full gear to raise money for
leukemia and lymphoma
research. The UCFD team
had been practicing on the
stair machines at Club 24.
The cause inspired Irwin,
who offered to let people
sponsor minutes on the stair
machines for her to com-
plete in fire-fighting gear
weighing 45 pounds. She
got more than she bargained
for — the sponsored min-
utes ended up totaling more
than 43 hours of exercise.
“I have a whole new
respect for what our fire
team does out there after
spending numerous hours
working off minutes,” she
wrote in an email. “It is very
humbling to know that’s
what they do for our fami-
lies and homes everyday.”
Luckily, other staff and
a few club members have
offered to help her work
off the minutes, something
Irwin said she is extremely
grateful for. She said she
wanted to thank Laney
Irwin, Makara Reth, Paige
Esterbloom, Kasi Vertrees,
Javier Echeverria, Erika
Ceja, Cayla Barthel, Kristi
Smalley, Jo Jo Garcia,
Erik Peterson, Dave Gra-
cia, Dennis Mcclure, Danny
Hinton and Jeremy Gillette
for their help.
The staff presented
UCFD with a check on Fri-
day for $3,655 to take to
Seattle with them.
West end cities host housing open house
HERMISTON HERALD
Umatilla, Stanfield and
Echo are holding an open
house to discuss housing with
members of the public.
The event is March 13
from 6:30-8 p.m. at the Staf-
ford Hansell Government
Center, 915 S.E. Columbia
Drive, in Hermiston.
The three cities have part-
nered together for the West
County Housing Study,
paid for by a grant from the
Department of Land Con-
servation & Development.
Hermiston did not participate
because it recently completed
its own study. Consulting
teams will present an over-
view of the residential build-
able lands inventory and a
needs assessment for housing
and residential land, includ-
ing a forecast of new hous-
ing the three cities will need
to accommodate forecasted
growth for the next 20 years.
Staff from all three cities will
also be present to answer
questions and take input.
Stanfield City Manager
Blair Larsen said in a state-
ment that the partnership
“reflects the regional hous-
ing and employment mar-
kets” that the three cities have
together.
“We share many of the
same challenges and oppor-
tunities, and it just made
sense to join together for this
study,” he said.
The state has placed
new requirements on cit-
ies considered “severely
rent burdened,” but Herm-
iston and Pendleton don’t
fit that criteria.
The
state
defines
severely rent burdened cit-
ies as those where more
than 25 percent of rental
households are spending
more than half of their
income on rent.
Hermiston, in particu-
lar, is a good place to be
a renter according to data
collected by the U.S. Cen-
sus Bureau and used by
the state. Of all the cities
in Oregon with a popula-
tion over 10,000, Herm-
iston has the second-low-
est percentage of severely
rent burdened households,
at 15.5 percent.
Pendleton comes in at
18.7 percent, with only
eight of the cities coming
in lower. Overall, 27 of the
49 cities in Oregon with a
population over 10,000
are considered severely
rent burdened.
The data is being
tracked
by
Oregon
Housing and Commu-
nity Services, a govern-
ment agency that pro-
motes affordable housing
through measures ranging
from downpayment assis-
tance programs to housing
choice vouchers.
Ariel Nelson, commu-
nications liaison for the
agency, said OHCS pub-
lished the list of severely
rent burdened cities as part
of House Bill 4006, which
passed during the 2018
legislative session. The
data concerning house-
holds spending more than
50 percent of their income
on rent is gathered by the
U.S. Census Bureau as
part of its annual Ameri-
can Community Survey.
“That’s a data point we
often use at the agency,”
she said of the 50 percent
statistic.
Each
year,
cities
that meet the criteria of
“severely rent burdened”
will have to complete
a survey about housing
affordability and conduct
at least one public meet-
ing to discuss the causes
and consequences of rent
burdens and possible solu-
tions to reduce the number
of rent burdened house-
holds in the community.
Since Hermiston and
Pendleton fall below the
25 percent mark, they
don’t qualify as “severely”
rent burdened.
Hermiston
assistant
city manager Mark Mor-
gan said he couldn’t say
for sure exactly why
Hermiston had a rela-
tively low number of rent
burdened households, but
Hermiston is “obviously
a totally different market
than some of the metro
areas.”
