Cheesemakers fall in season opener Page A10
U.S. 101 traffic will be open to one lane with traffic flaggers 24/7 into September Page A3
Headlight Herald
Tuesday, September 3 | Vol. 136, Issue 36
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www.TillamookHeadlightHerald.com
Highway 101 upgrade in Garibaldi underway WILL CHAPPELL Headlight Editor
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rews began working on a $10.6-million project to upgrade Highway 101 and pedestrian access in downtown Garibaldi earlier this month and work is expected to last through summer 2025. Once finished, the sidewalks between First and 11th Streets will be replaced, with upgraded ADA accessibility and a small stretch of the road will be repaved. David House, with the Oregon Department of Transportation’s public affairs office, said that the project is part of normal maintenance operations carried out by the department. The sidewalk upgrade work will bring the city’s accessibility for disabled residents and visitors up to the current standard and meet the needs generated by the city’s grown. A small section of roadway between milepost 55 and 56 will also be repaved as part of the work. In addition to the repaving and sidewalk replacement, workers will also improve the city’s railroad crossings to make them ADA compliant, add a pullout bus stop, improve drainage and signage, and restripe the roadway. House said that the work will not force any closures of the See HIGHWAY 101, Page A10
Community members congregated in the Wonder Garden at the Hoffman Center for the Arts to celebrate its 20th anniversary on August 30.
Hoffman Center Executive Director India Downes-Le Guin welcomes the crowd to the festival.
Hoffman Center celebrates two decades WILL CHAPPELL Headlight Editor
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anzanita’s Hoffman Center for the Arts marked its 20th anniversary with an all-day festival on August 31, welcoming volunteers and the community for a day filled with artistic activities. Volunteers staffed tables to let event attendees experience all the center’s offerings, including visual arts, horticulture, clay and writing, before local band Stay Tuned performed in the late afternoon. The festival began with a welcome ceremony in the center’s Wonder Garden. Executive Director
India Downes-Le Guin welcomed guests before turning the ceremony over to Adria Badagnani. Badagnani spoke about the center’s integral place in the community and gave a brief history of the nonprofit. Formed in 2004 when Lloyd and Myrtle Hoffman left their estate, including a house and vacant property, as well as their savings to the community to start a center for the arts. Originally housed in the Hoffman’s home, the center constructed a new building in 2006 to house their indoor activities and demolished the house to make way for the Wonder Garden.
Badagnani read a love letter to the arts center that she had composed based on community members’ responses to a survey in the lead up to the festival. It noted that the center had faced funding struggles in the past, notably in 2014, but that it was now on a stable footing. From its origins as a “scrappy little arts place,” Badagnani said that the center had since grown into a professional arts organization on the coast and anchor for the community. She said that center staff and volunteers dreamed of further expansion in the future. Badagnani thanked the thousands of people who
had volunteered since 2004 to help sustain the center and said that it would have been impossible to stay afloat without them and specifically thanked the volunteers who helped organize the festival. Badagnani invited the crowd to experience the center’s offerings, check out the gallery, which also featured a slide show highlighting the center’s history, and reconvene at 4 p.m. for closing ceremonies ahead of the concert and birthday cake. Plant bingo was hosted in the Wonder Garden with seeds given away as prizes and attendees participated in magnetic poetry, funny faces clay art and life drawing.
Rockaway Beach balloting methodology Kyler’s Big Heart Benefit to help boost withstands legal challenge cardiac disease awareness and prevention WILL CHAPPELL Headlight Editor
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Headlight Editor
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ollowing the sudden death of their son, Kyler, earlier this year from a cardiac event, Dennis and Amanda Cavitt have planned a benefit concert for September 7. Dennis and Amanda said they plan to put proceeds from the concert into a foundation that will support awareness of and training to respond to cardiac diseases for area first responders. “If I can save some parents from having to go through what we’ve gone through I’d love to do that because it’s just devastated our family,” Dennis said. Tragedy struck earlier this year while Kyler, 28, was working a carpentry job in the Phoenix suburbs in late May. Kyler grew up in Garibaldi and played basketball, baseball and football at Nestucca High School. He loved the Oregon coast, but Dennis said that the pay for the job in Arizona was too enticing and Kyler had decided to work there for a year or two before moving back to Tillamook County. While at work on May 29, Kyler started having severe chest pains and went to the nurse at his worksite who called an ambulance to transport Kyler to the hospital. After arriving at the emergency department, preliminary testing showed that Kyler’s heart was enlarged, and his blood pressure was running high. Kyler continued to experience severe chest pains while the doctors awaited further results and evaluated next steps. About eight hours after starting to experience chest pains, while exiting the bathroom, Kyler fell to the ground dead and could not be revived. An autopsy showed that Kyler
COURTESY PHOTO
Kyler at his high school graduation with sister, Kayla, and Dennis and Amanda.
