Skaar touts housing record in reelection campaign Page A2
Larson brings experience, deep community ties to assessor’s race Page A3
Headlight Herald
Tuesday, April 23, 2024 | Vol. 136, Issue 17
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www.TillamookHeadlightHerald.com
Garibaldi Home & Garden Show helps residents prep for spring manager shakeup WILL CHAPPELL Headlight Editor
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aribaldi’s city council approved a separation agreement with City Manager John Schempf on April 15, agreeing to pay him just under $29,000 in exchange for release from potential legal liability. Council also approved the hiring of Bay City Mayor Liane Welch as city manager pro tem, with a contract period of three months. The negotiated separation with Schempf came after the city delivered a letter of potential termination for cause on March 22, citing his confrontational style with city councilors, employees and vendors, as well as inaccuracies on his resume. Schempf responded to the complaints at a meeting on April 2, arguing that the complaints from vendors had come after he had stopped them from taking advantage of the city. He also said that he felt the potential termination was based on a poor performance review received in March and that the reasons cited were pretextual. A lawyer retained by Schempf also appeared at the meeting and argued that the city’s letter did not See GARIBALDI, Page A8
Show co-sponsor Tillamook County Solid Waste educated the public on its recycling programs throughout the show.
PHOTO BY FRANK PEREA
A large crowd gathered at the fairgrounds for the show on Saturday morning. STAFF REPORT Country Media, Inc.
The Tillamook Headlight Herald Home & Garden Show took over the Tillamook County Fairgrounds on April 20 and 21, giving residents an opportunity to gear up for spring and summer. The annual show, co-sponsored by Tillamook County Solid Waste, featured a wide variety of vendors as well as the Tillamook Beekeepers Association’s Bee Days
celebration. Members of the beekeepers showed off a demonstration hive and sold local honey and pollinator friendly plants from JAndy nurseries. They also hosted a series of short classes on beekeeping throughout the weekend and raffled off a Tillamook cheese block themed hive and other prizes. In addition to the beekeepers’ raffle, the Tillamook Peoples’ Utility District (TPUD), Marie Mills
Monkey Business 101 had an impressive selection of plants available for showgoers.
and Kiwanis Club of Tillamook also held raffles and the Tillamook County Democrats had free drawings for prizes. TPUD raffled a front loader washer and dryer set from Samsung and the Kiwanis Club’s raffle was part of their KT Days Scholarship Drive, with proceeds supporting the group’s scholarship program. Monkey Business 101 and Garden Witch Goods both brought a variety of plants to the show, ranging from flowers to a wide assort-
ment of berries, grapes and fruit trees, and the Oregon Department of Forestry handed out saplings to showgoers. Tillamook’s American Legion Post was on hand, selling handmade, wooden American flags with all proceeds going to benefit their organization. Pacific Restaurant and Sabor Autentico treated attendees to delicious food and other vendors offered gutter protection, windchimes, sweets and much more.
Adventist Health Tillamook announces surgery suite addition, modernization WILL CHAPPELL Headlight Editor
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dventist Health Tillamook is preparing for an addition to its surgery suite and modernization of existing facilities,
with the $16.8-million project set to begin later this year. The expansion will increase the number of available operating rooms from three to four and greatly improve the unit’s capacity by adding additional pre- and
post-operative beds. Adventist Health Tillamook President Eric Swanson said that the project was prompted when staff noticed serious foundation settling occurring in part of the suite constructed in 1995.
Currently, there are three operating rooms in the suite, as well as one room that can be used exclusively for scoping procedures. The unit only has three beds apiece for patients preparing for and recovering from surgeries, which
Swanson said leads to delays in moving patients from operating to recovery rooms due to a lack of availability. The new addition will be built See ADVENTIST, Page A8
Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife visits Tillamook WILL CHAPPELL Headlight Editor
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taffers and commissioners from the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife gathered in Tillamook on April 18 and 19, for the commission’s regular meeting and to tour project sites across the county. The day-long tour on the 18th had a theme of rising seas and coastal squeeze and focused on ways to address issues caused by climate change in the strip of land between Oregon’s coastal range forests and the ocean. The tour’s first stop was at the Historic U.S. Coast Guard Boathouse in Garibaldi, where several presentations laying the groundwork for the site visits were made. Dr. Steve Rumrill, the leader of the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife’s (ODFW) shellfish program spoke first and gave an overview of the issues facing Oregon’s coastal areas as the sea level rises. Rumrill shared data that showed that Oregon is set to fare better than many other places in the world, with only .14 meters of sea level rise forecast to occur on the state’s coast by 2050. That rise is lower than the projected nationwide average rise of .36 meters and worldwide projected rise of .21 meters because of tectonic lifting that is occurring under the coast. Even with the relatively lower level of sea level rise, there will be significant impacts on coastal habitats, according to Rumrill. He said that as the sea level rises, habitat
Brad York from TEP discusses the Southern Flow Corridor project during the ODFW tour.
will either migrate in areas without impediments or be squeezed in areas with roads or other infrastructure preventing migration. Dr. Tony D’Andrea then discussed ODFW’s Shellfish and Estuarine Assessment of Coastal Oregon (SEACOR) program, which monitors estuaries across the state. Specifically, D’Andrea discussed the monitoring of eelgrass,
IN THIS ISSUE News A2-4 Opinion A5-7 Obituaries A8 Announcements A10 Classifieds A11-16
a seagrass that provides habitat to clams and crab and helps to protect the shoreline from waves and storms. Every decade, SEACOR visits each of Oregon’s estuaries and conducts a survey of eelgrass sites to monitor their health and shares the data with state, federal and tribal agencies. Meg Reed from the Department of Land Conservation and Devel-
opment then discussed the coastspecific land use goals included in the 1973 law and the department’s coastal management program established in 1977. Dr. Kristi Foster, executive director of the Tillamook Estuaries Partnership (TEP), was the final presenter at the boathouse, giving a general overview of TEP’s mission. Formed in the 1990s, TEP aims
to promote habitat restoration and clean waters in Tillamook County’s estuaries and educate the public about issues facing them. The group then departed Garibaldi and headed for the site of the Southern Flow Corridor project in Tillamook on Godspeed Road, where York Johnson, TEP’s water quality manager, told the group about the project’s history. The Southern Flow Corridor is around 550 acres of former farmland that was converted back into wetland functionality in the 2010s. Progress began in the early 2000s when the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board (OWEB) purchased a several-hundred-acre farm near the site where the Tillamook, Trask and Wilson Rivers flow into Tillamook Bay. Major flooding in 2007 led members of the local community to seek ways to reduce the severity of floods that periodically render Highway 101 north of downtown impassable. The possibility of returning the OWEB owned property to wetland functionality emerged and with the help of Oregon Solutions, a working group was formed to develop a plan for the project. Preparation took the better part of a decade and included the purchase of additional farmland and land swaps with a neighboring property owner to increase the project’s footprint to 550 acres before work began in 2016. By 2017, crews had removed over five miles of levees from the See ODFW, Page A9
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