NCC626

NBHD clinic nears completion

WILL CHAPPELL Citizen Editor

Workers at the Nehalem Bay Health District’s new clinic and pharmacy in Wheeler are closing in on an early September date for substantial completion, which will allow the new facility to open the first weekend of October.

Flooring and ceilings are being installed, and dental and Xray equipment will both arrive by early August and Nehalem Bay Health District (NBHD)

Board Chair Marc Johnson said

the opening will serve as an opportunity for the community to explore the facility and the district to thank them for their support.

“It’ll be more in the nature of a community celebration with an opportunity for people to have tours of the building and familiarize themselves with what we built here,” Johnson said, “but also an opportunity to thank the community for being so supportive.”

Groundbreaking for the $12.2-million facility occurred last July and work has pro -

gressed smoothly since then under the stewardship of Bremik Construction and project superintendent Kevin McMurry.

As of mid-June, work on the pharmacy on the facility’s first floor was largely complete, with cabinets and the pharmacy window installed. The clinic’s waiting room was still awaiting its reception desk. Upstairs, preparation work for the three dental operatories that will be installed was in its final stages, while cabinetry for a demonstration kitchen in the facility’s community conference room

had been installed and was awaiting appliances.

Johnson said that the downstairs waiting room will feature displays honoring substantial donors to the project and tracking the district’s history. “It will pay tribute to the people who first brought health care here and show a little bit of the transition over time,” Johnson said. On the facility’s exterior, sidewalks and curbs have been

Summer festivals begin with Dairy Days and rodeo

Tillamook County’s annual slate of summer festivals kicks off this weekend with the 38th annual Dairy Days Parade on June 28, and the 68th Tillamook County Rodeo on June 27 and 28. Rodeo events lead the weekend off on Friday, with the Miss Tillamook County Rodeo and Junior Miss Tillamook County Rodeo competitions and Little Tillys pageant during the day before the first night of competition at 7 p.m. at the Tillamook County Fairgrounds. Saturday’s activities start off with the YMCA Milk Run at 8 a.m., before the June Dairy Parade begins rolling through downtown at 11 a.m., with a theme of “Moovin Thru the Seasons.”

Rodeo champions will be decided on Saturday night and the Miss Tillamook County Rodeo and Junior Miss Tillamook County Rodeo crowned at the halftime.

See the insert in this edition or online at our website for a map of the parade route, list of entries and more details about the rodeo and milk run.

Hand recount confirms TLT increase fails by 12 votes

Four members of Tillamook County’s board of elections gathered at the county clerk’s office on June 11, for a hand recount of votes on Ballot Measure 29-183, seeking to raise Tillamook County’s transient lodging tax from 10% to 14%.

After a process that lasted until noon on Wednesday, all 9,000 votes in the contest were recounted, confirming the results from the tabulator, allowing Tillamook County Clerk Christy Nyseth to certify the election, with the measure falling by a margin of 12 votes, with 4506 against and 4494 for.

Measure 29-183 sought to increase Tillamook County’s transient lodging tax (TLT) rate from 10% to 14% and was advanced by county commissioners in response to a budget crunch in the county government.

A concerted campaign was mounted against the proposed measure by members of the lodging industry, who argued that the increase would negatively impact their already-tight bottom lines. The vote on the measure was nip and tuck from the get-go, though the no side always led, with 21 votes separating the responses in the first round of vote results released on election night. The margin shrunk from there, falling to 20 votes two days after the election and just 11 votes once all votes had been counted on May 29. After 22 voters with unverified or absent signatures corrected their ballots by June 10, the tabulator’s results stood at 4506 against and 4494 for.

This margin fell within the threshold for an automatic recount, required by Oregon statute in any election on a ballot measure where the margin between yes and no votes is less than one fifth of one percent of the total votes cast for and against the measure, in this case 18 votes.

Tillamook County Election Board Members Joni Steel, Diane Colcord,

TLT reform passes house

WILL CHAPPELL Citizen Editor

Oregon’s house of representatives passed a bill that would restructure the statutory restriction on city and county spending of transient lodging tax dollars on June 19.

The bill, advanced by Tillamook Representative Cyrus Javadi, passed with 31 yes votes against 23 no votes and now moves to the senate for consideration.

Javadi’s attempts to reform the spending restrictions of House Bill 2267 that passed in 2003 and established the current regime for TLT spending have been ongoing since the beginning of this session. Javadi and leaders in counties that receive high levels of tourism argue that the current restrictions requiring 70% of funds from the TLT go towards tourism promotion or facilities leave jurisdictions without sufficient revenues to meet the cost of serving visitors, especially as it relates to emergency services.

Initially, Javadi introduced two bills, one proposing a change in the percentage of funds restricted for tourism use from 70% to 50% and the other proposing a change to the definitions of tourismrelated spending to add law enforcement and tourism facility maintenance in the allowed expenditures for the restricted funds.

Both of those proposals fizzled and died in the general government committee early in the session, but Javadi continued his quest and in early May, Democratic Representative Jules Walters revived the discussion, dedicating one of her five priority bills to redefining the allowable uses of restricted TLT funds.

