The latest news stories across the state of Oregon from the digital home of the Oregon coastal cities, OregonBeachMagazine.com
Monday, May 1, 2023
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Cargo Containers At Tillamook Airport To Store Supplies To Help In A Disaster
The City of Tillamook has received two large cargo containers that will be used to store emergency supplies for a major earthquake and tsunami.
The containers will be located at the Tillamook Airport and will hold enough food, water, tents and medical supplies to support 100 people for two weeks.
The containers were purchased by the state Office of Resilience and Emergency Management. These containers, called Conex boxes, were delivered in April and are part of an emergency preparedness partnership between ODHS, Tillamook County, Tillamook Municipal Airport and Near Space Corporation.
Seaside’s Sunset Empire Transportation District to Suspend Operations
Bus service will shut down on Saturday, April 29, 2023. The Sunset Empire Transportation District will suspend bus service and other operations starting Saturday after the agency’s troubling financial condition came to light. The transit district’s board voted unanimously on Thursday afternoon to discontinue operations indefinitely and furlough employees.
The message is we will not be offering any public transportation services effective Saturday due to the financial situation that we’re in. We will get it restarted as soon as we have a financial package in place. And we’ll get the process to restart up and running as soon as possible,” Jeff Hazen, the transit district’s executive director, told The Astorian.
The transit district’s bus routes and para transit services connect riders across Clatsop County. The Lower Columbia Connector also takes riders between Astoria and Portland. The agency has an annual budget of $6.6 million and 46 employees.
State Social Services Office In Astoria Remain Closed
The Oregon Department of Human Services office in Astoria remains closed indefinitely after shutting down over a building safety concern in late March.
Employees were working remotely while the issue was being investigated, and the state has declined to provide any other details. An owner of the building on Marine Drive, however, told The Astorian that the issue stemmed from a cracked heat exchanger, which was causing noncombustible gas to escape into the building. (SOURCE)
Fatal Crash – HWY 101 – Coos County
Oregon State Police – 05/01/23 6:57 AM
On Tuesday, April 25, 2023, at approximately 2:00 P.M., the Oregon State Police responded to a two-vehicle crash on Hwy-101, near milepost 242, in Coos County.
The preliminary investigation indicated a northbound Ford Ranger, operated by Dawn Marie Oviatt (53) of Gold Beach, crossed over the centerline and crashed head-on into a southbound Ford F350 pick-up, operated by Terry Ray Nighswonger (63) of Coquille.
The operator of the Ranger (Oviatt) was declared deceased at the scene.
The operator of the F350 (Nighswonger) was injured and transported to a local hospital for treatment.
OSP was assisted by Millington Fire and ODOT.
Oregon Public Universities Ask State For More Funding As Students Pay Record Tuition
Officials from Oregon’s seven public universities say they need more than $1 billion over the next two years to maintain services amid inflation and to avoid deep cuts and layoffs.
That’s more than $100 million more than the $900 million the state’s seven universities received in the last biennium for general support.
At a public hearing of the Joint Subcommittee on Education on Wednesday, Southern Oregon University President Rick Bailey told lawmakers that the current funding level will not be sufficient for the schools in the next biennium given inflation.
“This means that students will have to fund inflation on the majority of our budgets,” he said.
University administrators have begun restructuring and considering layoffs amid an expected $5 million deficit for the coming school year.
All seven of Oregon’s public universities have announced tuition increases for the next school year, in a regular pattern of annual increases in tuition during the last two decades. None in the upcoming school year is raising tuition above 5%, which would require approval from the Higher Education Coordinating Commission.
Oregon has more than 78,000 full-time students at its seven public universities – Eastern Oregon University, Oregon Institute of Technology, Oregon State University, Portland State University, Southern Oregon University, University of Oregon and Western Oregon University.
Their tuition covers 50% or more of university costs, one of the highest proportions in the nation, according to a recent report commissioned by lawmakers from the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems, a nonprofit think tank in Colorado. About 25 years ago, the state paid for up to 75% of the cost of each full-time employee at a university. Now, it pays for about 50% or less, researchers found.
The state’s per-pupil funding for full-time college students is about $5,600 annually, around $3,000 less than what California and Washington provide.
Lawmakers heard from a Southern Oregon University student working three jobs to pay for her tuition and living expenses. Annual tuition for Oregon residents attending the university full-time this year topped $9,400 dollars.
“I have good friends that have dropped out because they fell too far behind on their account, or took out as many loans as they possibly could, and still could not afford it,” she said.
Rob Fullmer, an information technology specialist at Portland State University, said if funding isn’t increased, tuition hikes will push Oregon youth further away from choosing college over joining the workforce after high school.
“Prospective students of Oregon’s higher education system are cost conscious. For the past decade, they’ve had to carefully weigh the price of college against any potential future earnings they expect they’ll enjoy – if they manage to get the degree – versus the lost wages and time they spend earning one,” he told lawmakers. “It’s been a close call. But more and more of them have decided to forgo that degree.”
Lawmakers are also facing other higher education requests.
