Mayor Weber backed by small business
Tillamook County Wellness Page 9
Headlight Herald
WEDNESDAY, JULY 15, 2020
Page 3
VOL. 133, NO. 28 • $1.00
TILLAMOOK, OREGON • WWW.TILLAMOOKHEADLIGHTHERALD.COM
Coronavirus
County at 16 confirmed COVID-19 cases T
Hilary Dorsey Staff Writer
he 16th COVID-19 case was announced during the Tillamook County Leadership meeting Friday, July 10. The individual is a 70-79 year old. Positive results came back Thursday, July 9. “OSHA reported yesterday that over the July 4 weekend, they had 750 complaints and those were primarily through retailers and restaurants,” said Gordon McCraw, incident command.
McCraw said OSHA will be assessing all of the complaints and doing spot checks. McCraw also addressed concerns of contact tracing. He said public health authorities do the contact tracing. Contact tracing involves that public health authority calling people who may have been exposed to someone with COVID-19 and giving them guidance as a result. Here in Tillamook County, there are public health tracers, as well as other tracers standing by if the case load gets too high.
“It helps reduce the spread,” McCraw said. “They talk to you about how to prevent the spread of the virus, including staying home – which is also known as quarantining – providing health information on how to protect yourself and others, and they share resources that are available to you.” This information is private and protected by HIPPA. HIPPA laws protect patient privacy, which is why there is not a lot of information about the cases in the county, McCraw said.
Commissioner Mary Faith Bell said the county is not talking about shutting down again at this time. They cannot promise that it will not happen, however. The virus is spread in the air, so everyone should keep wearing masks. Rinehart Clinic is continuing mental health visits when requested. They screen all patients who call or come in. “I think where our focus right now is twofold,” Oregon Sen. Betsy Johnson said. “There is a scheduled emergency board meeting on Tuesday that would
Essentially stockpiling
spend some more of the CARES money that came to Oregon from Congress.” Commission-elect Erin Skaar said those emergency board funds for rental assistance Tillamook County are with CARE, Inc. and people can fill out a rental assistance application. People can come by the office, visit the website at https://www.careinc.org/ or call 503-842-5261. Send comments to: headlightreporter@countrymedia.net
EXCLUSIVE
ORIGINAL Tillamook County discusses inclusion
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decisions about getting food, paying the rent, and getting some of the essential items, like laundry detergent and other essential needs,” Linnell said. People donated essential household items such as toothpaste, tampons and dish detergent. These items will go to various food pantries, Meals on Wheels, Tillamook Bay Community College’s food pantry, Tillamook Junior High food pantry, and Rinehart Clinic’s box distribution program – which distributes food boxes to the Latinx community – and more. Corry said the OSU Extension will do an assessment to see if there is a desire from the community about the possibility of hosting another essentials drive. 4,263 items were donated to the drive. $475 was also donated. Corry said items donated included a lot of adult briefs, feminine hygiene products, dental care, laundry detergent, Kleenex and more. Williams said it was awesome to see how many items got donated. There was a wide variety of items donated for people and pets. Linnell said dog food and cat food was one of the first things to get sold out during the outbreak. The list of items requested was informed by data and from food pantries. “This was one of the most successful drives we’ve had as far as quantity of donations that were given, so that was pretty cool to see,” Sisco said. If they host another drive, Corry said they could use more shampoo, conditioner, body wash and diapers. Linnell said the drive was an amazing partnership with the YMCA. If other organizations want to take something on similar to this drive, they should contact the OSU Extension or Tillamook YMCA. The need is ongoing, pandemic or not. OSU Extension and Tillamook YMCA thank the community, Marie Mills, PUD, Board of Realtors, and donors. People can still donate by dropping items off at the Tillamook County Family YMCA. You can contact the OSU Extension at 503-842-3433. The Tillamook County Family YMCA can be reached at 503-842-9622.