had suffered an aortic bisection, a rupture his heart’s aorta that allowed blood to pump into his chest cavity, eventually killing him. Dennis said that doctors at the hospital had noted fluid in Kyler’s chest on x-rays but that they had failed to diagnose the condition because it typically occurs in older patients with weakened blood vessels. If the condition had been diagnosed, emergency surgery could have saved Kyler’s life.
IN THIS ISSUE News Opinion Obituaries Sports Classifieds
A2-4 A5-6 A7 A9-10 A11-16
In the aftermath of the calamity, while beginning to work through the grief, Dennis said that he and Amanda decided they wanted to do something positive in Kyler’s memory and the idea for Kyler’s Big Heart Benefit quickly took shape. Dennis reached out to his old friend Jacquie Roar, a finalist on 2023’s season of “The Voice”, who signed on to headline the
fter an extended hearing on August 28, Tillamook Circuit Court Judge Jonathan Hill ruled that the City of Rockaway Beach can proceed with its November city council elections with position numbers on the ballot on August 30. Numerous citizens spoke on the stand about their belief that the city’s elections would be fairer if they were conducted using an at-large methodology. But Hill found that the current approach was a reasonable interpretation of the city’s charter and ordinances and declined to issue a writ of mandamus to change the city’s ballot. “It is not the court’s place to determine public policy for the city of Rockaway Beach,” Hill said. The matter came before the court when two Rockaway Beach Citizens, Daniel Howlett and Justin McMahan, who is running for city council, filed a petition for a writ of mandamus on August 8. The petition alleged that a 2014 change in balloting methodology had been made illegally, without legislative action. Prior to 2014, the city used an atlarge or block-voting format, with all candidates running against each other and the top vote getters being elected. But starting in 2014, the city began attaching positions to its council seats and requiring candidates to select a seat to contest. The petition alleged that the change was made without approval from the city council, violating the city’s charter that required such action to change the methodology, and that the city’s elections official had declined to stop using the incorrect ballot. After a preliminary hearing on August 20, Judge Jonathan Hill set a full hearing for the matter for August 28.
See KYLER’S, Page A3
Motion to dismiss Proceedings commenced with a
hearing on a motion to dismiss the petition for the writ of mandamus, brought by the attorney representing the city, Truman Stone. Stone argued that the petition did not meet the criteria for a writ of mandamus because the relators, Howlett and McMahan, had other remedies available and had waited too long to file the petition. Stone contended that the duo could have filed a statutory appeal or sought declaratory relief to challenge the balloting methodology, and that the writ of mandamus had been filed too long after the 2014 change to electoral procedures. Volpert, representing Howlett and McMahan, responded that getting the cases on a court’s regular docket would have taken at least a year under normal circumstances, at which point the issue would have been moot. Volpert also said that using 2014 as the starting date for his client’s window to file legal action was unreasonable and said that a July letter from City Manager Luke Shepard informing his clients that the city would not change its voting methodology was the actual precipitating cause of the petition. Hill said that the petition was of too great an importance to the public with the election fast approaching and denied the motion to dismiss, allowing the petition to proceed to a contested hearing. Opening remarks Volpert delivered his opening remarks first and told the court that the petition was a simple legal issue, with his clients only asking for the illegal change in balloting from 2014 to be corrected by the court. Volpert also preemptively responded to the city’s defense, offered in a written response the week before, that a February ordinance addressing nominating procedures for city positions had codified the balloting methodology. Volpert said that the new See ROCKAWAY, Page A8
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