The INDEPENDENT, January 6, 2011
State minimum wage increased 10 cents per hour
Oregon's lowest-paid work-
ers got a small boost January
1, when the state’s minimum
hourly wage increased by 10
cents to $8.50. The 10-cent in-
crease mirrors a 1.15% in-
crease in the Consumer Price
Index (CPI) from August 2009
to August 2010, according to
the Oregon Bureau of Labor &
Industries. A full-time minimum
wage worker will earn approxi-
mately $208 more in 2011.
The minimum wage in-
crease is the result of voter-ap-
proved Measure 25, enacted in
2002, which requires a mini-
mum wage adjustment annual-
ly based on changes in infla-
tion, as defined by the CPI. The
CPI, published yearly by the
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics,
measures changes over time in
a fixed “market basket” of
goods and services. Minimum
wage workers did not receive
an increase in 2010 under the
formula.
In October, the state Em-
ployment Department reported
that “Oregon had roughly
121,000 jobs paying less than
$8.50 per hour in the second
quarter of 2010. More than half
of these jobs were in the leisure
and hospitality or retail trade in-
dustries.”
OSU program for woodland owners
Woodland owners interested
in learning about how to main-
tain their land are invited to at-
tend Woodland Information
Night, Wednesday, January 12,
at 6:30 p.m. at the OSU Exten-
sion Service office in Washing-
ton County.
This free program will pro-
vide tips on dealing with
weeds, planting trees, protect-
ing wooded property from fire,
and other issues of interest to
small acreage woodland own-
ers. Attendees will find out
about the various sources of
assistance available to help
them achieve their goals and
take care of their woodland and
associated wildlife, water, and
other resources.
The OSU Extension Service
office is located in Beaverton at
the Capital Center, 18640 NW
Walker Road. For more infor-
mation, contact Amy Grotta at
503-397-3462.
Page 5
Sen. Johnson named Vice-chair
of Ways and Means Committee
Senator Betsy Johnson (D-
Scappoose) has been named
Vice-chair of Ways and Means,
the Legislature’s chief budget-
writing committee, and Co-
Chair of the Ways and Means
subcommittee on General Gov-
ernment for the 2011 Legisla-
tive Session.
“We have a lot of hard work
in front of us to balance Ore-
gon’s budget and set a path for
economic recovery,” said John-
son, who also served as Vice-
Chair of Ways and Means dur-
ing the 2009 Legislative Ses-
sion. “I look forward to using
my Ways and Means experi-
ence to find ways to cut spend-
ing while protecting critical
services. Oversight and gov-
ernment accountability will be
key as we work to close our
budget deficit and restore con-
fidence in state services.”
As vice-chair of Ways and
Means, Johnson is responsible
for working with the Co-Chair in
crafting the overall state budg-
et. In her role as co-chair of the
Subcommittee on General
Government, Johnson will
oversee the budgets for the
Legislative branch, the State
Treasurer, the Secretary of
State, Department of Revenue,
the Governor, and several oth-
ers state agencies.
The 76th Oregon Legislative
Assembly will convene on Jan-
uary 10. Committees will begin
meeting on February 1st.
Rates will increase, but amounts to charge will be determined by studies, not guesses
From page 4
gon Department of Environ-
mental Quality (DEQ) because
its sewer system pollutes the
Nehalem River. In 2005, the
city started a project that in-
cluded new pump lines and sta-
tions, and the purchase of the
mill site for effluent disposal.
This was paid for with Commu-
nity Development Block Grant
(CDBG) funds and DEQ loan fi-
nancing. The city currently
owes $6,487,923 (combined
principle and interest) on DEQ
Loan #R93462. Then, like so
many other development activi-
ties around Vernonia, the sec-
ond serious flood in 12 years
forced the city to reconsider its
plans.
Over the past four years, a
succession of city administra-
tors, turnover in the public
works department, and “churn-
ing” of the City’s plans for sew-
er upgrades, caught this essen-
tial project in a stranglehold.
Recently, as a result of a “pre-
pre-engineering” report by the
engineering firm of Brown and
Caldwell, the city is closer to
understanding the way forward.