The Oregon Council of Presidents, an advocacy group comprised of the seven university presidents and the president of Oregon Health & Science University, is asking the Legislature to double the budget for the Oregon Opportunity Grant for the biennium, from $200 million to $400 million. The grant is the largest state-funded, need-based grant program for Oregon residents. The council is also calling on the state to allocate $40 million to the Oregon Student Tribal Grant in the next two-year budget, which will start July 1 and run through June 2025. The program was launched in 2022 with $19 million for the 2022-23 school year.
Megan Van Pelt, a student at the University of Oregon and a member of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, is one of 450 Native students who received the grant last year. At the hearing she said it had been instrumental in alleviating the financial burden of attending a four-year college, and allowed her to get involved on campus and to serve as co-director of the Native American Student Union.
“This grant has not only enabled me to pursue my academic goals, but this grant has allowed me to be a normal student,” she said.
The post Oregon public universities ask state for more funding as students pay record tuition appeared first on Oregon Capital Chronicle.
Communities Sign Contracts On Funding For Governor’s Homelessness State Of Emergency
Six of the seven multi-agency coordination groups representing regions across Oregon affected by governor Tina Kotek’s declaration of a homelessness state of emergency have signed contracts that will grant them funds to deal with the problem, with the seventh expected to sign in early May.
On her first full day in office in January, Gov. Kotek declared a homelessness state of emergency which the Oregon legislature later supported with a multi-million dollar response packaged passed in March. February saw the creation of infrastructure to handle the homelessness response including seven regional multi-agency coordination groups that would be tasked with distributing those emergency funds. The governor announced which of those groups would get certain portions of the funding on April 10, contingent on the groups’ signing of contracts to receive the funding to execute the governor’s order.
“The housing crisis demands urgent action on an unprecedented timeline. I am grateful to the providers, local and county leaders who quickly assembled to form the MACs, the legislature for passing the package early with bipartisan support and broad stakeholder input, and to communities across Oregon embracing this call to action,” Governor Kotek said. “I look forward to the work ahead to help ensure these investments yield visible, measurable results across our state by the end of the year.”
According to the governor’s office, six of the seven multi-agency coordination groups have signed contracts to receive the funding to carry out the governor’s order. This funding will be used to prevent nearly 9,000 people from becoming homeless, rehouse more than 1,200 households, and create over 600 new shelter beds by January 2024. The seventh group, which will handle Clackamas County’s response, is expected to sign their contract in the first week of May due to a local policy that requires county commissioners to approve the contract before it is signed.
The Southern Oregon And Northern California TV Station KTVL Plans To Lay Off Its Entire News Staff In Mid-May
Taylar Ansures is a digital content producer at the Medford station, which is owned by the telecommunications conglomerate Sinclair Broadcast Group. Ansures said that on Thursday morning, their general manager informed the newsroom that the station will cease operations after Friday, May 12.
“They were planning to keep the entire community, all of Southern Oregon in the dark, all of our viewers in the dark, until our last day, until our last broadcast,” she said.
According to Ansures, the closure will affect all 17 people on their news staff, including managers.
According to a statement from Sinclair Broadcast Group, the network’s national news desk will take over starting Monday, May 15.
“The National Desk, which provides real-time national and regional news from Sinclair’s television stations across the US, will air during KTVL’s regularly scheduled news time periods, with an opportunity for local news cut-ins in the newscast,” the statement reads.
A Sinclair spokesperson did not provide further detail about local content or new programming. KTVL News Director Chad Hypes could not be reached for more information.
Ansures said she started working at KTVL in November, after moving from another Sinclair-owned station in Redding, California to be closer to family. While she had seen similar downsizing at other Northern California TV stations, she said this was more dramatic.
“It’s happening in other markets, but I’ve never seen it happen quite like this where it was so blindsided and unexpected. Even our management was left in the dark until [Thursday],” she said.
KTVL shared a newsroom with the Medford Mail Tribune until the Rogue Valley’s longest-running newspaper closed operations in early 2023. During that time, questions swirled about the nature of the relationship between the two media companies.
Ansures said managers told staff the KTVL closure was separate from the Mail Tribune ceasing operations. She said staff did not receive an explanation from Sinclair’s corporate representatives for why the layoffs were occurring.
Additional layoffs and downsizing have happened across the national media industry in recent months. In March, NPR laid off 10% of its workforce. In mid April, Buzzfeed announced it was closing its news division, Buzzfeed News. On April 27, Vice announced it would close its news division, Vice News Tonight.
The Oregon legislature is sending Governor Kotek two bills that would limit single-use food containers.
One bill bans styrofoam food containers and the other allows customers to bring their own containers for leftover food at restaurants. The Oregon Health Authority would be required to develop guidelines for personal containers and customers could still request non-styrofoam containers from restaurants.
The Oregon state House passed two bills with bipartisan support on Wednesday to address the growing environmental and public health impacts of single-use plastics. Both bills now head to Gov. Tina Kotek’s desk for her signature.