illamook County Leadership discussed at a meeting Monday, July 6, county employee culture of inclusion. Tillamook County Human Resources (HR) Director Naomi Roundtree said with everything going on in the country, creating a positive culture and focusing on inclusion is what human resources and the county would like to promote. “People are excited to work in the county,” Roundtree said. “People are excited to say they live in the county.” Whether you are an employee or community member, we want you to feel welcome, Roundtree said. She wanted to get feedback from department heads about what they think inclusion is and how that can be implemented. County Clerk Tassi O’Neal said the more communication there is, the better people can feel included. “Originally what we were talking about are the things that are happening right now that, for example, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the commissioners’ statements about it, the health department’s statement about it, the sheriff’s office statement about it,” Commissioner Mary Faith Bell said. “We were thinking about how as an organization we want to lead with the values of inclusion.” Bell said everyone is looking to the county to role model those values. The same principles apply for mask-wearing. They want to start the conversation here because they are the leaders of the county. “We just want to start the conversation here and say these are values that we’re carrying forward as an organization,” Bell said. “The value of inclusion includes uplifting diversity, uplifting inclusion, and that’s what we need to do as a group.” Commissioner Bill Baertlein said on different boards, they have had some inclusion trainings. He suggested the idea of creating an inclusion committee that would work with department heads. “We know we have some morale issues in the county,” Baertlein said. Tillamook County Community Health Centers Administrator Marlene Putman said they would be having their inclusion training Wednesday, July 8, and have done these trainings in the past. “We’ll be working a couple of months on implicit bias, inclusion, and cultural confidence in the workplace and policy development,” Putman said.
Send comments to: headlightreporter@ countrymedia.net
Send comments to: headlightreporter@countrymedia.net
Kaylan Sisco, Tillamook YMCA, and Grace Corry, OSU Extension, with donated items from the essentials drive. Photo by Hilary Dorsey.
OSU Extension, Tillamook YMCA partner for essentials drive
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Hilary Dorsey Staff Writer
SU Extension, in partnership with the Tillamook YMCA, started a home essentials drive from June 1-19. The household items will be distributed to food pantries and other sites. Dusti Linnell, an assistant professor of practice in Family and Community Health at OSU Extension Service, said everyone was jumping in to help when COVID-19 hit. The Extension spoke with Mis Carlson-Swanson, branch services manager at Oregon Food Bank – Tillamook County Services, who said they were receiving food donations, but could use essential items. Linnell said the Extension Office returned to research from 2018-2019. “The research showed that in addition to needing food, oftentimes household essentials could be really expensive, and people still need those things, but they aren’t as readily available as food is,” Linnell said. “The household essentials can often take away from the family’s ability to get the food they need.” Linnell teamed up with Grace Corry, education program assistant, and Kym Hamann, office specialist at the OSU Extension Service, to plan
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an essentials drive. The goal was to help 200 local households from having to make the impossible choice between buying food, paying rent, and purchasing toilet paper or cleaning supplies. The OSU Extension called on Tillamook County Family YMCA CEO/Executive Director Kaylan Sisco’s help for a physical space for the drive. The YMCA finds opportunities and sees if they could be relevant in that situation. “A lot of people either drive by or come in,” Sisco said. “It’s easy for them to have it in their car, come to the Y, and drop it off.” The YMCA has staff who can deliver the essential items to various food pantries and other sites during windows of time throughout the day. The YMCA helped with other organizations and efforts during COVID-19 as well. “The YMCA and Kaylan had their team; they had already been doing work with the Oregon Food Bank to assemble food boxes that were for emergency food distribution during the pandemic,” Corry said. “They had an infrastructure in place and initially, they were not open yet to the public but still had staffing hours, so they were happy to help with essentials.” The person mainly handling the drive at the YMCA was Youth Development Director Andrea Williams. Williams drove essential items to a church in Pacific City on June 30. The YMCA’s vehicles were donated from the Tillamook People’s Utility District a few years ago, Sisco said. The YMCA staff never says no to a task, Sisco said. He said he thinks it is unique that the staff appreciates the community enough to step outside of their job description to help the community. Sisco said the Board of Realtors launched the drive. They had reached out to the YMCA to see how they could help during the pandemic. Sisco spoke about the essentials drive at the Social Services Directors meeting. The Board of Realtors were invested. Linnell said the social media campaign by Hamann was really helpful in getting the word out. “When we did the research project that informed this drive, we heard time and time again that people were having to make
Hilary Dorsey Staff Writer