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Our Time • 2015 • 1
Our Time
Fall 2025
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End 2025 with Cannon Beach Visit See page 3
Inside
Flipping the totem pole Page 4 Photo credit Nora Neely
Photo courtesy of Cannon Beach Chamber of Commerce
Enjoy good hiking weather this fall.
See more inside:
AV-8B Harrier II+
Photo courtesy of Tillamook Air Museum
What’s new at Tillamook Air Museum Page 9
Headlight Herald
Our Time Special Section
• Tillamook County Family YMCA is proud to offer a number of programs designed for seniors, page 6 • New displays at Tillamook Pioneer Museum, page 7 • Rockaway Beach offers Community Education programs, page 8 • NCRD offers programs and facilities, page 9 • Columbia River Maritime Museum, page 10 • Seaside Outlets shopping and events, page 11
Citizen North Coast
North Coast
Citizen Serving North Tillamook County since 1996
Thursday, September 18, 2025 | Vol. 32, Issue 18
$2.00
www.northcoastcitizen.com
Oregon State Representative Cyrus Javadi
Javadi discusses party switch WILL CHAPPELL Citizen Editor
Photos by Finn Findling
Kite Fest takes flight in Rockaway STAFF REPORT
Rockaway Beach’s 49th annual Kite Festival returned this past weekend, with flyers entertaining crowds of onlookers from September 12 to 14. The festival, sponsored by the American Kitefliers Association, welcomed both professional and amateur fliers for a weekend of friendly competition and exhibitions. Throughout the weekend, participants took part in a variety of contests, including ones for the nicest kite, the kite that drags on the ground longest before becoming airborne and many more. Vendors also set up at the city’s wayside, offering festivalgoers the chance to purchase kites of their own, with lessons also available for new fliers.
See JAVADI, Page A3
Wyden focuses on healthcare in Tillamook town hall WILL CHAPPELL Citizen Editor
In his 1,135th town hall, held at the Officers’ Mess at the Port of Tillamook Bay on September 5, Senator Ron Wyden responded to questions posed by constituents concerned about a range of issues from federal intervention in Oregon to his stance on Israel. Focus returned repeatedly to healthcare policy, with questioners asking about cuts to Medicare funding passed in Republicans’ recent budget bill and Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Junior’s impacts on public health. Wyden pointed to a confrontation with Kennedy the previous day about vaccines as a model for pushing back against the secretary and said that he would continue to fight for Americans’ access to insurance. “We’re not going to let him or anyone else, Democrat or Republican, turn back the clock on healthcare in America,” Wyden said.
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Following growing frustration with his party’s lack of support, Oregon State Representative Cyrus Javadi switched his party affiliation from Republican to Democrat in the first week of September. In an interview with the Headlight Herald, discussing the decision to change parties, Javadi said that Republicans’ steadfast opposition to working on a solution for transportation in the recent special legislative session was the deciding factor, confirming a feeling that the party was not interested in finding solutions. “Well, I had enough, honestly,” Javadi said, “I was frustrated with what had been pretty consistent opposition from my own party to do things for the north coast or Oregon that I thought were reasonable solutions to problems we were having and it wasn’t just that they disagreed on principle, they disagreed for reasons I thought were bad, for politics.” Javadi grew up in a home where politics were not discussed much, and he said that he admired Ronald Reagan as a child, was a fan of Bill Clinton aside from his personal indiscretions and thought, at the time, that George W. Bush did a good job of responding to the September 11 attacks. As Mitt Romney became nationally prominent during his 2008 and 2012 campaigns, Javadi said that he was drawn to Romney’s willingness to work with people from both sides of the aisle to find solutions, citing his work on health insurance as Massachusetts Governor, leading him to join the Republican party around 2012. While Javadi was not excited about Donald Trump’s performance in his first
The town hall drew a considerable crowd and most of the questions focused on Wyden and other congressional Democrats’ response to various policies being advanced by President Donald Trump. Anxiety about healthcare bubbled to the top repeatedly, with Wyden reassuring attendees that he would do everything in his power to protect funding for Medicare and Medicaid and push to increase that funding with taxes on the wealthy. “I’m trying to make sure we’re doing everything we can to protect people to the greatest extent possible,” Wyden said, “and if I have my way, we’re going to start rolling some of the tax breaks back for the affluent and get that money for healthcare.” Concerns about Kennedy’s impact on access to reproductive care for women and vaccine recommendations was another recurrent theme among the questioners. Wyden said that at a hearing the previous day he had pushed Kennedy on his anti-vaccine stances, with several Republican colleagues also expressing concern, and argued that this type of pointed questioning was a model for future interactions with Kennedy. “The whole idea is to use what happened yesterday as a kind of trampoline to get more
Rockaway council nixes Nedonna Wave second phase WILL CHAPPELL Citizen Editor
promoting healthcare for all and better access to mental healthcare to bounce back from the defeat in 2024 elections. Wyden also addressed concerns about Trump’s deployment of
Following a remand from Oregon Land Use Board of Appeals, Rockaway Beach’s city council reversed a previous decision and overturned a planning commission approval of the second phase of the Nedonna Wave subdivision, denying the application on September 9. A revised staff opinion that advised developers had not met a required timeline to improve infrastructure for the development and were requesting to build in a special area wetland zone after consulting county mapping data led to the decision. The proposal for the 28-unit Nedonna Wave planned unit development was first brought to Rockaway Beach’s planning commission and city council for approval in 2008. After securing initial approval from the city for the project, developers later applied to break the development into two phases and completed eight phase-one houses by 2009. Following the real estate market crash in 2008, the second phase of the project was put on the shelf until in 2024 when the developer returned to the city asking that the phase-two plans be amended to allow for two additional units. Planning commission approved the request last July, while rejecting a request to divide the second phase into two sub-phases. This decision triggered an appeal to the city from the Oregon Shores Conservation Coalition on several grounds relating to the timeline and zoning restrictions on wetland development, but in Novem-
See WYDEN, Page A3
See ROCKAWAY COUNCIL, Page A3
PHOTO BY MICHELE BRADLEY
Wyden addresses Tillamook constituents at a town hall at the Port of Tillamook Bay on September 5.
discussion about what we really want, which is a safe vaccine program,” Wyden said. Wyden pledged that he would also continue to support legislation promoting women’s right to make reproductive health choices and that he believed the Democratic party should focus on