OUR 114th Year
April 2, 2021
SEASIDESIGNAL.COM
$1.00
Seaside lays
out long-term
goals, priorities
By R.J. MARX
Seaside Signal
At a goal-setting ses-
sion in January 2019, the
city aimed to reestablish
its community emergency
response team, stream live
meetings and work with the
school district to bring a res-
ervoir to the new campus.
They helped accomplish all
three. The CERT team is
in operation and populated
with volunteers, meetings
are presented electronically
on the city’s youtube chan-
nel, and the reservoir at the
new campus are complete.
“Our feeling is, if you set
goals, they need to be mea-
sured and accounted for,”
Mayor Jay Barber said at
the time.
Monday night the City
Council presented this
year’s goals list. Working
with a consultant, the coun-
cil met in January over a
two-day period to project
goals for the next two to
four years.
Housing returned with
a goal to continue focus on
development of housing
opportunities in Seaside.
That category has been
expanded, City Councilor
Steve Wright said, from a
focus on workforce hous-
ing to include the “gamut of
housing.”
The city will develop
strategies to address home-
lessness as a way to improve
quality of life in Seaside,
and will seek opportuni-
ties to address addiction
and mental health issues.
“It’s so vastly needed,”
City Councilor Dana Phil-
lips said. “It’s not just the
homeless.”
The list, which breaks
down the vision to five cat-
egories: economic, infra-
structure, operations, resil-
iency and quality of life.
Resiliency,
evacuation
and bridge replacements
are major long-term goals
returning to the to-do list.
“The statistics when the
next tsunami hits are vari-
able, some are near term
LOVE IS IN
THE AIR
Neal Maine/Pacific Light Images
For two Seaside osprey, love is in the air. A male and female returned to the Broadway Park this week and
began nest repair after winter storms, photographer Neal Maine said. Along with large sticks and other natural
materials, osprey build their nests with Styrofoam, bailing twine, rope and plastic containers.
See Goals, Page A6
Chamber honors the
city’s best businesses
By R.J. MARX
Seaside Signal
Brian Owen and Ken
Heman hosted the Seaside
Chamber Annual Awards
and Auction from the Sea-
side Civic and Conven-
tion Center last Thursday,
streamed to more than 70
viewers.
came with the delivery of the
chamber’s top honor, Busi-
ness of the Year award to Pat-
taraporn “Patta” Lorwatcha-
rasophon and her husband,
Dacha “Kim” Pathumratana-
than. The family operates
Thai Me Up, and during
the coronavirus pandemic,
opened the SEA in Seaside,
and the SEA Crab House and
Raw Bar in Astoria.
‘THANK YOU AGAIN EVERYBODY
FOR DOING YOUR PART IN THIS
AWESOME COMMUNITY.’
— Ken Heman
Seaside Visitors Bureau
“It’s all about the com-
munity,” Heman, visitors
information specialist at the
Seaside Visitors Bureau,
said. “It’s about you, and
the businesses in this com-
munity. Last year was once
again one of those awesome
years where the community
of Seaside really showed
how everybody could come
together, step up and do
what needs to be done to
continue to be a successful
community.”
The evening’s highlight
The challenges to the
chamber came as a result of
the pandemic, chamber CEO
Owen said.
“March was the month
we all got scared,” Owen
said. “No one really knew
what was coming at us.
I remember receiving an
onslaught of emails. I quit
counting. It just kept going
through April and it just kept
going and going. Informa-
tion changed daily.”
See Chamber, Page A6
Sunset Empire Park and Recreation District
Children enjoying the gym at the Sunset Recreation Center.
Preschool begins at rec center
By R.J. MARX
Seaside Signal
Preschool classes began
last Monday at the Sunset
Recreation Center. Staff has
been working this week on
transitioning the all youth
programs to that facility,
Skyler Archibald, execu-
tive director of the Sun-
set Empire Park and Rec-
Newsome brings passion for books
By R.J. MARX
Seaside Signal
reation District, said at last
Tuesday’s board meeting.
“We will be able to
have two preschool class-
rooms over there as well
as our kindergarten class-
room two classrooms that
are dedicated for that first
through fifth grade,” he
said.
Preschoolers will have
“a little more room to
stretch their legs” at the
See Library, Page A5
R.J. Marx
Micah Newsome, assistant library director at the Seaside
Library.
for our patrons.”
The lap swim and other
aquatic programs are oper-
ating at an 85% to 95%
participation rate, he said.
Swim lessons return May
1.
The district hosts its
annual Easter Egg Hunt
on Sunday from 10 a.m. to
noon at Broadway Field for
the district’s community
egg hunt. The event is free.
Students put campus to test
By R.J. MARX
Seaside Signal
Micah Newsome, his
girlfriend and two Bos-
ton terriers drove from
Augusta, Georgia, to Sea-
side in the midst of the
pandemic last summer.
“It was a joint decision.
She has family in Wash-
ington County and we
both like the area,” said
Newsome, Seaside’s assis-
tant librarian. “We both
applied for jobs before
moving, and planned to
move if either of us was
offered a position. We
former Broadway Middle
School, with the opportu-
nity to use classrooms, caf-
eteria and gym space.
“The district is really
working hard to pro-
vide programming during
this time of COVID,”
Archibald said. “Not a day
goes by where I am not
impressed by the work of
staff in ensuring that we
have a safe environment
It’s showtime at the new
Seaside High School and
Seaside Middle School
campus, as the new building
recently debuted for high
schoolers.
The new building, the
product of a $99.7 million
bond from voters passed in
2016 to move schools out of
the tsunami zone, received
a certificate of occupancy
from Bob Mitchell, Sea-
side’s director of building
and code enforcement, in
March.
Construction
project
manager Jim Henry told
the Seaside School District
board in March that students
and staff were field-testing
doors, windows, carpet and
bathrooms.
“We’re getting a few
reports of things that need
some assistance, but that’s
not unusual when everyone
moves back in,” Henry said.
Science room ventila-
tion, high school gym floor
repair and “hurricane hard-
ware” — door seals, door
bottoms and sweeps — are
among tasks ahead, Henry
said.
Exterior remediation is
95% complete, Henry said, a
process that replaced 22,000
linear square feet of weather
barrier after the first appli-
cation failed to meet speci-
fications. Cost for repair is
covered by insurance under
Hoffman Construction.
Athletic field drainage
issues are sorted out, and
field reseeding was set to
take place in late March or
April.
The
intergovernmen-
tal agreement between the
school district and the city
for the reservoir property
above the school was com-
pleted last Friday. The 3.28-
acre reservoir site, part of
130 acres donated to the
school district by Weyerhae-
user Co. in 2016 prior to the
bond vote, was annexed by
the city in October.
Budgeted at $5.56 mil-
lion, the 5-million gallon
reservoir project totaled
$5.84 million after change
orders. The reservoir pro-
vides water to the new mid-
dle school and high school
See Campus, Page A6