The latest news stories and stories of interest in the Willamette Valley from the digital home of Southern Oregon, from Wynne Broadcasting’s WillametteValleyMagazine.com
Friday, June 9, 2023
Willamette Valley Weather
Eugene Approves Funding For New Affordable Housing Projects
The Eugene City Council recently approved $1.2 million for projects meant to increase the supply of affordable housing.
Laura Hammond is a housing tools analyst with the city. She said the goal is to serve people who find it difficult to find housing in an especially challenging market.
“It includes small homes that first time homebuyers can buy,” Hammond said. “It’s going to include the conversion of a hotel into permanent supportive housing for people exiting homelessness, and it’s also going to include a new mixed-use building that would create a permanent living situation for people with conviction histories.”
Hammond said four houses for first-time homebuyers planned by Cultivate Inc. takes advantage of new middle housing codes enacted by the state. She said it’s in a residential neighborhood in West Eugene near shopping and bus lines.
“It could have happened just on its own, but by adding the affordable housing trust fund, those four new homes are actually going to be affordable to first-time homebuyers,” Hammond said. “Something that we know is pretty challenging now in Eugene.”
Hammond said one of the homes in that project will be fully accessible under the American With Disabilities Act. The Affordable Housing Trust Fund was established in 2019 and is funded by a .5% excise tax on new construction in Eugene.
More details on the projects: (from the City of Eugene website)
- $552,650 was awarded to Homes for Good Housing Agency for The Coleman, a new mixed-used three-story development in partnership with Sponsors Inc. that will provide 38 apartments and on-site support services to people with conviction histories. The land for the development, at Highway 99 and Roosevelt, was donated by Lane County and is located across the street from Sponsors’ Roosevelt Crossing transitional housing community. The building will include Sponsors’ Re-entry Resource Center, offices, and meeting rooms, providing services to people living on-site, as well as for clients in the community. The project will also receive $470,847 in City Fee Assistance. Construction is anticipated to start in Spring of 2024 and occupancy would begin in 2025.
- $383,434 was awarded to Homes for Good Housing Agency for Bridges on Broadway, which will convert the four story, former Red Lion Hotel, located at 599 East Broadway in downtown Eugene, into a 56-unit Permanent Supportive Housing apartment community serving people experiencing chronic homelessness, including individuals with severe and persistent mental illness and/or substance use disorder. Residents will receive support services to help them maintain stable housing. The project will also receive $173,590 in City Fee Assistance. Construction is anticipated to start in Spring of 2024 and occupancy would begin in 2025.
- $321,528 was awarded to Cultivate Inc. for the Grant Street Grow Homes, four new homeownership homes in the Far West Neighborhood. The four new homes would be built in the backyard area of an existing home and would be available for purchase by low-income households. Three of the new homes would be one bedroom, one-bathroom homes with ability to ‘grow’ to become three-bedroom, two-bathroom homes in the future. The fourth home will be ground level and fully accessible under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The project will also receive $58,472 in City Fee Assistance. Construction is expected to start in early 2024 and occupancy would occur by 2025. — (SOURCE)
Arrest Made In Valley River Inn Fire
Eugene Police Violent Crimes detectives have made an arrest in this case. Morgan Christopher Immesoete, age 47, of Cheshire, was arrested without incident today in W. Eugene. He is being lodged at Lane County Jail on Arson in the First Degree.
PREVIOUSLY RELEASED INFORMATION: Three-Alarm Fire at Valley River Inn On Tuesday, February 28 at 11:07 a.m., Eugene Springfield Fire (ESF) responded to the report of a fire at the Valley River Inn in Eugene. The fire started on the second floor on the south side of the building, and quickly spread to the third floor and attic, turning the incident into a three-alarm fire. All available ESF crews are actively working to contain the fire at this time. The building’s sprinkler system was not activated but the fire alarm allowed for a successful building evacuation with no injuries reported. The building suffered a partial roof collapse and extensive damage. The cause of the fire is unknown at this time.
