A packed audience urged Baker County commissioners Wednesday to accept Ski Anthony Lakes as a gift from the current owners and to create a nonprofit entity to run the resort.

Commissioners could decide at their next meeting, on July 28, whether to do so.

Connie Kearney, part of the three-family group that owns the ski area about 35 miles northwest of Baker City, said she and her husband, Lee, and the two other couples in the ownership group offered to donate the resort to Baker County because they don’t want to either dismantle the business or sell it to private investors and risk seeing it shut down and its assets, valued at $1.2 million, sold piece by piece.

Keeping the Powder River Correctional Facility off the state’s budget chopping block was a top priority at Wednesday’s Prison Advisory Council meeting, but the meeting also buzzed with criticism of a decision that curtailed some inmate work crews starting July 1.

“Our No. 1 priority is to protect the Powder River facility and staff,” said Fred Warner Jr., chairman of the Baker County Board of Commissioners. “We will fight all we can to keep Powder River. We will fight to our last breath to keep Powder River as the last minimum-security prison closed.”

Students and residents in North Powder will soon be able to see a medical provider without driving to Baker City or La Grande.

Through a partnership between Powder Valley School and Eastern Oregon Medical Associates in Baker City, the school clinic will be reopened this fall. The students decided to name it the Badger Aid Health Clinic.

The clinic was originally operated on grant money by Oregon Health and Sciences University. But that money started dwindling several years ago.

"Think Out Loud," Oregon Public Broadcasting's radio discussion program, will broadcast live Thursday morning at 9 a.m. from Mike and Debby Schoeningh's ranch near Haines.

The episode's topic is "Live from Haines: Ranching Roundtable."

Guests include the Schoeninghs, George Chandler, co-owner of Chandler Herefords in Baker Valley, and Diane Snyder, who grew up on the Daggett Ranch, which was sold in 2008.

OPB broadcasts in Baker County on FM 88.9.

The one-hour "Think Out Loud" will be rebroadcast Thursday evening starting at 9 p.m.

  http://www.opb.org/thinkoutloud/shows/Haines-ranching-roundtable/

Revising the intersection of Chico Road and Highway 30 in northwest Baker City is part of a planned $1 million project to rebuild Chico Road in 2011.

By ED MERRIMAN
Baker City Herald

Preparations are under way for $10.1 million in improvements to four heavily used roads in the Baker City area.

The money is from the Oregon Jobs and Transportation Act passed by the 2009 Legislature.

Baker County was allocated $10.1 million under three separate contract agreements for improvements to Chico Road, Chandler Lane, Resort Street and Best Frontage Road.

Idaho Power officials heard concerns about potential interruptions of farming and ranching activities, damage to viewsheds, negative health effects associated with high-voltage power lines, sage grouse and right-of-way acquisition policies during a public open house meeting Tuesday in Baker City.

“I don’t want it, zero, none,” said Wannie Mackenzie, who ranches in the Baker Valley north of Baker City.

A relatively rare and long-lived species of conifer tree that crowns Northeastern Oregon’s highest mountain ranges might be listed as a threatened or endangered species.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is studying whether the whitebark pine, a tenacious tree that grows at higher elevations than other conifers in the region and can live for more than a millennium, needs protection under the Endangered Species Act.

The Natural Resources Defense Council contends such protection is necessary, due to the whitebark’s vulnerability to insects and disease.

The number of people working in Baker County swelled to the highest level of the year in June, with increases in nearly every employment category.

“Most of the indicators we track were up over the month in Baker County,” said Jason Yohannan, regional economist with the Oregon Employment Department.

June’s unemployment rates fell to their lowest levels in more than a year, at 8.5 percent non-adjusted and 9.7 percent seasonally adjusted. Yohannan said those figures are down from 8.7 percent and 10 percent respectively in May, and from 9.2 percent and 10.6 percent in June 2009.

The Broadway Street crossing of the Union Pacific Railroad tracks in Baker City will be closed from 7 a.m. Wednesday until 5 p.m. Friday while workers rebuild the crossing.

The work continues a project that started earlier this summer. Crews have rebuilt the crossings at Pocahontas Road, 17th Street and, last week, Campbell Street.

The Auburn Avenue crossing is tentatively set to be closed on Aug. 1-2; Union Pacific will announce the specific dates and times for that closure next week.

Later this summer workers will rebuild railroad crossings east of town, including the one on the road leading to Baker Sanitary Service's landfill.

Eva Mather, 3, spent Saturday afternoon enjoying the slide that was part of the family fun area. In addition to the slide, kids could romp in a jump house, play games and make crafts.

By JAYSON JACOBY and
RUSSELL VINEYARD
Baker City Herald

Baker City Police Chief Wyn Lohner was ready for trouble.

He didn’t get it.

And the absence of turmoil, in Lohner’s view, makes for a pretty fair definition of the ideal Miners Jubilee weekend.

Event organizers, who have the same goal albeit different responsibilities, also deemed as a success Baker City’s signature summer festival, which ran initially from 1934-41 then was revived, after a four-decade hiatus, in 1982.

“I was real pleased,” Lohner said this morning, the day after an event that’s not always quite so tranquil.

“Overall it was a good weekend. We always prepare for the worst and hope for the best. And fortunately we’ve had the best more often than not.”