Earlier this year, members of
the City Council, Interim City
Administrator Bill Haack and
several members of the Public
Works Committee, met with
Brown and Caldwell, DEQ and
a consulting firm retained by
DEQ. The agenda included a
review of Brown and Caldwell’s
report, as well as a brainstorm-
ing session to find additional
ways to reduce the estimated
cost of the project and limit its
impact on utility rates. As we
understand it, the steps be-
tween us and a completed sew-
er project are as follows:
Pre-pre-engineering:
1. Brainstorm different proj-
ect ideas. The ideas consid-
ered so far include: abandoning
the lagoons completely and
building a treatment plant, a
combination of those two mod-
els, wetlands treatment sys-
tems (inside and outside the la-
goons), effluent management
systems like poplar farming,
etc.
2. Retaining an engineer to
advise the city about the feasi-
bility of these options.
3. Settling on the best de-
sign idea developed by the
public works committee and the
engineers, and producing an
estimate of the cost to make
that idea real.
Pre-engineering:
4. Using the final idea
emerging from Step 3, further
improve the resolution of the
plans and designs.
5. Provide another estimate
based on these refined de-
signs.
6. Reconsider funding op-
portunities and estimate the im-
pact on utility rates.
7. If indicated, revisit Steps 1
through 6.
Engineering:
8. Prepare full design docu-
ments and specifications for
the project that emerged from
Step 7. These documents need
to be so well-designed and writ-
ten that they can be publicly
bid, limiting the opportunity for
contractors to find loopholes
with which to gain a change or-
der. (It is these change orders
that push fully funded budgets
into the red.)
9. Bid and contract the de-
sign documents produced in
Step 8.
10. Construct the project.
Vernonia may never see a
more opportune time to com-
plete the sewer project. The in-
terest and sympathy of the pub-
lic sector, beginning with the
Governor, has given Vernonia
historic levels of state and fed-
eral interest in providing help.
This interest includes problems
like the sewer treatment sys-
tem. It seems unlikely that the
city will ever have the level of
outside support available to it
right now.
At the same time, construc-
tion costs, in general, have tak-
en a dip after the real estate
bust of 2008. There will proba-
bly never be a less costly time
to build the sewer project that is
needed to bring the city into
compliance.
Finally, the standards that
will govern the project’s design
may be on the verge of chang-
ing. Regulatory agencies are
beginning to recognize entirely
new categories of “pollutants”
that must be eliminated from
the waste stream. These are
very common compounds
which will be hard to remove.
They include pharmaceuticals,
birth control hormones, caffeine
and even cholesterol. Any new
system built after these rules
are adopted will need to be
much more sophisticated and
expensive.
So what does all this mean
for sewer rates? Unfortunately,
it means they will go up. At this
point, it is not known how
much. However, we are cur-
rently accruing interest on
$4,341,153 of expended princi-
ple and have accrued to date
$2,146,770 on this open DEQ
loan. That interest is being
added to our balance, accruing
additional interest. It’s not un-
like having a credit card bill and
making no payments. The bal-
ance just goes up and up. We
need to complete our project as
soon as possible to convert this
higher-interest rate debt to
DEQ into lower-cost, long-term
municipal debt. Obviously, this
cannot happen for a year or
two. In the meantime, the Pub-
lic Works Committee will rec-
ommend that the City Council
rededicate the soon-to-expire
$12 per month water payment
surcharge as a sewer sur-
charge to begin paying against
the interest accrual on the out-
standing DEQ loan amount.
No one in this process, not
the engineers, not DEQ, not the
City Council, let alone the Pub-
lic Works Committee has a
crystal ball to let us know exact-
ly the right way to proceed.
What is known, is that doing
nothing will lead to a DEQ en-
forcement action, and is likely
to be the worst possible alter-
native.
The next article will discuss
the alternative wastewater sys-
tems that were considered in
the process of selecting a de-
sired option to take forward into
final engineering. At this time
the city anticipates selecting a
project manager, a project en-
gineer, completing a rate study,
conducting geotechnical analy-
ses of the soils at the lagoons,
and upgrading existing pump-
ing stations to protect them
from flood damage in a future
high water event. Over the next
year more information will be
provided on each of these ele-
ments of the wastewater proj-
ect as they develop.
Source: City of Vernonia – Public
Works Committee
Unemployment still
high in Columbia Co.
Columbia County’s season-
ally adjusted unemployment
rate was 12.4 percent in No-
vember, essentially unchanged
from the previous month
(12.1%) and the year before
(12.7%). The rate was above
the statewide (10.6%) and the
national (9.8%) rates. Total em-
ployment climbed by 138 to
22,075 and the number of un-
employed people increased by
237 to 2,903. Total employ-
ment this November was 633
more than one year before and
there were 13 more people un-
employed this year.