Eugene Springfield Fire Crews Respond To Mobile Home Fire On Coburg Road
Fire officials say one was injured in fire that broke out in a mobile home on Coburg Road on Wednesday morning.
Fire crews responded to a mobile home fire on Coburg Road at about 10:50 a.m. on June 7, according to Eugene-Springfield Fire’s Facebook page. Fire officials said that the fire was under control within 15 minutes, and the home was unoccupied. Authorities said that the cause of the fire is under investigation.
Eugene Emeralds Owner David Elmore Passes Away
Eugene Emeralds owner David Elmore has passed away, the Emeralds announced on Thursday.
Elmore created the Elmore Sports Group, a conglomerate of Minor League Baseball teams, professional hockey clubs, and more.
Elmore was also the founder and owner of several Minor League Baseball teams including the Eugene Emeralds, Colorado Springs Sky Sox, Inland Empire 66ers, Amarillo Sod Poddles, San Antonio Missions, Idaho Falls Chukars, and the Lynchburg Hillcats.
“David Elmore established a lasting legacy in the world of sports,” the Emeralds said. “Through these teams, he created opportunities for aspiring players, entertained countless fans, and contributed to the growth and development of the sport.”
Josephine County Missing Person Rally in Grants Pass Today
FRIDAY, JUNE 9, 2023 AT 10 AM – 6 PM Josephine County Circuit Court
https://www.facebook.com/events/197013002742549/?ref=newsfeed
Our intention is to bring renewed awareness to over 30 of the 50 active missing persons cases in Josephine County, Oregon. We will have signs held outside of the courthouse, some will be held by family members of the local missing, others will be held by community volunteers who simply wish to see these cases resolved.
We will have tables of fliers set up for any curious folks who are passing by. There will also be snacks and drinks, though bringing your own provisions is highly encouraged. this is a PEACEFUL demonstration, but peaceful certainly doesn’t have to mean quiet. We need to get loud, and let people know that we will not let our missing be forgotten. We need to demand answers. Too many of these cases hinge on people coming forward with information. Now is the time to let them know they can. https://www.facebook.com/JoCoMPP
UPDATE JUNE 9th-— Hello everybody! A few things that I’d like to update y’all on before the rally. We have 28 signs. Ideally this means that we’d like 28 people consistently holding those signs. I understand that not everybody will be there for the full 8 hours, but a rotating influx of volunteers will be necessary for us to pull this off.
I will have JCSO and GPPD records request forms available for anybody who would like to fill one out on behalf of their missing loved one in order to gain further insight on their case. If you get the records before we do, you can email them to us later on.
PLEASE bring whatever accommodations you need to be comfortable and safe while we’re out there. Sunscreen! If you use it, bring it! Chairs! Legs get tired, some of us (me) have bad knees and stuff. No shame in sitting with your sign!
Folding tables! A few folks have said they’d bring some but we need something to put these flyers on and I’m getting nervous that there won’t be enough!
And now for a pretty cool announcement! Will there be press? YES! While few media outlets that I reached out to actually responded to my messages, I was surprised just a few days ago by a journalist for Southern Oregon’s PBS station when they messaged me asking if they could cover the rally for a segment. They also said that if any friends or family of the missing wanted to speak specifically about their loved ones to promote their cases, they’re happy to speak with you.
let’s show up for our locally missing, make some new friends, and give Josephine County something to talk about! https://www.facebook.com/JoCoMPP
Oregon Democratic lawmakers stood on the steps of the state Capitol Tuesday and implored Republicans, who have been boycotting the Senate, to return and vote on a number of bipartisan bills that are at risk of dying because of a political standoff that has now lasted a month.
Several statehouses around the nation, including Montana and Tennessee, have been ideological battlegrounds this year. Republicans in the Oregon statehouse conducted walkouts in 2019, 2020 and 2021 to deny enough members for voting on measures. But this one is the most serious yet, threatening hundreds of bills and the approval of state budgets for the next two years.