The cost of purchas-
ing a home, for example,
is much lower than Ore-
gon’s largest cities, lead-
ing some residents to
make the jump to home
ownership rather than pay
prices on the higher end of
Hermiston’s rental market.
“More people here who
want to own, have the abil-
ity to own,” he said.
Morgan also said he
hears from landlords in the
area that if rents in Herm-
iston get too high people
often decide they can pay
just as much in the Tri-Cit-
ies while living closer to
amenities such as Costco.
Hermiston has 2,537
renter households, many
of which contain multi-
ple people, according to
the survey data. The city
hasn’t had luck in recruit-
ing a new apartment com-
plex is several years,
although Morgan said it’s
“not for lack of trying.”
“Their response is that
they can’t get the rents
they need,” he said.
There have been some
smaller rentals such as
duplexes built in the past
few years, as well as the
new Cimmaron Terrace
town homes off Theater
Lane. He said there are
some larger rental com-
plexes in the works.
According to the rent
burden data put out by the
state at the beginning of
the month, Pendleton has
2,660 renter households,
with 497 of them consid-
ered severely rent bur-
dened. The city has expe-
rienced a recent housing
boom and in November
approved the sale of prop-
erty on Westgate for a
200-unit housing complex
by I&E Construction.
BMCC goes off book to save students $1 million
By ANTONIO SIERRA
STAFF WRITER
At a time of rising costs
for tuition and fees, it’s not
often that a college can cele-
brate what it helped students
save.
But Blue Mountain Com-
munity College did that
when it held a small get-to-
gether to tout a large num-
ber: $1 million.
That’s the figure BMCC
officials estimate the college
has saved students over the
past two years in textbook
costs, savings made possi-
ble by a long-term effort to
convert its course material to
open educational resources,
or OERs.
BMCC’s effort comes at
a time when textbook prices
are skyrocketing.
According to Vox, text-
book prices have risen 1,000
percent since the 1970s
and a 2014 report from the
Public Interest Research
Groups showed that two-
thirds of students surveyed
had skipped buying or rent-
ing course materials because
they couldn’t afford it.
BMCC is no different.
Before getting involved in
OERs, Bruce Kauss, the
BMCC e-learning coordi-
nator, said it wasn’t unusual
for a course to require a $300
textbook.
PET OF THE
WEEK
Holly was found as a stray on the streets
with a large mass that turned out to be
malignant. She has had two surgeries now
and it appears that the cancer has all been
removed. She is a very sweet dog that is
great with kids. She would love a lap to lay
in and be your little shadow. Holly is spayed,
Microchipped, Vaccinated. She is potty and
crate trained.
Mark Sargent, DVM • Brent Barton, DVM
Eugenio Mannucci, DVM, cVMA • Jana von Borstel, DVM, cVMA
Small and Large Animal Care
Mon: 8-6
Tue - Fri: 8-5
Sat: 8-12
Emergency Service
541.567.1138
80489 Hwy 395 N
Hermiston
www.oregontrailvet.com
Kauss said BMCC started
introducing OERs into their
courses in 2012, but the col-
lege really started gearing
up its efforts in the past two
years.
Using $98 as the average
cost of a textbook and fac-
toring in enrollment and the
number of classes that use
OERs, BMCC estimates it
now saves students at least
$500,000 in textbook costs.
BMCC is able to avoid
using traditional textbooks
in many of its courses by
encouraging
instructors
to build their curriculum
through online resources like
CK-12 and OpenStax.
It’s a trend that colleges
and universities across the
country are taking advantage
of, and BMCC wants to be
a leader in that trend in the
state.
John Fields, the BMCC
vice president of instruc-
tion, said it isn’t always easy
to get faculty on board with
OERs.
A former administrator at
Florida State College at Jack-
sonville, Fields said some
faculty members preferred
using textbooks because of
the additional supplementary
material that provided lesson
plans and tests.
But Fields said there isn’t
the same cultural resistance
at BMCC.
M
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Contact Audra at
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Today!
If interested in her please go to
fuzzballrescue.com and fill out an application.
If you aren’t able to adopt, but would like to donate you can through PayPal by going to fuzzballrescue.com,
or you can mail in donations to Fuzz Ball Animal Rescue PO Box 580 Hermiston, OR 97838
Renata Anderson, MA
2237 SW Court, Pendleton • 541-276-5053
www.renataanderson.com