From there, Javadi and other

First TBCC nursing grads pinned

Family, friends and supporters gathered at Tillamook Bay Community College on June 11, to celebrate the 14 nurses who completed their degrees with a traditional pinning ceremony to welcome them into the profession. Those nurses were the first to graduate from Tillamook Bay Community College’s (TBCC) nursing program, after starting their studies in January 2024.

“Today we gather not only to honor the hard work and dedication of these students, but a historic milestone for the college,” said Dr. Tiffany Slover, the Dean of Allied Health who spoke at the ceremony.

The pinning ceremony is a time-honored tradition in the nursing profession dating back to the Knights Hospitalier in the 12th century, who received the Maltese cross as a symbol of their service. The pinning of the cross to welcome new nurses went on to become a standard practice by the early 20th century in the United States and England. At the ceremony, Slover welcomed the crowd and graduates, congratulating them on their accomplishment and thanking the friends, family and staff members who had helped them during their studies.

Shannon Hoff, a nurse and member of TBCC’s board of education, then gave a keynote address, encouraging the graduates to work to build each other

WILL CHAPPELL

CITIZEN EDITOR

Three planes piloted by volunteers from the Oregon Disaster Airlift Response Team ferried supplies to the Tillamook Airport on June 14, as part of an airlift drill dubbed the Whale Run.

Tillamook County Emergency Management, Oregon’s Department of Human Services and Office of Resilience and Emergency Management, the Emergency Volunteer Corps of Nehalem Bay and the Port of Tillamook Bay all helped coordinate and execute the exercise, which aimed to simulate the aftermath of a maximum Cascadia subduction zone earthquake and tsunami.

The Oregon Disaster Airlift Response Team (ODART) is comprised of pilots, who volunteer their aircraft and skills to help Oregon’s far-flung communities during a disaster. June’s drill was made up of a dry run on June 7, before the full drill on the 14th.

On the 14th, Tillamook County Emergency Manager Randy Thorpe coordinated with the volunteers to coordinate a food supply run from Aurora to the coast in response to a simulated late night 9.0-magnitude earth-

quake and tsunami. Three planes landed at the Tillamook Airport around noon bearing 200 pounds of food each, where it was received, inventoried and distributed by drill participants. In the case of the drill, the transported food was donated to local food banks.

After making their dropoff, pilots participated in a further drill to practice triage decision making in a crisis, with Thorpe providing a list of survivors with various medical conditions, who the pilots were responsible for prioritizing for air transport to the Willamette Valley.

Beyond their supply and evacuation functions, in a disaster ODART will survey roadways to help local emergency responders coordinate transportation and help coordinate communications between isolated communities.

The exercise was the first that brought together ODART volunteers, Tillamook County emergency management and state agencies, and Jeff Gilbert, Regional Emergency Coordinator with the Office of Resilience and Emergency Management, said his team had been impressed by the results. “We were not certain how smooth the coordination would go, but we could not

up and to help promote the importance of nursing, so those in the profession would no longer be unsung heroes.

Dr. Alex Tripp from the

college’s nursing faculty then led the pinning of graduates, who were pinned by fellow nurses, with several mothers and best friends participating, as well as staff

have been more pleased,” Gilbert said. “Everyone came together and made it a truly wonderful success.”

projects that are part of a $15.5-million overhaul of the district’s facilities along with the new clinic and pharmacy are also taking place. Renovations at the district’s skilled nursing facility in Wheeler have already begun, with foundation

Garibaldi council raises water and sewer rates

In a lengthy and sometimes contentious meeting on June 16, Garibaldi’s city council approved drastic raises to the city’s water and sewer utility rates, voted to establish a street maintenance fee and adopted a budget for fiscal year 2026. The water rate increase will see the city’s base water rate for customers with three-quarter-inch pipes jump from $37.62 to $48.91 for 4,000 gallons and is the third increase in as many years. The sewer rate increase will see the base rate rise from $62.71 to $81.52, while the street maintenance fee will be set at next month’s meeting but is expected to come in at $10.

Members of the public, including two former mayors, extensively questioned the budgeting process and rate hikes at the meeting, and Councilor Norman Shattuck voted against the street maintenance fee and budget, while Councilor Cheryl Gierga voted against both utility rate increases.

City Manager Jake Boone first brought proposals for the rate increases and new fee before the city council in April as part of the city’s budgeting process, though council opted to delay decisions on both to allow the city’s budget committee a chance to weigh in.

The street maintenance fee will go into the city’s street maintenance fund, which currently relies on a franchise fee on the Tillamook Peoples’ Utility District electric bills, which are insufficient to

meet the city’s street maintenance needs. Originally proposed at $19 per month per property, Boone told the council that he was now proposing the fee be $10 monthly, which will be formalized at the council’s July meeting, thanks to the budget committee allocating previously unallocated, unrestricted transient lodging tax dollars to the fund.

Utility fee increases were calculated based on the needs of the water and sewer systems, and Boone explained in April that failures to raise rates in the past had led to insufficient collections and deferred maintenance, making the large increases necessary. The city’s base water rate, for example, remained steady at $24.50 from 2010 until 2023, when it was increased to $36.14, before being increased again last year to $37.62.

