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.”
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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. One
of the most influential stories
that helped mold her as a child
was about Harriet Tubman,
who escaped slavery, only to
return to help others at great
risk to herself.
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