March 15, 2010 12:53 pm
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Alcohol and high school proms are, sadly, linked.
Joseph Malone, who’s the principal at Portland’s Grant High School, doesn’t claim that he has devised a way to sever that link.
But he’d sure like to fray it some.
Malone will require all students to be tested with a Breathalyzer device before they enter Grant High’s prom on May 14.
The Oregon Liquor Control Commission will supply the Breathalyzers and monitor (but not actually administer) the tests.
Students whose breath shows any amount of alcohol won’t be able to
attend the prom, since Grant High School has a zero tolerance policy
for alcohol.
Policy aside, it’s also against the law for anyone younger than 21 to drink alcohol.
We like Malone’s idea. And, although surveys show most Oregon high
students don’t drink alcohol, we also believe it’s an idea officials
from all high schools ought to consider.
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March 12, 2010 04:23 pm
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There’s a curious situation playing out along Brownlee Reservoir and
we’re trying — and in the main failing — to make sense of it.
Perhaps this is because the federal government instigated the whole episode.
At issue are 31 privately owned structures, 28 of them on the Oregon
side and in Baker County. In most cases the structure owner also owns
the land.
Each of those structures, or a portion thereof, encroaches on property that belongs to Idaho Power Co.
By way of brief background, the company, before it built Brownlee
Dam in the late 1950s and so created the 58-mile-long reservoir, bought
the strip of land that starts at the reservoir’s high water line and
extends eight vertical feet up the bank. That means Idaho Power owns
the reservoir shore below an elevation of 2,085 feet above sea level
(the high water line being 2,077 feet).
With a few exceptions where Idaho Power’s property extends
considerably farther above the water, much of the land above the
2,085-foot mark belongs to other private landowners.
Unfortunately, even Idaho Power admits that the 2,085-foot line is not marked on the ground.
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March 12, 2010 04:18 pm
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Spring debuted this past weekend in Baker County, on the ground if not
the calendar, and I celebrated its arrival with a great burning.
Actually I just touched off the dead grass which lay in the irrigation ditch, flat as scythed hay.
This spawned a brief, but satisfyingly intense, blaze.
A little too intense, as it turned out.
I had to sprint to the shed and grab another section of hose when it
looked as though the flames were going after one of the fledgling
lilacs.
Except the hose, a cheap brand that probably was fashioned from the
bald tires pried off some kid’s tricycle, was frozen into its coil like
a winter-sluggish snake.
And was about as cooperative.
Anyway I saved the lilac.
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March 08, 2010 03:29 pm
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Let’s say you own a business and you’re looking to hire somebody to keep your books.
Do you care more about applicants’ credit scores, or their arrest record?
We’d wager that most employers would rather know whether their
prospective accountant has been convicted of embezzlement than find out
that the person sent a mortgage payment late.
Which partially explains why we applaud the Oregon Legislature for
passing Senate Bill 1045 during the recent month-long special session.
The bill, which takes effect July 1, prevents most employers from perusing the credit history of job applicants.
The biggest benefit of the bill is that it should get Oregonians off the unemployment rolls sooner.
There are plenty of people in the state now whose credit score has
plunged since they joined the list of more than 125,000 Oregonians who
have lost their job during the recession.
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March 05, 2010 12:52 pm
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Not another Baker City Council recall.
Please.
We don’t need it.
A recall is far more likely to hurt this city than to help it.
We hope, then, that former Councilor Dick Haynes, who is running ads
in this newspaper seeking help with a campaign to recall Councilor Milo
Pope, gets so few responses that he decides not to take the next steps
of filing a recall petition and gathering the approximately 605
signatures needed to force a recall election.
Haynes is upset because Pope has expressed several times over the
past nine months his belief that four of his colleagues botched things
when they voted, on June 9, 2009, to fire City Manager Steve Brocato.
We understand Haynes’ complaint.
We, too, find Pope’s predilection for criticizing his fellow councilors over Brocato’s firing occasionally tiresome.
A majority of city voters, after all, made it clear last fall that they don’t share Pope’s dissatisfaction.
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