A1 Spring
2025
Photo by Katherine Mace
Home Improvement | Decor Real Estate | Construction
Check out these booths & so much more at the 2025 Tillamook Headlight Herald Home & Garden Show
2025
TR Russell Photography, pg 8
Monkey Business 101, pg 4
ODOT’s 2024 Bridge Report
Welcome Home Special Section Inside
Page B1
Headlight Herald Tillamook Beekeepers’ Bee Days will feature a demonstration hive as well as a fundraising raffle for a hive constructed by Rick Stelzig and painted by local youth, pg 7
Old House Dalias, pg 4
Headlight Herald
Citizen North Coast
Tuesday, March 25, 2025 | Vol. 137, Issue 12
www.TillamookHeadlightHerald.com
$2.00
Twin Rocks hosts 24th Clean Water Festival TLT debate continues M WILL CHAPPELL Headlight Editor
Tourist industry responds to Javadi’s bill WILL CHAPPELL Headlight Editor
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s a bill sponsored by State Representative Cyrus Javadi makes its way through the legislative process, conversation has been stirred about tourists and their impact on highly visited counties, including Tillamook. Weighing in on the debate, Oregon Restaurant and Lodging Association (ORLA) President and CEO Jason Brandt said that the current split was fair and questioned Tillamook County’s use of the unrestricted funds and coastal counties’ use of the restricted funds. Oregon Coast Visitors Association (OCVA) Executive Director Marcus Hinz said that there was not enough data to show that the current split was insufficient to address tourists’ impacts on the counties. Hinz also argued that before trying to change the division, counties should collaborate with OCVA to use restricted funds to address the issues raised by Javadi and others. “Generally speaking, if you want somebody’s money, you should just really sit down at the table and try to work things out first,” Hinz said, “and that piece has never really happened.” In response to these arguments, Tillamook County Commissioner Paul Fournier said that while he agreed more data was needed, that the impacts of the industry were not able to be sufficiently mitigated under the current arrangement was clear to any resident of the county. “Driving anywhere during the three months is insane. Beaches are full. The impacts are real, the call volumes are going up,” Fournier said. “We are tracking them, but I agree if it doesn’t pass, I think it’s because we haven’t done a good job of showing the problem.” Fournier also pushed back on the notion, suggested by Brandt and Hinz, that the county should use the funds for purposes outside the language of the statute based on assurances from OCVA and ORLA, saying that would put the county in a position of potential legal jeopardy. “It’s not in the statute, so now we’re doing something because See TLT, Page A3
ore than 300 fourth grade students from across Tillamook County descended on Twins Rocks Friends Camp on March 18, for the 24th annual Children’s Clean Water Festival hosted by Tillamook Estuaries Partnership. Students spent the day rotating between activities that helped them learn about different aspects of the local water cycle, challenges in keeping it clean, the animals and plants that rely on it and the impacts people have. “If it touches water or has to do with water, we try to elevate and celebrate it,” said Claudine Rehn, Deputy Director of Tillamook Estuaries Partnership (TEP). The festival kicked off 24 years ago, when Rehn applied for a grant from the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality that sought to replicate a clean water festival sponsored by the department in Portland in other areas of the state. Each year, the entire fourth grade classes from the Neah-KahNie, Nestucca and Tillamook School Districts attend the festival, while students from the county’s private schools attend every other year with both fourth and fifth graders. Leading up to the festival, Danielle Maillard, TEP’s Community Engagement Coordinator, worked to organize around 100 volunteers to run the seven activities for students. After setting up the activities the day prior to the festival and arriving early on the day of to prepare, the volunteers welcomed the kids at 9 a.m. Students were split into groups and visited each of the six stations on one of two loops, with chaperones and volunteers guiding them around the camp. The six activities in 2025’s festival related to water quality, macro invertebrates, marine debris, salmon homes and the water cycle, while the camp’s main activity hall hosted exhibitions from
Students examine a model showing different potential sources of water pollution.
