North Coast
Citizen Serving North Tillamook County since 1996
Thursday, August 22, 2024 | Vol. 31, Issue 15
www.northcoastcitizen.com
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Man pleads no contest in Nehalem homicide WILL CHAPPELL Citizen Editor
Construction of a new city hall and police station in Manzanita is on budget and ahead of schedule for a summer 2025 grand opening, with cement pads poured for both structures and work beginning on walls. Jason Stegner, owner of Cove Built, the company leading construction on the project, said that he was having fun working on the project and that he hopes to have the building roofed by early October, ahead of wet winter weather. The new city hall and police station are being constructed at the corner of Manzanita Avenue and Classic Street, on the same property where Manzanita’s weekly famers’ market is held. Work began this spring with extensive site preparations, including knocking down the old school building and Quonset hut that stood on the property, grading the site and doing preparatory seismic mitigation work for the police station.
On July 10, William Evro Stetzel, 59, of Nehalem entered a no contest plea to one count of manslaughter in the first degree for the July 9, 2022, killing of Richard Ford in Nehalem. For the class A felony, Stetzel was sentenced to 16 years in prison, the first ten of which he will serve with no reduction. He will be eligible for release in April 2037. Events began to unfold on the afternoon of July 8, 2022, when Stetzel and a friend visited Ford’s family cabin in Nehalem to install a new freezer. Stetzel had worked as a handyman for the Ford family for more than two decades, developing a friendship with Richard, so after completing the work, the three shared a beer. At some point in the evening, Stetzel took his friend home before returning with his dog and continuing to drink with Ford. As the drinks flowed, Stetzel’s memory became fuzzy, and he later told investigators that he remembered getting into an argument with Ford but that the next thing he remembered was waking up in his bed covered in blood. Stetzel also had a voicemail from Ford, received at 1:13 a.m., in which Ford said that Stetzel had hit him in the head before leaving without his dog and asked him to come back to pick up the pet. Upon hearing the voicemail, Stetzel, his son and a friend went to Ford’s cabin, where they found Stetzel’s dog in a breezeway and Ford’s body lying in the house, bludgeoned to death.
See CITY HALL, Page A3
See HOMICIDE, Page A3
The concrete pads that will serve as the foundation for Manzanita’s new city hall and police station as seen from the west end of the property.
PHOTO BY WILL CHAPPELL
Work progressing smoothly on Manzanita city hall and police station WILL CHAPPELL Citizen Editor
PHOTO BY WILL CHAPPELL
Jason Stegner of Cove Built LLC (center right) discusses project details with Manzanita City Council President Linda Kozlowski (left), City Manager Leila Aman (right) and project superintendent Dave Kram.
Pearl and Oyster fest Tillamook to bring weekend of library transitioning music to Bay City to new system STAFF REPORT
Nehalem Bay State Park photo courtesy Oregon Parks and Recreation Department.
Nehalem Bay State Park to close for upgrades starting November WILL CHAPPELL Citizen Editor
More than $11 million in upgrades are scheduled to take place at Nehalem Bay State Park between this November and June of next year, Oregon Parks and Recreation Department officials told Manzanita City Council on August 7.
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The upgrades will focus on restoring and upgrading existing facilities at the park and will necessitate its closure for the duration of the work. The council also moved forward on selecting the design for a new city logo at the meeting. Funding for the work at Nehalem Bay State Park is coming from a pot of $50 million in general obligation bonds approved by the Oregon legislature in 2021 to revitalize parks and campgrounds across the state. Work will include upgrading the park’s water main, replacing water and electrical services in the park’s campgrounds, adding a new
restroom, renovating nine campsites for improved accessibility, repaving the park’s entry road, connecting a day use restroom to the sewer system and improving equine facilities at the south of the park. Tracy Johnson, a senior project manager at Oregon Parks and Recreation, appeared at the meeting and discussed the decision to close the park for the duration of the work, beginning November 1. Johnson said that the project team had investigated the possibility of leaving part of the park open during the work, but due to the limited roads in See STATE PARK, Page A3
Returning for its third edition, the Bay City Pearl & Oyster Music Festival is set to rock and roll on August 24 and 25. Co-hosted by the Headlight Herald, the festival welcomes four bands on Saturday before shifting focus to kids’ day on Sunday. According to coorganizer Kathleen Leipzig, the festival’s organizers hope to create a sustainable, free event to entertain residents and visitors to the town. “This is our big event for the year,”
Leipzig said. “It’s a bedroom community, it’s a sleepy little town and so, we really want to highlight all the great things about Bay City and bring our community together.” First held in 2019, the festival was forced to take a three-year hiatus during the pandemic, before returning in 2023 for its second year. The festival will again take over fourth street in Bay City, with more than forty vendors expected, as well as Al Griffin Memorial Park, where a stage will be See PEARL FEST, Page A2
NCC FILE PHOTO
Great live music is on Saturday during the festival. Kids day is on Sunday.
WILL CHAPPELL Citizen Editor
Tillamook County Library is set to move to a new integrated library systems provider after the board of county commissioners approved contracts with ByWater Solutions to migrate data to and support a new system on August 13. Transitioning will lead to considerable cost savings for the library and integrate Tillamook’s libraries with those at Tillamook Bay Community College and across Lincoln County when the new system goes live on March 11, 2025. “This is one of those rare opportunities where I think that the service that we will be able to provide will really improve and costs will go down,” said Tillamook County Library Director Donald Allgeier. Integrated Library Systems (ILS) are the software programs that libraries use to manage their collections and lending. Currently, Tillamook County Library uses a proprietary system called Sierra and is part of a consortium called Oceanbooks with the libraries in Newport and Driftwood. Meanwhile, the rest of Lincoln County’s libraries and See LIBRARY, Page A3