Headlight Herald
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 2023
TILLAMOOK, OREGON • WWW.TILLAMOOKHEADLIGHTHERALD.COM
VOL. 135, NO. 36 • $1.50
Pearl and Oyster Music Festival welcomes crowds for music and family day
See more event photos on A6
Bay City firefighters faced off in a game of water ball in front of their station on Saturday afternoon. STAFF REPORT
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rowds descended on Bay City on August 26 and 27, to celebrate the annual Pearl and Oyster Music Festival. On Saturday, four bands performed on a stage in Al
Griffin Memorial Park, while on Sunday a kids talent show took over the stage. More than 40 vendors set up shop up and down 4th Street for the weekend, centered around food sellers and a bier garden set up at the park.
The committee of citizens that organized the festival also hosted a booth near the park, conducting a fundraising raffle of an antique dollhouse, which was won by Robi from Bay City. Bay City’s fire department got in on the fun with
water ball fights outside their station early Saturday afternoon. Saturday’s musical entertainment kicked off with a performance by Tombstone Shadow, playing covers of Creedence Clearwater Revival songs. Shades of
Helping Hands receives grant to continue Tillamook services WILL CHAPPELL Headlight Editor
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elping Hands Reentry Outreach Centers recently received a $500,000 from the Columbia Pacific Coordinated Care Organization that will allow them to continue operating offices in Tillamook and Clatsop Counties. Now, Helping Hands needs to find further funding, with the group’s founder saying that either the state or county governments need to step up. “We just realized that we can’t do this by ourselves anymore,” said Alan Evans, Founder and President of Helping Hands. Helping Hands started in 2002 with an 8-bed shelter in Seaside, opened by Evans who had previously been homeless for more than two decades. Today, the organization operates 11 shelter facilities across five Oregon counties and will have more than 600 beds available once
currently underway renovations are complete. In Tillamook, Helping Hands has run a low-barrier, long-term shelter at the Naval Command Center at the Port of Tillamook Bay since 2018. It is the only facility of its kind in the county. However, earlier this year when Helping Hands staff started looking at the economic forecasts for the shelter, they realized there was a looming problem—the finances. Helping Hands has historically relied on private donations to fund its operations, with 90% of the Tillamook shelter’s cost covered by fundraising. But with a dip in donations that started during the pandemic, Help-
ing Hands realized that they would soon run out of money to continue their operations in Tillamook and Clatsop Counties. “We realized we’re gonna run out of money faster than we’re ever going to be able to bring it in,” Evans said. That led to the decision in the middle of August to stop accepting new clients at the Tillamook and Clatsop facilities to allow Helping Hands to continue operations for existing clients for as long as possible. Shortly after that decision, the Columbia Pacific CCO, which helps coordinate SEE HELPING HANDS PAGE A5
Huey performed in the early afternoon, offering renditions of Huey Lewis and the News’s repertoire, followed by Alabama cover band Roll On. The evening wrapped up with Fever Band, playing Elvis Presley’s hits. On Sunday, the festival
hosted its first-ever kids talent show on the mainstage, with the winner taking home $100, while second and third place finishers received $50 and $25, respectively.
Rau charged in missing and tampered evidence case WILL CHAPPELL Headlight Editor
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illamook Police Chief Raymond Rau was charged with four misdemeanors on August 30, relating to the Oregon State Police and Department of Justice investigation into missing and tampered evidence at the Tillamook Police Department’s property room. Rau was charged with two counts of official misconduct, a class A misdemeanor, one count of theft in the second degree, a class A misdemeanor, and one count of theft in the third degree, a class C misdemeanor. Oregon State Police’s
(OSP) investigation began in May, after an audit of the department’s property room revealed that evidence had been tampered or removed in more than 80 cases dating back to 2005. Most of the cases, 64 of the 83, related to drug crimes and the majority had occurred since 2021, when Rau became chief of the department. According to Tillamook District Attorney Aubrey Olson, missing evidence included an assortment of controlled substances, paraphernalia for their use, cash and at least one body camera recording, while bags holding evidence for other cases had been damaged.
The investigation led Olson to reevaluate the affected cases and begin dismissing charges and seeking vacations in several earlier this summer. As of early August, Olson had moved for the vacation of four convictions and dismissed charges in several other cases. Olson told the Herald in early August that the decisions to dismiss and vacate charges were being made using a list provided by OSP of the affected cases and evidence. Olson said that in making the decisions she was evaluating whether the compromised evidence had been SEE RAU PAGE A5
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