Democrats who held a news conference Tuesday cited a range of bills about urgent issues facing Oregon, including ones aimed at reducing drug overdoses, mitigating wildfire risks and shoring up seismically vulnerable dams, that are in limbo because of the ideological rift.
Yet neither side is budging on a bill on protections for abortion and transgender care, with Democrats saying it isn’t negotiable and minority Republicans insisting it die or be changed. Republicans reject a provision that would allow doctors to provide abortions regardless of age, with doctors not required to notify parents when doing so could endanger the child, such as in cases of incest.
“If Democrat leaders truly prioritized bipartisan budgets and policy proposals Oregonians desperately need, they would work to resolve this impasse in a bipartisan fashion,” Senate Republican Leader Sen. Tim Knopp said. “Instead, Democrat leadership is clinging to an unlawful, extreme agenda.”
The standoff is down to a matter of which side blinks first. If there is no compromise well before the session is constitutionally required to end by June 25, the hundreds of bills that haven’t passed both the House and Senate will die.
Sen. Jeff Golden, a Democrat who represents southern Oregon’s Rogue Valley, said among them are bills to improve response and protections from wildfires like ones that devastated parts of the state in 2020.
“Like the other bills you’ve been hearing about, these are teetering on the edge. We are looking at serious damage — as in life-and-death kind of damage — if we abandon these bills now,” Golden told reporters and supporters under a hot sun, a harbinger of the coming dry season in this drought-stricken state.
Rep. Travis Nelson, a Democrat who is a registered nurse, said also among measures frozen by the Republicans’ longest walkout in state history is a bipartisan opioid harm-reduction package that includes making overdose medication like Naloxone available in restaurants, grocery stores, police departments and schools.
“This is going to save lives and give people a chance to recover, and we must pass this bill,” said Nelson, who wore blue nursing scrubs at the news conference and rally.
Knopp was unmoved by the Democrats’ dire warnings.
“Well, there are always lives at stake as it relates to policy that is being debated here in the state Capitol,” Knopp told reporters after the rally. “However, unfortunately, their ire is misplaced, and the Senate Democrats could have ended this weeks ago.”
Rep. David Gomberg, a Democrat who represents the coast, said a bill he worked on with Democrats and Republicans would provide $70 million in support for small farmers, fishermen, small businesses and create more housing. If another bipartisan measure, aimed at attracting the semiconductor industry, dies, Oregon stands to lose billions of dollars in federal funds to other states, Gomberg said. A related bill passed before the walkout with broad support.
Seismically vulnerable dams would be replaced by another bill that’s at stake. Without it, Oregon could lose out on $60 million in federal matching funds, Gomberg said.
Jan Kaplan, president of the city council of the coastal town of Newport, said dams that create reservoirs for Newport’s drinking water are the most seismically vulnerable in the state.
“Even a modest earthquake could cause the dams to fail and send water rushing through a neighborhood just downhill. People would die,” Kaplan said. “The flood would breach Highway 101, our principal coastal arterial.”
The boycott has prevented the Senate from reaching the two-thirds quorum required to vote on bills, with all but two of the 12 Republicans and the lone Independent staying away.
The walkout happened despite a ballot measure, approved by Oregon voters last November, that disqualifies lawmakers with 10 or more unexcused absences from being reelected in the next term. The measure, now part of the state Constitution, is expected to be challenged in court by Republican senators if the secretary of state’s office prevents them from registering as candidates.
On June 1, Democrats in the Senate voted to fine senators $325 every time their absence denies the chamber the two-thirds quorum it needs to conduct business.
Democratic Gov. Tina Kotek can call a special session this summer for the House and Senate to approve the state’s budgets for the next two years if they’re not all approved by June 25. But most of the bills that die because of the walkout wouldn’t be resurrected until 2025, because next year’s “short session” lasts barely one month.
Sen. Michael Dembrow, a Democrat from Portland, grew emotional as he described the frustrating walkout.
