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August 18, 2017 • Seaside Signal • seasidesignal.com • 3A ‘Social investment’ ready to gamble on Seaside preschool By R.J. Marx Seaside Signal A new program could bring private sector funding for preschool education in Clatsop County. County Manager Camer- on Moore and Sydney Van Dusen, coordinator of Way to Wellville, came to Seaside’s Downtown Development As- sociation meeting Thursday, Aug. 10, with plans for sup- plementing public funds with private investment to help provide preschool for chil- dren who otherwise could not afford it. Clatsop County is one of five communities around the country to participate in the Way to Wellville program, which came to the county in 2014. Moore, who serves on the group’s economic devel- opment committee, said the team considered lack of pre- school in the county a signifi- cant impediment to economic development. “If you have children but you don’t have a place for those children to go while you go to work, you may not be working,” Moore said. Employers want to know their employees’ families are taken care of, so having high-quality preschool in the county has economic impacts, Moore said. Long-term return In December, the county was approved for $350,000 in federal grant money from the U.S. Department of Edu- cation, he said, money which did not require local matching funds. “Since then we’ve been doing a lot of work to see if we could in some way provide additional preschool opportu- nities for 600 children in our county,” Moore said. That number captures some, if not all, of the chil- dren who don’t have access to those services, Moore said. One option is to “pay for success,” he said, through a social investment concept. “How do you get the private sector to pay for things the public sector typically pays for?” Moore asked. “There are private investors willing to invest in these types of in- vestments. Why not tap into that?” Programs in other counties have addressed issues like homelessness and veterans’ services, Moore said. The initial money is private, but the private investor is paid A power outage hit War- renton, Seaside and Cannon Beach Tuesday night, Aug. 8, as a result of a pole fire near a substation in Seaside on Roo- sevelt Drive behind the outlet mall. Pacific Power received re- ports of the outage around 10 p.m. Warrenton returned to power shortly before 11:30 p.m. Cannon Beach returned to power at 11:37 p.m. Seaside was the last to re- turn to power at about 12:40 a.m.. One woman’s quest to end family violence and abuse By Rebecca Herren Seaside Signal R.J. MARX/SEASIDE SIGNAL County Manager Cameron Moore speaks to members of the Seaside Downtown Development Association. through public dollars. Moore said the funding could reduce the number of children who need special education when they get to the K-12 system, or prepare young children so they are better academically. Returns come over the long term. “We go to the private sec- tor and say, ‘Would you pay for this?’ If they say ‘yes,’ and they invest, they make some money — typically 5 percent,” Moore said. “If we don’t achieve the outcome — they lose their money. If they put up the money and we achieve these outcomes, we get what we want and you get a return on investment.” Families benefit Children could receive free universal preschool if they qualify, Van Dusen added. “It would be for those families who cannot afford preschool at this time,” she said. Families at 300 percent of poverty level would be available to participate in the preschool program. Since in- come of $24,000 for a family of four is considered poverty level, a family with an income of up to $70,000 could be eli- gible, Van Dusen said. Funds would “bring ev- erybody up to a higher stan- dard,” Moore said, working with existing local preschools to provide greater access for county children, kindergarten readiness and teacher train- ing, among other goals. Preschool teachers in the county make about one half what kindergarten teachers earn, he said. “That doesn’t seem right to us.” If the program is success- ful, the cost of individual- ized instruction programs for struggling students — which can reach $20,000 per year, per child — can be signifi- cantly reduced, Van Dusen said. “If you think of that over 12 years, that adds up.” Power outage hits South County Seaside Signal Breaking the Pattern “There’s no obvious cause,” Tom Gauntt, a Pacific Power spokesman, said. “It doesn’t look like anyone had a bonfire down there.” He said birds or a chemical reaction after rain may have caused the substation breaker to fail. “It’s the same idea as the breaker box in your garage.” The pole was badly dam- aged. Crews were “able to work around it and isolated it using different circuits,” Gauntt said. Gauntt said 15,324 custom- ers were without power after the outage. On the heels of the re- lease of her new book “Safe House,” longtime Seaside res- ident and local author Shan- non Symonds was the guest at the July Lunch in the Loft author series hosted by Beach Books. “I’m very happy to have Shannon. Her book is fantas- tic,” said Karen Emmerling owner of Beach Books. “It highlights things you prob- ably didn’t know were go- ing on in Seaside, or hoped weren’t going on in Seaside, but it’s definitely a tribute to her work and to her faith. I hope Shannon and her char- acters will be back at some point, soon.” Symonds said, “I am re- ally happy to be here and for those of you who I recognize, I can’t think of any other way I’d rather do this the first time, it’s a little bit scary.” “I am a writer for those of you who didn’t know and I have written for some years. When I was little, my mom said when I was in trouble, I wrote her letters,” Symonds said. “I actually got some published when I was in my 20s; mostly poems, because I had kids and that was all I had time for.” Later, Symonds and her daughter wrote articles to- gether, which she found to be fun and good practice. “For a big ten bucks an article, we reached out to about 2.5 mil- lion people, and they loved us in