Friday, March 7, 2025 | Vol. 49, Issue 3
www.cannonbeachgazette.com
council Haystack Rock Awareness Program’s Spring Events Split vote gives This spring, HRAP will have exciting outdoor events for everyone to enjoy
HRAP $125,000
WILL CHAPPELL Gazette Editor
PIERCE BAUGH V for the Gazette
The days are getting longer, and the temperatures are rising; spring is nearing. With the spring months approaching, the Haystack Rock Awareness Program has exciting events planned that allow people to enjoy the unique ecology that Cannon Beach offers. On Sunday, April 13, from 8 a.m. to noon at Haystack Rock, HRAP will be hosting its Puff Welcome Celebration. With the warmer weather, the tufted puffins will be returning to Cannon Beach for their summer nesting season. It’ll be a day packed with education and the chance to see some of Oregon’s most iconic birds. The tufted puffin is a unique species, with long pale-yellow plumage jetting from its head and red-rimmed eyes. This species nests mostly in deep burrows on cliff edges and slopes that can be five feet deep. Most of the year they live at sea, and it’s not till they reach the age of three that they return to land to breed on nesting cliffs where they were born, according to Cornell Lab. Tufted puffin can also hold multiple small fish in its bill at once, ranging from five to twenty. From 8 a.m. to noon there will be an open house, providing people the opportunity to learn more
HAYSTACK ROCK BY BOB KROLL
about HRAP, the Wildlife Center of the North Coast and Friends of Haystack Rock. Puffinology 101: Exploring the World of Tufted Puffin, a discussion on tufted puffin, will be from 9 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. From 10 a.m. to 10:30 a.m., Puffin Pursuit: Master the Art of Spotting Tufted Puffins will provide visitors with advice on how to best spot tufted puffins. Scops and binoculars will be provided. The Predator Game will be from 10:45 a.m. to 11 a.m. The interactive game
teaches people the challenges tufted puffins face. And at 11:30 a.m., the tufted puffin costume contest will be held. Attendees can don their best tufted puffin costume for a chance to win prizes donated by Friends of Haystack Rock and Salty Raven. For early risers, on April 27 at 6:30 a.m. to 10 a.m., at Haystack Rock, there will be the seventh annual Nudibranch Safari. The low tide will provide the perfect opportunity to find nudibranchs. You might be wondering, “What’s a
Council approves COWS update WILL CHAPPELL Gazette Editor
Cannon Beach City Council approved a $212,000 contract with ATI systems for a replacement to the city’s Coastal Outside Warning System, which has been inoperative since last June. The current system has reached the end of its useful life after being installed by the Cannon Beach Rural Fire Protection District in the 1980s, according to City Manager Bruce St. Denis. Several residents expressed concern over its absence at city council meetings in recent months. Cannon Beach’s Coastal Outside Warning System (COWS) consists of seven sets of horns— five in Cannon Beach and two in Arch Cape—that warns residents of distant tsunamis that require evacuation from low-lying areas. The system is tested with the sound of mooing cows monthly. Cannon Beach’s Rural Fire Protection District had maintained the system after its installation but in 2022, found that the costs of maintenance were too high for their budget and turned responsibility over to the city. City Manager Bruce St. Denis told councilors in January that since then, city staff had done what they could to maintain and repair the system but that it had broken completely last summer and needed to be replaced. City staff first communicated about the outage in December, with a release on the city website, drawing concern from members of the public who had
been unaware of the system’s outage and were worried about the lack of ability for the city to notify residents and visitors of an emergency. St. Denis recommended that residents sign up for Nixle or ClatsopAlerts for notifications on their phones. At council’s regular meeting on February 4, St. Denis brought three bids to replace the system to the council for review. Bids from ATI Systems and CTC Mass Notification were within $300 of each other, with the ATI bid coming in lower at $212, 613.67, while Alerius Technologies submitted a bid for $225,427.75. ATI has more than 50 years of experience in building similar systems and its systems can be activated from a central computer station or remotely via a web portal. The system supports up to 63 customizable emergency alerts, including prerecorded voice messaging and speech to texts, and will support the mooing noise familiar to residents. Cannon Beach Emergency Manager Andrew Murray said that the system would take between 30 days and three months to install, with completion expected closer to the 30-day timeframe. Murray said that the system would have a 10-20-year lifespan and that he and other staff would have remote access. Murray clarified that in the case of a Cascadia subduction zone earthquake and tsunami, the system would be unable to provide advanced warning and that residents would instead be alerted by the violent shaking of the earth.
nudibranch?” The unique name is perfectly suited for a unique creature. The nudibranchs are sea slugs. Experts will be there, dressed as nudibranchs, ready to answer questions people have about the fascinating creatures. Lisa Habecker, HRAP’s Education and Volunteer Coordinator will be leading the hour-long hunt for nudibranchs that are commonly found in tidepools at Haystack Yock. With the bright colors and alienlike appearance, spending time with these interesting creatures will make for a
memorable day. “You’ll see why people are so obsessed with them,” says HRAP Program Manager Kelli Ennis. Every single special is just crazy unique looking. They always have these incredibly different color morphologies.” See how many different species of nudibranch can be found, the record is 14. “It’s a really, really cool field of marine biology,” says Ennis. For more information on Haystack Rock Awareness Program’s events, call 503-436-8060 or visit their website: www.haystackrockawareness.com.