various partner agencies. At the macro invertebrates’ station, kids examined the gilled creatures before being asked to construct a model from clay. At the marine debris station, kids played a game where some were assigned to pick up ocean waste while others were assigned to play the tide, washing new debris in as the cleaners cleared the beach. The salmon homes activity involved small groups of students creating and sharing plans for shepherding salmon to survival, while the water cycle activity saw students taking on the role of a rain drop and rolling dice to determine their path between the clouds, ocean and precipitation on
land to demonstrate the varying paths any droplet can take in the cycle. At the clean water station, kids learned about TEP’s countywide water-quality monitoring program and got a chance to examine water under ultraviolet light. The exhibit hall featured displays about fish anatomy, native plants, water safety, birds and a touch tank with creatures from the intertidal zone. Rehn said that the festival’s goal was to raise awareness of the special place the students live and encourage them to think about ways they could help to promote and preserve it. The festival also strives to be an inclusive event,
including bilingual volunteers and sensory rooms and backpacks for students that need them. Nowadays, the festival is supported by TEP fundraising efforts, but staff from the Department of Environmental Quality still participate, as do staff from Oregon Shores, Oregon State Parks, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, the Seaside Aquarium, the Salmon Superhighway and Coast Guard Auxiliary. Many private citizens also contribute their time, and one longtime volunteer said that he kept returning because seeing the excitement and engagement among the students reaffirmed his belief in kids.
TCTD steps up for dialysis patients WILL CHAPPELL Headlight Editor
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ince last year’s closure of the dialysis clinic in Tillamook, the Tillamook County Transportation District has provided or paid for more than $200,000 in transportation costs to get patients to Lincoln City, Astoria and Forest Grove for life sustaining care. Tillamook County Transportation District (TCTD) General Manager Brian Vitulli said that coordinating the 115,000 miles of transportation has been a complex logistical dance for district staff. “It’s like conducting an orchestra, really,” Vitulli said, “it’s just the amount of coordination and the amount of teamwork that goes on here is incredible.” Even before the February 2024 closure of the U.S. Renal Care dialysis center in Tillamook, TCTD provided rides to their thrice weekly dialysis appointments through four different programs. But when U.S. Renal Care made the decision to shutter the center, they did not communicate with the district to help establish a plan to get patients to their new centers in Lincoln City, Astoria or Forest Grove. “That caught us very much by surprise, you know, that the clinic
TCTD driver Jeremy Bellante assists Martin Boge into a district van for his ride to dialysis treatment in Forest Grove on March 17.
could just pull out of town like that and there not be any kind of plan for how to care for those patients or transport those patients to other centers,” Vitulli said. However, district staff buckled down and tackled the transportation task by relying on the programs that were already making patient transport possible, according to Vitulli. Those programs include the North-
west Rides Nonemergency Medical Transportation Brokerage, the district’s in-house dial-a-ride program, grants received to transport veterans and reimbursement to patient family members. The brokerage, run by the Columbia Pacific Coordinated Care Organization, covers Tillamook, Clatsop and Columbia Counties and relies on a network of volunteer
drivers to transport Medicaid- and Oregon-Health-Plan-eligible patients to medical appointments. Vitulli said that the brokerage was covering just over 50% of the rides. A further 40% of rides are being provided by TCTD’s dial-a-ride program, which has put a strain on that program’s capacity, according to Vitulli. For the most part, patients’ dialysis treatment schedules have not been coordinated and the long travel times to the clinics have largely meant that drivers stay for the duration of the three-and-a-half to five-hour treatment. “It’s way outside of our service area and it doesn’t make sense for us to bring that driver back in a lot of cases,” Vitulli said, “so pretty much, you know, the vehicle and that driver is busy for that entire time transporting them there and then transporting them back.” District dispatchers have done their best to coordinate other rides for the drivers in areas of the county closer to the dialysis centers, but that has been difficult. Vitulli said that dialysis transport was requiring two to four drivers’ time on an average day, constraining the program’s ability to serve other community members. “This is the reason we’re at See TCTD, Page A3
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