COMMUNITY
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 2019
HERMISTONHERALD.COM • A3
Holiday tree lighting scheduled for Dec. 5
By JADE MCDOWELL
NEWS EDITOR
When the city of Herm-
iston picks a Christmas tree,
it’s go big or go home.
The tree lighting up
Hermiston’s Festival Street
this year is the biggest yet,
altering the downtown sky-
line as it stretches above
the rooftop of the two-story
Union Club.
Parks and recreation
director Larry Fetter esti-
mated the top is about 45 feet
above street level — a few
feet taller than trees of years
past — but it’s the width
that’s really impressive.
“It took up two lanes of
traffi c (while transporting
it),” Fetter said. “It’s defi -
nitely broader.”
Five years ago, drivers
passing Northeast Second
Street were doing double
takes as they checked to see
if a 30-foot pine really was
sprouting up from the mid-
dle of the road. RDO Equip-
ment had donated the tree to
the city, which decided the
best way to put it up was to
jackhammer a hole directly
into the middle of the road
next to city hall.
There was some grum-
bling from taxpayers about
the practicality of digging a
hole in a perfectly good road,
but the city hoped the lights
would draw shoppers down-
town, and the tree-lighting
ceremony was a hit.
Each year since, the light
displays on the tree and sur-
rounding block have gotten
bigger and brighter. The city
turned the street into a year-
round “festival street” host-
ing a variety of events, and
there are nightly light shows
throughout December.
“It’s become quite a spec-
tacle,” Fetter said.
The city has always used
trees that were slated to
come down that year any-
way, to avoid waste. This
year’s tree was donated by
the Hermiston Seventh-day
Adventist Church. The
church’s original building
burned down in 2018, and
the tree that now sits down-
town was in the way of con-
struction for the new church
being built.
Mark Black, the con-
tractor for the church, said
construction is on sched-
ule for completion some-
time during the summer of
2020. The burned-out build-
ing was recently demolished
Staff photo by Ben Lonergan
A Umatilla Electric Cooperative line-truck uses its crane to
stabilize the tree as it is cut on Monday.
Staff photo by Ben Lonergan
road as it moved downtown
with a police escort. Finally,
the tree was lifted back up
and gently lowered into a
hole in the festival street
that is covered by a manhole
cover most of the year.
Fetter said parks staff
will once again string the
thousands of lights verti-
cally instead of horizontally,
which allows them to pack
more lights on and doesn’t
require driving a truck in cir-
cles around the tree.
The city will host a “Win-
terfest” tree-lighting cele-
bration on Dec. 5 starting
at 5:30 p.m. on the festival
street next to city hall. The
tree lighting will take place
at 6:15 p.m. with entertain-
ment before and after by
Hermiston High School’s
Majazzsty jazz choir, the
Hermiston High School jazz
band and Gems & Gents
Cheer Group. Santa Claus
will be available for photos,
there will be food vendors
on site, and the event coin-
cides with downtown mer-
chants’ First Thursday sales
and giveaways.
For the rest of the month,
the festival street will fea-
ture light shows each half
hour from 5-8 p.m. Monday
through Friday. The holiday
season will end with a New
Years Eve fi reworks show
and giant watermelon drop.
Umatilla Electric Cooperative employee Cody Ridant uses a chainsaw to clear branches from
the base of the tree prior to cutting it down.
and steel beams are rising up
to take its place.
He said he was happy
they were able to work out
the timing to donate the tree
to the community.
“It’s going to be a beau-
tiful tree,” he said. “It’s a
good gift from the church.”
On Monday, a crew from
Umatilla Electric Cooper-
ative carefully moved the
massive tree over the course
of three hours. They trimmed
branches off the bottom, cut
it down and used multiple
boom trucks to pick it up
and lay it down sideways on
wooden stands designed to
keep the branches from get-
ting crushed underneath.
The thick tree seemed to
swallow the fl atbed trailer,
trailing its branches over the
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Potential fi fth candidate announces
bid for county commissioners seat
HERMISTON HERALD
A fi fth candidate could
be entering the race for
Umatilla County Board of
Commissioners.
At last week’s Pendleton
city council meeting, Hol-
lyJo Beers of Milton-Free-
water announced she was
planning a run. As of last
Wednesday she had not fi led
the paperwork with Umatilla
County, but Beers referred to
herself as a candidate at the
meeting and has until March
10 to make her campaign
offi cial with the county.
Other candidates are Dan
Dorran, Mark Gomolski,
Patricia Maier and Jonathan
Lopez, all of Hermiston.
The Pendleton council
meeting Nov. 19 became an
impromptu candidate forum
as three of the candidates
introduced themselves.
Lopez, Beers and Maier
all used their time during
the public comment section
to provide the council with
some biographical informa-
tion about themselves and
answer the occasional ques-
tion about their platforms or
views on local issues.
The Position 3 seat is
being vacated by Commis-
sioner Bill Elfering, who is
retiring from the board after
two terms.
All candidates will run
in the May 19 primary and
the top two candidates will
move on to a runoff election
on Nov. 3, 2020.
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