Our Time 55+
Rockaway Beach Chamber of Commerce & Community Education Events at the Ocean’s Edge Wayside, pg 7
Spring/Summer 2025
Monday Musical Club of Tillamook honors beloved member and talented pianist, the late Joan Petty, pg 7
Whale Watching begins in time for Spring Break
Our Time 55+ Special Section Inside
Page B1
Headlight Herald
Haystack Rock Awareness Program’s Spring Events, pg 10. Photo by Bob Kroll Headlight Herald
Bay City Pearl & Oyster Festival, pg 4
Citizen North Coast
Tuesday, March 18, 2025 | Vol. 137, Issue 11
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Licensing requirements delay dialysis center opening T
illamook County dialysis patients’ wait for a local center to provide life-sustaining care has stretched past a year, as Dialysis Clinics Incorporated works to meet Oregon Health Authority certification and licensure requirements. Sharon Marti, Senior Operations Director at Dialysis Clinics Incorporated (DCI) said that the process was progressing smoothly, and she was hopeful that the center would open to patients at some point in April or May. In the meantime, patients have been left to travel to Clatsop, Lincoln and Washington Counties thrice weekly for treatments, which Sharon Gallino, a Tillamook dialysis patient, said is taking a toll. “During the winter it was touch and go,” Gallino said. “You had the ice and the snow and the animals running out in front of you and almost hitting them; it’s been a long year.” Patients were thrown into uncertainty in January 2024 when the then-operator of Tillamook’s dialysis clinic, U.S. Renal Care (USRC), announced its intention to close the unit, citing low patient numbers making the operation economically untenable. Following the announcement, Tillamook Adventist Health President Eric Swanson swung into action, seeking a new partner to operate the center and save its 11 patients the long commutes. On a tip from a consultant, Swanson reached out to DCI, a Nashvillebased nonprofit that runs dialysis centers across the country, which immediately expressed an interest in helping to reopen the center. In September, DCI staff reached out to the OHA to inquire about the possibility of transferring USRC’s license for the center to the new center, according to Erica Heartquist, a Public Health Communication Officer for the Oregon
Bay City council set to raise water rate WILL CHAPPELL Photo by John Hay
The dialysis clinic in the basement of Adventist Health has sat unused for over a year but will soon reopen as the Tillamook Kidney Center.
Health Authority (OHA). However, USRC had returned its license to OHA and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), making a transfer impossible and triggering a new review for the proposed center. The review process, which usually takes six months to a year, according to Heartquist, starts with a review of the physical environment by the OHA’s Facilities Planning and Safety Program and fire and life safety elements and mechanical by the State Fire Marshal’s Office. The Fire Marshal’s Office’s reviews were completed in late February, a timeline shared by Heartquist showed, and documentation has been submitted to the facilities program, which still needs to complete an onsite inspection
before issuing a notice of project approval. Marti said that inspection will happen by the end of March and that she believes all needed work has been completed, or that waivers will be issued for items that cannot be retrofitted to meet current standards but are still safe. Once the notice of project approval is issued, OHA’s Facility Licensure and Certification division will schedule an onsite inspection of their own within 7-14 days, which will require more documents be submitted by DCI. The company will need to address any issues identified in the inspection and may be subject to a second inspection and will then be issued a license. Marti said that this review will focus on the center’s operational
plans and that with the same staff who were at the center before its closure returning and DCI’s experience in other states, she believes it will go smoothly. At that point, the center will be able to begin operations and will undergo a final certification survey by OHA surveyors or contracted surveyors from an accreditation agency to gain final CMS certification. Marti said that she had had a productive phone call with OHA personnel on March 14, and that she was feeling more optimistic about the center’s prospects of opening in April or May than she had in weeks. See DELAY, Page A3
Equipment going in at NCRD pool WILL CHAPPELL
W
Headlight Editor
ork on the new pool facility at the North Coast Recreation District in Nehalem is entering the home stretch, with pool decks installed last week and equipment installation around a quarter complete. As the facility’s completion in June approaches, the team at North
Coast Recreation District (NCRD) are preparing to create safety plans for and train staff to use the new facility, while also working on decommissioning plans for the district’s legacy pool. The new facility’s two pools, one six lanes wide, eight feet deep and competition ready, and the other a wheelchair-accessible therapy pool have been adorned with tile work and are waiting for equipment installation to be complete before a final plaster layer is added for waterproofing. Once the pools are complete and the facility handed over, the hard work will begin for district staff who need to create safety plans for the pools and familiarize themselves with their operation. NCRD interim Executive Director Barbara McCann said that she expects the two new pools will require five lifeguards on duty, with three in highchairs and two roaming around the pools. This configuration will not be confirmed until the pool is complete, however, when teams will test various chair placements to ensure that every inch of the pool’s bottom is visible to one of the guards. McCann said that this process will be the district’s top priority
Photo by Will Chappell
The facility’s interior is taking shape, with the installation of pool decking com-
once the pool is complete and that the installation of a water slide, which is planned and budgeted, will have to wait until it is finished. The water slide will also require a dedicated lifeguard. There is no firm opening date set for the new facility and the district will be offering its summer aquatic programming in the legacy pool in the main building’s basement. McCann said that once the commissioning and training process is complete, district leadership is
planning a grand opening celebration for the new facility, after which it will be open with the same hours of operation as the legacy pool, which will close. McCann said that the plan for the new pool was to get programming like that in the legacy pool established and expand from there once staff felt comfortable that they were able to operate the facility well See NCRD, Page A3
F
Headlight Editor
ollowing extensive discussions over the past year, Bay City’s city council signaled their in-tention to increase the city’s base rate for water while cutting the number of gallons includ-ed in the base allotment at their meeting on March 11. The council will formally adopt the rate increase at their April meeting to prevent the contin-uing depletion of the utility’s reserves and allow for ongoing maintenance and repayment of a $135,000 loan for completed work. Bay City City Manager David McCall reviewed the need for the rate increase with the council, saying that automatic increases tied to the consumer price index had been outpaced by in-flation in recent years. That led to the depletion of the water utility’s reserve fund by last year, requiring the transfer of $110,000 from another city reserve fund to the water reserve fund this year and prompting a rate review by McCall. McCall said that he had looked at the rates in other nearby cities as well as across the state before creating nine possible adjustments for the council to consider. Currently, Bay City residents pay a base rate of $36.17 for up to 6,000 gallons of water, compared with a statewide average of $52.81 for 5,000 gallons of water and a north coast average of $45.47 for 5,000 gallons. Options presented included a 30% across-the-board increase and upping the cost of water used over the base allotment, but council coalesced around an option to cut the base al-lotment to 3,000 gallons a month, up the base rate to $45 and maintain a $5.50-per-thousandgallons charge for consumption over the base rate. Council also agreed to leave the current wastewater utility rates and allowance untouched at 6,000 gallons per month. McCall will bring a finalized proposal to next month’s council meeting for adoption before the city begins its budgeting process. Council also approved a $264,000 contract with AKS Engineering to replace the city’s water main line between Alderbrook and Juno Hill, and add a second reservoir at Juno Hill, and approved a construction manager/general contractor project management model for the upcoming $2.5-million seismic retrofit of the city’s fire station.
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