NEWS
A10 • HERMISTONHERALD.COM
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 22, 2020
Plan to reopen Oregon due next month
By DICK HUGHES
FOR THE OREGON CAPITAL BUREAU
By the week of May 4, Gov.
Kate Brown could have a fi rm
plan for reopening parts of Ore-
gon’s economy, probably starting
with rural counties.
Brown held a conference call
Monday afternoon with county
commissioners throughout the
state.
“Commissioners are under tre-
mendous pressure in their counties
to reopen for business,” Umatilla
County Commissioner George
Murdock said afterward.
“I felt like it’s actually progress-
ing. The conversation about open-
ing up, with the notable exception
of large groups, is almost pro-
gressing more quickly than I had
anticipated.”
He added, “Now, by moving
right along, we’re talking about
mid-May or so.”
Brown expects to release a
more detailed draft plan next
week. It will not contain dates for
when businesses might reopen
and social distancing restric-
tions might be eased. Instead, it
will require meeting criteria that
Brown announced last week,
combined with President Donald
Trump’s recommendations.
Each Oregon county also
would have to certify that it had
adequate hospital beds to handle a
surge in COVID-19 cases and suf-
fi cient personal protective equip-
ment for medical personnel and
fi rst responders.
Unlike in some states, Brown is
focusing on a regional approach.
“The main thing the gover-
nor told us is that there clearly
are counties, particularly in East-
ern Oregon and Southeastern Ore-
gon, that have zero cases or maybe
one case, and they should be prior-
itized for reopening in a way that’s
consistent with maintaining pub-
lic health,” Nik Blosser, Brown’s
chief of staff, said. “So, how
quickly can we do that and what’s
the framework we need for them?”
Umatilla County is not one of
the Oregon counties with only one
case. The county was up to 27 con-
fi rmed cases as of Monday, with
more than half of those patients
still sick.
Blosser said the governor’s
Medical Advisory Panel was
working through plans this week
on comprehensive testing, con-
tact tracing and isolating people
with coronavirus; allowing none-
mergency medical and dental pro-
cedures to resume; and the spe-
cifi c metrics required statewide
and regionally for that reopening
to recur.
Dr. Bob Dannenhoffer, the
Douglas County health offi cer,
said he knew of no Oregon county
that was yet meeting all crite-
ria laid out last week by Trump
for initial reopening. Dannenhof-
fer is a member of Brown’s panel
but emphasized his views were his
own, not the panel’s.
Late last week, county com-
missioners of Baker, Deschutes,
Grant, Malheur, Harney, Jefferson,
Union, Lake, Wallowa, Wasco
and Klamath counties asked Gov.
Brown for “a conversation about
partly opening up Eastern Ore-
Ryan Brennecke/EO Media Group
A closed sign is posted in the front window of L & K Barber Shop in
downtown Bend.
gon.” Not every commissioner
signed on to the letter sent to the
governor. All three Deschutes
County commissioners signed it,
along with two Jefferson County
commissioners.
Sen. Tim Knopp, R-Bend, noted
that new cases of COVID-19 are
declining in Deschutes County but
the coronavirus will not disappear
for a long time.
“We need to learn how to live
with the virus and still continue
on. The current shutdown and
having 300,000 Oregonians essen-
tially unemployed because of it
is completely unsustainable and
is going to cause serious prob-
lems — catastrophic problems, I
would say — with the state being
able to fund important programs,”
he said. “I think we really need to
look at a county-by-county open-
ing of the state.”
Oregon Senate Minority Leader
Herman Baertschiger Jr., R-Grants
Pass, agreed that the state must
learn to maintain both public
health and a healthy economy. The
place to start is with rural health
care.
“Our hospitals in rural Ore-
gon are really hurting right now.
They need to get back to work,
both for their income but also for
all those people who need their hip
replaced, bypass surgery, all that
stuff,” he said.
Two Eastern Oregon lawmak-
ers proposed using Harney County
as a pilot project, citing its lack of
confi rmed COVID-19 cases, its
small population and its isolation
from other communities.
“This is not a proposal to open
businesses. This is a proposal to
recognize the health hazards and
the health risks and work through
those and mitigate restrictions and
allow people to return to some of
their prior freedoms,” said Sen.
Lynn Findley, R-Vale.
He and Rep. Mark Owens,
R-Crane, put together a proposal
that includes ideas for how the
community could mitigate health
risks and how specifi c types of
businesses could enforce social
distancing.
“We’ve got a little more work
to do it, but not a lot. And we
hope we can get the governor to
agree with running a pilot,” Find-
ley said. “If we can’t make a pilot
work there, we can’t make it work
anywhere.”
Dick Hughes is a freelance
journalist who has covered
Oregon politics since 1976.
Contact him at thehughe-
sisms@gmail.com.
Umatilla’s downtown getting a needed makeover
By JADE MCDOWELL
NEWS EDITOR
After years of planning, Uma-
tilla’s main thoroughfare is fi nally
getting an upgrade.
The Oregon Department of
Transportation has started work on
an overhaul of Sixth Street, from
Yerxa Avenue next to Columbia
Harvest Foods down to the bridge
over the Umatilla River.
The project will include recon-
structing the road to better with-
stand the heavy truck traffi c along
Highway 730 that it sees each day.
City Manager David Stockdale
said the project will bring streets,
sidewalks, curbs and crossings up
to accessibility standards in the
Americans with Disabilities Act.
There will also be decorative
touches, such as stamped con-
crete that looks like red brick, new
landscaping and new lampposts
with arms that can hold banners
or hanging fl ower baskets watered
automatically with a built-in irriga-
tion system.
At intersections, sidewalks will
“bulb out” to the point where park-
ing spaces end and the lane of
travel begins, creating a visual cue
for drivers to remember they’re
going through a town and to slow
down.
“As a driver, it makes it far eas-
ier to see pedestrians,” Stockdale
said.
Sixth Street isn’t closed com-
pletely during the project, Stock-
dale said.
Traffi c is just being rerouted to
the center lanes. Businesses can
stay open, and customers can still
access their parking lots or park on
side streets.
The project is set to be com-
pleted on Oct. 31. Stockdale said
that timeline included an extra
two weeks built in for contin-
gency, but that two weeks has
been “gobbled up” by some
delays in the supply chain caused
by COVID-19.
Since Sixth Street is part of
Highway 730, and therefore under
the jurisdiction of ODOT, the state
is paying for 88% of the $6 million
project, Stockdale said.
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