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SERVING CURRY COUNTY SINCE 1946 www.currypilot.com

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 13, 2024

Brookings, Oregon

City of Brookings honors Fire and Rescue Volunteers EMS Helper of the Year – Assistant Chief Tom Kerr

The City of Brookings recognized the service of four Fire and Rescue Volunteers in a ceremony on March 3, 2024 at the Elks Lodge in Brookings. The yearly award are given annually for excellence in a particular area. Brookings Fire and Rescue relies heavily on the participation of volunteers, as they currently have 24 active members of their volunteer team, as well as two Community Emergency Response team members.

Junior Fireﬁghter of the Year – Colton Hill Ofﬁcer of the Year – Lieutenant Jose Contreras Please join us at the Curry Coastal Pilot in congratulating the winners of this year’s awards, and in thanking Brookings Fire and Rescue for all they do to keep our community safe and healthy. For those looking to join the ranks, the Brookings Fire Department is always actively looking for volunteers for a community team that is essential to the City. Information can be found on the City of Brookings website or the Brookings Fire Department Facebook page.

The award winners for 2023 were as follows: Fireﬁghter of the Year – Jennifer Wolf Engineer of the Year – Darryl Harmon

Ellensburg site purchased for Survey shows affordable housing development massive support

The Coos-Curry Housing Authority (CCHA) announced the purchase of a new development site in Gold Beach this week. The Ellensburg site, located near Gauntlett St. and Colvin St. was acquired using funds from State of Oregon- Oregon Housing and Community Services Land Acquisition Program; Network for Oregon Affordable Housing

(“NOAH”); and AllCare CCO. In a partnership with the State of Oregon, the CCHA will look to secure further funds to develop 26 affordable housing units for Curry County. The units will be catered toward seniors, as CCHA looks to stem the effects of the housing crisis that has swept along the Southern Coast.

With property values climbing at a rate incongruous with economic growth, many citizens are ﬁnding themselves priced out of areas they could once afford. This is a major problem within the elderly community, as many retirees planned for a future that could not accommodate the rampant inﬂation we are experiencing, among other contributing factors like ballooning

medical costs and insufﬁcient Social Security pay-outs. With older adults among the fastest growing demographics in terms of homelessness, this will be a welcome boon to the community. The CCHA anticipates that construction will be able to start by 2026, as further funding for development must still be secured.

for downtown improvements

BY NATE SCHWARTZ Country Media Inc.

The Brookings Downtown Merchant Association (BDMA) released a report containing information gathered across two townhall style forums and two surveys of downtown business owners. The intent of the report was to identify possible areas of improvement to the downtown area. The BDMA presented these findings to business owners in a meeting at the Chetco Brewing Company on March 3rd, with plans to give the report to City Council as well. The first question BDMA set out to answer was on a unifying theme for the downtown area. They found the most popular amongst business owners was a ‘historic’ theme, given the many longstanding buildings in Brookings. “100% of the merchants of downtown support the idea to position historical monuments and/or plaques on or around historic features and buildings throughout or downtown,” states the BDMA report. This will allow both tourists and residents to see how deep the community’s roots are, and imbue significance in many of the areas’ points of interest. The BDMA has already identified a handful of locations and Please see DOWNTOWN, Page 9

Oregon Legislature wraps up session in high spirits amounts of hard drugs and cap campaign contributions. “We took advantage of the short session to tackle the biggest challenges facing Oregon, including some things outside spectators didn’t think we had the guts to take on,” said Rep. Rob Nosse, D-Portland, as he delivered the House’s sine

BY JULIA SHUMWAY Oregon Capital Chronicle

Oregon lawmakers headed home three days earlier than required on Thursday night, March 7, ending a surprisingly bipartisan session that saw them invest hundreds of millions of dollars in housing, recriminalize possession of small

die resolution shortly after 8 p.m. The ﬁve-week session, which saw Democrats and Republicans come together to pass bipartisan bills, was a departure from the vitriol that deﬁned the 2023 session, when Senate Republicans walked out for six weeks and ground the

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Legislature to a halt. Leading up to this session, lawmakers and observers didn’t know whether Republicans would even allow it happen: Just days before lawmakers started work, the Oregon Supreme Court ruled that 10 Republican senators – a third of the Senate – were ineligible to run for reelection, and Senate Minority Leader Tim Knopp, R-Bend, warned that the ruling would mean majority Democrats would have to come up with incentives for Republicans to attend sessions. Knopp credited the 2023 walkout for the bipartisan nature of the 2024 session, saying he and other senators paid a price and would do it again. “I think that they recognized each day we could have walked out, said ‘See you Sunday,’ and we’ll determine what’s going to

Fast Fact The 35-day session prioritized the homelessness and drug addiction crises, pouring millions into housing and treatment programs. pass and what’s not going to pass,” Knopp said. “We didn’t have to do that.” The ending In the House, incendiary comments made by two Republican lawmakers about LGBTQ+ people, atheists and Muslims, and Democrats’ decision to choose their next speaker in a closed-door meeting before the session began, cast a pallor over the early days. Rep. Tom Andersen, D-Salem, joined a small group of advocates at a press conference March 7,

outside the Capitol condemning those Republicans, while a caravan of timber trucks circled the Capitol, blaring horns to protest a forest conservation plan. Inside the Capitol, lawmakers were in good spirits as they pushed through a series of ﬁnal bills and tried to ﬁll their sine die bingo cards over the unending drone of construction equipment from an ongoing nearly $600 million construction project meant to better prepare the building Please see SESSION, Page 4

Phone Number: 541-813-1717 • Address: 519 Chetco Avenue, Unit 7, Brookings, OR 97415 • Email: Circulation@CountryMedia.net

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