Amid falling volunteer hours and increased offbeach programming, the Haystack Rock Awareness Program requested and received $125,000 from the Cannon Beach City Council to cover a budget shortfall on February 4. However, the allocation was approved by a bare 3-2 majority, with Councilors Erik Ostrander and Deanna Hammond voting against it, and even those who voted in favor expressed severe concern over the organization’s financial management. Controversy around the decision only increased when a group of former program employees attended a council meeting on February 11, and alleged unfair treatment in wages and discrepancies in advertised responsibilities and those reported by Haystack Rock Awareness Program (HRAP) Director Kelli Ennis at the previous council meeting. The request for an additional allotment to support the program marked the second time in two years that budgeted payroll expenses were insufficient to cover the actual costs of running the program. This year, HRAP had budgeted for a combined $179,343 to fund two fulltime, year-round staffers, a part-time year-round director of communications and workers on the beach who perform outreach seasonally. See HRAP, Page A3
Council ponders elementary project scope WILL CHAPPELL Gazette Editor
At a Cannon Beach city council meeting on February 18, City Manager Bruce St. Denis shared an estimate by the Cannon Beach Elementary project team that bringing the two existing buildings up to current code would cost $8.8-9.2 million. Councilors discussed what this meant for the project’s future, landing on a consensus that the projected figure was likely too high to satisfy community members who had voted no on last fall’s advisory measure regarding the project. Council reached a consensus that the project’s scope would have to be scaled back and asked the project team to work up cost estimates for saving each of the buildings on site while demolishing the other as well as an estimate of what size building could be constructed for $5.6 million. St. Denis began the meeting by sharing cost estimates generated by the project team at Bremik Construction and CIDA, the project’s architects, in response to council requests for the minimum cost of bringing the elementary school building and Quonset hut gymnasium up to code. St. Denis said that the hard costs for the project had been estimated at $6.4 million, while soft costs were pegged at $2.4-2.8 million, for a total cost of $8.8-9.2 million. Councilors Erik Ostrander and Deanna Hammond pointed out that this would bring the total cost of the project to around $11 million, including $2 million already spent acquiring the property and doing initial site work and planning. Both said that they felt this didn’t achieve the goal of bringing the cost down from the projected $12 million budget rejected by voters in November. Councilor Gary Hayes said that
it was clear that bringing the cost down in a significant way would require removing one of the buildings from the project’s scope or demolishing both and building anew at the site. Ostrander said that it was important to gather community input on what residents wanted to see to determine if they would support a $9 million repair or if they would prefer to see the structures torn down for parking or potentially torn down to pave the way for a new structure designed with a budget in mind. Councilor Lisa Kerr said that consideration for the project’s funding would need to be included in those discussions, as a non-tourist-related facility would require a source of funding outside the transient lodging tax, which had previously been intended to finance the project. Kerr also noted the low turnout at the meeting and said that without the people who had been opposed to the project as envisioned sharing their opinions she felt lost. Hayes said that he felt it was clear that the budget needed to be reduced and that he felt it was time to begin looking at the possibility of saving just one of the two buildings at the site. Hammond explained that she believed people had gotten the project’s price anchored at $4 million which was mentioned early in the process. She said that she thought the project should start with a smaller scale and maybe add more later. Hammond continued that she felt it was important for the council to start with a desired budget and build the scope of the project around that, rather than deciding on a scope and letting the budget follow, as it had in the first planning process. Hammond then said that she thought the new budget for the
project should be set at $5.6 million, a limit proposed in a ballot measure seeking to require voter approval for city debt incurrence and calculated as half of the city’s government activity revenues. The council then jumped into a discussion about that price point, with Hayes pointing out that with projected per-square-foot construction costs for the project and demolition estimated to cost $500,000, $5.9 million would only support a 3,000-3,500 square foot building. Ostrander said that he would favor saving the gym over the classroom building, noting that the Tolovana Arts Colony already had classroom space available, while there was little indoor recreation space in town. Ostrander also said that he believed such a project could be funded with transient lodging tax funds if it included interpretative elements. Kerr, Hayes and Mayor Barb Knop said they were uncomfortable with taking that funding approach and did not want to push the envelope on using transient lodging tax dollars for a recreation center. Hayes also said that he thought there was a lack of facilities for arts activities and that saving the classroom building could also be worthwhile. Councilors also discussed the $3.4 million already borrowed to support the budget and disagreed about whether this amount could be used in addition to a future loan of $5.6 million or whether it needed to be included as part of a total of $5.6 million in borrowing for the project. The council directed the project team to work up price estimates for rehabilitating the school and gymnasium individually, while demolishing the remaining structure, as well as an estimate of what size building could be built at a budget of $5.6 million if both were demolished.