It’s official. The Union-Baker and Umatilla-Morrow education service districts will become one.

The State Board of Education gave plans for a voluntary merger between the two ESDs a thumbs up Thursday morning in Salem. The board’s approval means the Union-Baker and Umatilla-Morrow ESDs will consolidate into the InterMountain ESD on May 31, 2011.

Mike Sowder, superintendent of the Union-Baker ESD, was delighted with the state board’s vote.

“It is a relief knowing that the (Union-Baker) ESD is going to be OK,’’ Sowder said.

Sowder began pushing for a voluntary merger almost a year ago in large part because his agency is financially strapped and hard-pressed to provide services. Sowder often said the Union-Baker ESD, hard hit by budget cuts in recent years, would become financially insolvent in about two years unless there was a merger.

A major reason is a $260,000 per year bonded indebtedness obligation to the Public Employees Retirement System, the state’s retirement system for school employees as well as many county and city workers. The Union-Baker ESD would soon not have been able to afford these payments, which would have increased at least 10 percent a year.

The fallout from the Baker City Budget Committee’s $105,000 cut that ended Gene Stackle’s job as economic development manager evolved into the elimination of the entire community and economic development department.

The result is the termination of Jennifer Watkins, a 12-year city employee whose job titles included community and economic development director and assistant city manager.

Drew Stanley is eager to begin his military career at West Point — but he will miss his vacation.

“I’m just out of high school, don’t have a summer, and then have 47 months of college. We get one month off,” he said.

Stanley, 18, leaves Sunday for the U.S. Military Academy at West Point to begin cadet basic training.

In addition to the academics, his time will include winter warfare training in Alaska, escape training in North Carolina and infiltration in England.

He’s also looking forward to studying a foreign language.

“I think I’ll take Arabic,” he said.

A proposed county takeover of Ski Anthony Lakes Mountain Resort drew support from skiing enthusiasts and the resort’s management and employees Wednesday at the Baker County Board of Commissioners meeting.

Commission Chairman Fred Warner Jr., said he was approached several months ago by Lee and Connie Kearney and other owners of Ski Anthony Lakes with an offer to turn over operation of the ski resort and ownership of all of the related assets and the remaining 30-year Forest Service lease of the site to the county.

“Anthony Lakes is an asset we don’t want to lose,” Warner said. “I think we have an opportunity here to do something good, but before we accept this gift, I want to make sure we have a business plan that makes money at least most of the time.”

The weather strikes again.

This time with alfalfa harvesting.

Unusually cool and wet weather has forced alfalfa growers to delay the first cutting of their crops, creating a potential for lower quality hay and a late start to the second and third cuttings.

Cory Parsons, Oregon State University Extension Services agent in Baker County, said the weather, with well above average rainfall in both May and June, has been the enemy for many farmers.

“The weather is definitely making it difficult to cut the hay,” Parsons said. “Some has been cut but has since been rained on.”

(Baker City Herald/S. John Collins)

The new section is between Washington Avenue and Madison Street. The section, including the bridges, is scheduled to be finished by the end of October.

Tuesday wasn’t a dark and stormy night, but the Baker City Council meeting had plenty of  suspense as councilors and city staff acted out a mystery over what part of the budget to cut to offset $136,000 in lost economic development funding.

Baker County officials pulled the $136,000 from transient lodging taxes that had been allocated to the city to pay for economic development efforts carried out by city staff.

A majority of the Council prefers taking that money from the economic development department, even though that option could jeopardize Jennifer Watkins’s job as community and economic development manager.

However, the budget resolution on the agenda at Tuesday’s meeting didn’t identify where the $136,000 would be cut, leaving councilors with concerns that by default, the money could  wind up being taken out of the ending fund balance, counter to what a majority of the Council agreed on during a budget committee earlier this month.

Councilor Aletha Bonebrake presented an alternative to resolve that conflict by cutting the $136,000 from the city’s economic development budget, but taking $54,000 from reserve funds to maintain a code enforcement officer, along with 14 sworn police officers in the police department.

With rain comes pools of water.

With pools of water come mosquitoes.

This year there’s a lot of both.

“It’s a mess,” Jim Lunders said.

He manages the Baker Valley Vector Control District.

“This is the most difficult year since I’ve been here,” Lunders said.

He was hired in April 2001 to run the 200,000-acre Vector Control District, which includes Baker, Keating and Bowen valleys.

Officials with the U. S. Department of Transportation said today that $3.2 million has been earmarked for repairs to a stretch of the Wallowa Mountain Loop Road washed out by recent flooding.

“We just got off a conference call with John Porcari, deputy director at the Department of Transportation, and he confirmed we will be getting the money to repair Wallowa Loop Road,” said Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore.

Federal officials have deemed the Loop Road, a popular summer route between Baker and Wallowa counties, will have the highest priority for repairs to be done by Nov. 1.

Phillips Reservoir is full.

More than full actually.

All thanks to a rain dance done by Jeff Colton.

“This is good for me,” he said. “I like summer, just like everyone else, but having a little extra rain helps too.”

Colton manages the Baker Valley Irrigation District, which means he keeps a watchful eye on the water level at the reservoir, which supplies irrigation water to about 30,000 acres, mostly in Baker Valley.

Colton said Phillips filled about a week and a half ago.

“We’re just a hair overfull, just about 103 percent full,” he said on Tuesday.

The reservoir, along the Powder River about 17 miles southwest of Baker City, is officially full when it’s impounding 73,500 acre-feet of water.