Echoing the meeting in April, former mayors Judy Riggs and Tim Hall gave public comment questioning the city’s budgeting process and the fee increases, taking aim at staffing costs.

Hall questioned why Boone and the city’s finance manager were receiving cost-of-living based pay increases when they were not union employees and the city’s finances were so dire as to require the drastic increase in costs to citizens.

Riggs questioned Boone’s salary, noting that in 2022 the then city manager had earned $86,000 versus $120,000 for Boone now, and said that a drastic change was needed. Riggs also bemoaned the impact of the fee increases on seniors, saying that she had already seen an uptick

in retired people coming to the food bank where she volunteers.

When discussion among the council began, it was quickly clear that councilors shared many of the public’s concerns.

Councilor Linda Bade said that approving the street maintenance fee and rate increases was “heart breaking” for her, but that there was no other choice. Bade said that the recently completed audit for fiscal year 2021 showed that the city’s street maintenance fund had been operating in the negative, and that the auditors only expected the deficit to grow in future audits. Bade said that given this, if the city wanted to have even the most basic maintenance, such as mowing rights of way, completed, the new fee was necessary.

Bade said that she appreciated the impact the new fee and increases

would have on residents living on a fixed income but that she felt it was necessary nonetheless, a sentiment with which Gierga agreed.

Bade, Gierga, Councilor Sandy Tyrer and Mayor Katie Findling voted in favor of the ordinance allowing the city council to impose a street maintenance fee, while Shattuck voted no. The council will consider a resolution to set the fee at $10 next month.

On the utility rate increase resolutions, Bade, Tyrer, Shattuck and Findling voted yes, with Gierga voting no.

On the budget itself, Bade, Gierga, Tyrer and Findling voted yes, and Shattuck voted no.

At the meeting the council also deferred action on assigning responsibility for the maintenance of sewer lateral lines to property owners.

The proposed ordinance would shift responsibility for sewer lateral maintenance lines between property lines and the city’s main line from the city to property owners. This proposal also drew criticism from commenters, who questioned why residents should be responsible for

the costly maintenance when the city had done a shoddy job of installing them in the first place.

When council discussions began, Tyrer said that she was uncomfortable with the legality of the ordinance though Boone said he had cleared the ordinance with the city’s legal counsel. Other councilors said that they also had questions about the ordinance and unanimously voted against the ordinance and approved a request for a written opinion from counsel before reconsidering the ordinance in July.

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Hundreds protest Trump in Tillamook

WILL CHAPPELL

CITIZEN EDITOR

More than five hundred people gathered in downtown Tillamook on June 14, to join in a nationwide day of protest against Donald Trump and his administration at a No Kings rally. A handful of citizens organized by We the People Tillamook County participated in a simultaneous demonstration nearby, with organizer Tiffany Jacob saying that it was not a counterprotest but a celebration of Flag Day and Trump’s birthday.

The No Kings rally was organized by Indivisible Tillamook County, a nonpartisan, grassroots organization that relies on citizen engagement to organize protests against Trump’s policy agenda, according to Don Backman, who helped organize the June 14 rally.

On the day of the protest, citizens began arriving before the scheduled noon start time, checking in at Sue H. Elmore Park, where signs were available, and taking up positions on both sides of Highway 101 on the bridge over Hoquarton Slough up to First Street. Volunteers in safety vests escorted participants through crosswalks and Backman and other organizers circulated among the

crowd, working to maintain a peaceful environment.

Backman said that the message of the protest was very simple: no kings.

“What we are having is a peaceful protest that just says no kings in the United States,” Backman said. “If you take a look at what’s happening in the United States right now, Donald Trump is basically making himself a king and he’s ignoring the courts, making arbitrary decisions, arresting people without probable cause and without due process and trying to kick them out.”

Protesters’ signs addressed a variety of concerns, including threatened cuts to public broadcasting and food banks, though most stuck closely to the no kings theme.

Backman estimated that almost 400 people had arrived by 12:15 p.m., with more still waiting to sign in at the park, and organizers announced by megaphone that by the end of the protest more than 500 people had participated. A sister protest in Manzanita drew a crowd estimated at several hundred by one attendee.

On the other side of Highway 101, a smaller group gathered at Hoquarton Park and lined the west side of the highway’s southbound lanes with several American and Trump campaign flags.

Jacob, a local organizer with We the People Tillamook County, stressed that the event was not a counter-protest, but a celebration of Flag Day and Trump’s 79th birthday.

“Our perspective is we

love America and we’re out here for Flag Day,” Jacob said. “We want to wave our flag proud. It’s also our president’s birthday, going to give a little bit of love there too.”

When asked about the adjacent protest’s no kings messaging, Jacob pointed to the fact that Trump had

been duly elected, saying that he wasn’t a king. Jacob said that while she would like to see more cuts to the federal budget, she understood the pressures preventing them, and was happy overall with Trump’s actions since resuming office in January.

“I am happy with how things are going,” Jacob said. “I would like to see our budget cut, but I understand that things have to go the way they are, and I think DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) did a good job and I would like to have seen some follow through with the work they’ve done.”