Senate Bill 543 will phase out polystyrene foam foodware, packing peanuts and coolers and prohibit the use of PFAS, the toxic substances nicknamed “forever chemicals” because of their longevity, in food packaging starting January 1, 2025. The legislation passed the House by a vote of 40-18.
Eugene Marathon Brings Out Thousands
Thousands of people turned out to the 2023 Eugene Marathon on Sunday, with hundreds of others backing them up with hydration, medical, and moral support.
Around 8,000 people participated in the half and full marathon races at the Eugene Marathon on April 30, according to race officials. The field included runners with a variety of athletic backgrounds. While many Oregonians came out to the weekend’s festivities, a number of people made the trip to Eugene.
Results of the full and half marathons, and the other events from the 2023 race weekend, can be found on the Eugene Marathon website.
10th Annual Art of Survival Century Bike Ride Returns to Klamath Basin
The 10th Annual Art of Survival Century Bicycle Ride and Gravel Grinder event isn’t just about pedaling a road or mountain bike through beautiful stretches of the countryside. It’s also an opportunity to learn about a region that includes Southern Oregon’s Klamath Basin and Northern California’s Tulelake Basin and Butte Valley area.
What is unique about this event—which is a ride, not a race—is that at each rest stop offers educational components and/or ranger or historian-led talks highlighting the cultural history, geography, environmental issues and geology of the area. Along with providing fluids and nutritious snacks at the rest stops, riders will have opportunities to learn about the areas they’re passing through.
This year enjoy a breathtaking ride through American History. 150 years ago, along the banks of Lost River, sharp cracks of rifles broke the restful silence of the Klamath Basin igniting a tragic war between the Modoc Indians and U.S. Army. This Memorial Day weekend we invite you to join us in “Remembering the Modoc War”. Cycle along the uncrowded backroads of our beautiful Basin in the shadow of majestic Mount Shasta. Witness first-hand where the war started and where many of the battles took place.
Explore Captain Jack’s Stronghold, a natural fortress where 55 Modoc warriors held off a U.S. Army force of several hundred troops for six months. Ride along roads where Army soldiers were marched into battle. Talk to historians about the land and cattle barons and their relentless efforts to remove the Modoc from the Basin, the Modoc’s desire to stay in their homeland since time immemorial and the plight of the soldiers and settlers friendly to the Modoc caught in the middle.
Day 1, Saturday, May 27: Choose from four routes that begin and end at the Malin Community Park in Malin, OR – 100-mile Century, 62-mile Metric Century, 38-mile and family friendly 14-mile road routes plus a 22-mile mountain gravel grinder route in the Medicine Lake Highlands.
Day 2, Sunday, May 28, is a Gravel Grinder Mix covering distances of 74 and 54 miles and a family friendly 13-mile route. All gravel routes begin and end at the Butte Valley Community Center in Dorris, CA. Participants will ride along the flatlands of Butte Valley, including the Butte Valley Wildlife Area, farms, ranches and for the long rides to Juanita Lake. Views of snow-capped Mount Shasta and Goosenest Mountain are plentiful.
Registration Fees for Saturday, May 27: Rides are $75 for the Century and Metric Century, $55 for the 38-miler and $25 for both the mountain bike and family friendly events. The cost for Sunday, May 28 rides are $75 for the 74 and 54-mile and $25 for the 13-mile ride. However, if riders register for both days they will receive a discount. The cost for all routes will increase $10 after May 20. Fees include rest stop food and beverages, SAG, delicious post-ride meal both days and SWAG.
Whether riding a bicycle or not there will be plenty of activities during the weekend. The ride committee, along with Rural Klamath Connects, is planning to offer a bus tour of the audio tour “Modoc War: A Homeland Lost” on Friday morning, May 26. For more details and to sign up email aoscentury@gmail.com.
A pre-ride reception will be held Friday, May 26 from 4:00-6:30 p.m. at the Malin Broadway Theater in Malin, OR for cyclists to pick up their ride packets, enjoy refreshments, discover new area activities and learn about the Modoc War history, plus tour our restored historic theater and visit with the locals. The committee welcomes anyone interested to attend this reception.
Post-ride meals will be offered both days and are included in the registration fees. The cost for non-riders is $15 both days. The Malin meal will likely feature locally grown, load-your-own baked potatoes while Dorris will offer yummy lasagna.
For images, see here. For more information and to register visit the website at https://survivalcentury.com/
83-year-old Clarence Edward Pitts walked away from his home in Bandon on Tuesday, January 31 at around 1:00 p.m. Pitts is described as:
- 6′ 00″
- 150 lbs
- Gray hair
- Brown eyes
- Last seen wearing an orange beanie, plaid jacket, tan pants and white shoes
- May have a walking cane
- Has dementia and PTSD
Pitts may be in a vehicle that was also found to be missing from the home:
- 1999 Toyota Van
- White
- Oregon license plate: WYN 788
If you see Clarence or have any information pertaining to where he may be, please call the Coos County Sheriff’s Office Dispatch Center at 541-396-2106 or the Bandon Police Department at 541-347-3189.