the Philippines.” Authors usually write about what they know, Sy- monds said, and although she would like to write pirate sto- ries, saying she loves telling pirate bedtime stories, what she knows is something that has become important to her, REBECCA HERREN/SEASIDE SIGNAL Local author Shannon Symonds discusses some key points she wrote in her new book, “Safe House,” during a Lunch in the Loft presentation at Beach Books in July. and that is survivorship of abuse and trauma. Symonds survived a rare stranger assault at a young age. She began working as an advocate in 1997, first as a child advocate for Head Start. She has written articles about surviving abuse and has vol- unteered at Helping Hands. “Safe House” is about do- mestic violence. “It impacts 1 in 3 women and 1 in 4 men,” said Symonds. And, though she thinks these statistics only reflect what is reported, she said she could honestly say that during the three years working six nights a week at a crisis center, “I took about two calls for every reported incident to the police.” When it comes to telling stories we know about, she said, “We need to be very careful.” Each time she’s asked why she doesn’t tell her own story, “because, it’s real- ly pretty interesting,” Symonds thinks of Tiger Woods’ mother. “How heart- broken she must have felt knowing he’s struggling and how much she loves him and how much that must have Police host National Night Out in Seaside Bonding over burgers, hot dogs and games By R.J. Marx Seaside Signal Seaside celebrated the 34th annual National Night Out Tuesday, Aug. 1, as res- idents and police officers shared burgers and conversa- tion at Cartwright Park. “It’s a national push to have a night out and meet your neighbors and have a barbecue,” Police Chief Dave Ham said at the event. “It’s a great time to get out and so- cialize with your neighbors, and meet up with your police department.” National Night Out is an annual community-building campaign that promotes po- lice-community partnerships, held the first Tuesday in Au- gust. The national event, cele- R.J. MARX/SEASIDE SIGNAL Russ Vandenberg, Denny Jones and Parker McCarthy han- dle the grill at Seaside’s National Night Out. brating its 34th year, came to Seaside about 12 years ago, Ham said, with the goal of offering a “nonchalant atmo- sphere” and an opportunity to meet members of the po- lice department. The event alternates locations between Broadway Park and Cart- wright Park. Ham credited the Kiwanis Club and Rotary for provid- ing food and supplies, and the city’s Park and Recre- ation Department for games and prizes. Officer Matthew Brown enjoyed his first National Night Out as a Seaside po- lice officer. Originally from Wallowa, Brown joined the department in December. “I like it,” Brown said. “It’s good to see the commu- nity show their support for law enforcement.” One goal of National Night Out is to offer the pub- lic an opportunity to share concerns with local law en- forcement. “Hopefully we can help, depending on what it is,” Brown said. “It might not be an issue to everybody, but it’s an issue to them.” Has anyone come up with a question or problem? “Not yet,” Brown said. “Just a lot of ‘thank-yous’ and people being apprecia- tive.” ASTOR STREET OPRY COMPANY 33rd Season of Dr. Darren Thorsen Don’t miss out on life’s beauty because of blurry vision! Back to School Special! S hanghaied in A storia July 7 - September 9 www.coastaleyecare.com powered by hurt her.” Symonds notes that telling her story would affect her family and she chooses to keep it within herself, as do most survivors. Today, Symonds writes fictional stories behind a backdrop of experience. She discussed the different types of abuse: cycle of violence and power and control. With cycle of violence, there comes the explosion, the apology followed by a honeymoon pe- riod then another explosion. “That’s about 25 percent of domestic abuse,” said Sy- monds. With power and control, she explained, “It’s pretty un- predictable, you never know when the shoe is going to drop.” There’s jealousy and tracking of the victim: check- ing whereabouts, checking computers and cellphone ac- tivity; even as far as the abus- er keeping medication, money and cellphones so their victim would have no access to basic resources. Relationships under the guise of either type of abuse can go on for years without showing any violence. “But,” Symonds said, “there are little signs and little things that are happening all along that are nevertheless abusive,” refer- encing a study on the “Pat- tern of Violence” by Dr. Evan Stark. Abusers who cycle are predictable: they blow, let off a little steam and repeat the pattern. When abusers “feel they are losing control or feel they are losing power, they actually become much more dangerous,” she added. These differences, she said, are the basis for how she approached her book. “The reason why I chose to write fiction is because there are some things I could never explain. There are just some things that you can’t tell un- til you take someone there, and in a story, I can take them there,” she said. There are examples of ex- perience woven throughout the book. Stories of advocacy and survival that, as Symonds said, are the stories she hopes to tell in a way the reader can also laugh, “because at times life is too ridiculous, life is silly. We go to great lengths to survive because survivors do amazing things and survivors experience miracles every day.” Although “Safe House” is written from the perspective of Symonds’ faith, the book crosses many faiths and cul- tures. Symonds said she be- lieves miracles happen when victims make steps in the right direction for safety. “Un- derstanding the whole story can lead to a change in all of us, one part at a time.” Her lifetime goal is too end family violence and sexual abuse. Born in Portland, Symonds spent every summer weekend as a kid in Seaside, staying at the family home that her great-grandmother Emily Pringle bought in 1921. She is an artist and avid reader. 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