“This is very painful for me,” Dembrow said. “As many of you know, this is my last long session in the Legislature. I’ve been here for 15 years. I’m not running again. I was not looking to end in this way.” (SOURCE)
Wildfire Class Action Suit Against PacifiCorp Goes To Jury
Attorneys for both PacifiCorp and victims of four of Oregon’s catastrophic fires on Labor Day 2020 made their closing argument to jurors Wednesday in the $1.6 billion class action lawsuit that has played out in Multnomah County Circuit Court during the last seven weeks.
Jurors will now determine whether PacifiCorp’s power lines were responsible for all or a substantial part of the damage caused in four of those Labor Day fires, whether the utility was negligent for, among other things, failing to de-energize its power lines before and during the events, and whether the utility subsequently destroyed evidence of its culpability in the fires.
The 2020 Labor Day fires were the most costly in Oregon history, killing at least nine people, demolishing thousands of homes, and burning more than 1 million acres. The case against PacifiCorp revolves around wildfires along the Oregon Coast, in Southern Oregon and in the Santiam Canyon.
Throughout the trial, plaintiffs’ attorneys largely focused on executives and decision makers at PacifiCorp, saying they opted to keep the power on even as line workers for the company fielded calls about damaged electrical equipment. Those same executives, plaintiffs’ attorneys said in their closing, then took no responsibility at the trial, instead saying it was company policy to let front-line workers make de-energization decisions.
In three of the fires at issue in the case — the Echo Mountain Complex, 242 and South Obenchain fires — attorneys for the plaintiffs told jurors that PacifiCorp had failed to offer any alternative explanation on how the fires started if the cause wasn’t electrical equipment.
Several people who lost homes or live in the fire areas testified that they saw PacifiCorp’s equipment spark after being hit by trees and branches that fell in extreme winds on Labor Day. For fires in which both sides agreed trees hit power lines, PacifiCorp lawyers said the branches either couldn’t have sparked the line or they were healthy trees no one could have predicted would fall.
PacifiCorp’s attorneys have variously called the fires unprecedented, the result of climate change and an act of god. The company said it had done all it could in its planning given the scope of the 2020 fires.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs noted that PacifiCorp focused its fire preparation efforts primarily on the 17% of its service territory it considered at highest risk.
Jurors in the trial will begin deliberations Thursday, where they will decide on damages for each of the named 17 plaintiffs in the case. If the jurors also decide PacifiCorp is responsible for damages to members of the class, the case will go to a second phase with a separate court proceeding to calculate those damages.
Oregon To Hold Landowners Responsible For Illegal Pot Grows
Oregon has long been known as a mecca for high-quality marijuana, but that reputation has come with a downside: illegal growers who offer huge amounts of cash to lease or buy land and then leave behind pollution, garbage and a drained water table.
Now, a bill passed by the Oregon Legislature seeks to tackle that by making the landowners themselves responsible for the aftermath. The bill also prohibits the use of rivers or groundwater at the illegal site, as well as criminalizes seizing the identity papers of migrant workers who tend the plants or threatening to report them for deportation.
Under the bill, local governments are authorized to file a claim of lien against property used for illicit marijuana, if the owner doesn’t pay for the cleanup.
The Senate approved the measure before GOP senators began a walkout on May 3 over Democratic measures on abortion, gender-affirming care and gun safety. The House passed the marijuana bill on a 53-3 vote on May 31. The bill will now go to Kotek to sign into law, taking immediate effect.
ODFW Asks People to Stay Away From Seals On Oregon Beaches
This is the peak of harbor seal birthing season at the Oregon Coast. The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife is asking you to keep pets leashed and give the seals plenty of room. The mother will leave her pup alone while she gets food and if there are people around when she returns, she might abandon the pup.
This is also the time of year when California sea lions travel south to breed, and you might see them resting on sand or rocks. Elephant seals are molting, which makes them look sick, but they’re not. If you see an injured, stranded or dead animal please call NOAA’s West Coast Marine Mammal Stranding Network at 866-767-6114.
