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LOW CLOUDS 65 • 56 | WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2020 | theworldlink.com
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Bandon special election measures approved AMY MOSS STRONG The World
BANDON — Two ballot measures proposed by the City of Bandon were soundly approved by voters in Tuesday’s special election. Measure 6-179, asking for a sewer rate increase, passed with 872 “YES” votes (69.43%) and 384 “NO” votes (30.57%); total votes: 1,256 Measure 6-180, asking voters to approve a water rate increase, passed with 862 “YES” votes and 395 “NO” votes (31.42%);
total votes: 1,257 “I was confident that Bandon voters would support their community if we did our job and provided them with the facts,” said Bandon City Manager Dan Chandler after results were posted by Coos County Elections. “It is now our job to continue to show that we can be efficient, transparent and accountable stewards of the trust the public has given us.” The ballot measures asked voters to approve an increase of $8 per month for water and $7 per month for sewer for city resi-
dents. Residents living outside city limits will see an increase of $11 in their water rate and $11 in their sewer rate. The rate increase is permanent. Bandon’s water and sewer utilities must meet state and federal requirements for safe drinking water, Chandler explained. Currently, water and sewer rates don’t cover the full cost of operating those utilities. Water revenue is short by $218,000, and sewer revenue is short by $169,000, according to Chandler. The last rate increase for water operations was in 2006, sewer
was in 2012. An increase to the base water rate was approved in 2016. However, that increase can be used only for capital projects, not operations. Chandler said the city’s general fund can’t cover the shortfalls. If general fund dollars are used to subsidize utilities, it will negatively impact public safety. The city’s six-person police department accounts for 40% of general fund spending. Administration and the planning department also are both funded by the general fund.
The rate increases should put the water and sewer funds into a break-even position for the next few years, Chandler said. Bandon has the lowest permanent tax rate of any city in Oregon that has a population of over 750 people, he added. The general fund also receives some lodging and utility taxes, but the amounts are limited. The city is prohibited from raising rates without voter approval. In this election, the city did not ask for rate-setting authority, as it has in past failed
Please see Measures, Page 5
Police at Coos Bay protest ‘exonerated’ ZACK DEMARS The World
Oregon Department of Transportation
One of many vehicles burned in recent Oregon wildfires.
Recovery begins after wildfires SALEM — After a week of firefighting efforts across the state of Oregon, Governor Kate Brown said Oregonians have been pushed to their limits. “It’s really hard for all of us to wrap our heads around the devastation that these fires have caused and the pain and the suffering that so many Oregonians endured over the past few days,” Gov. Brown said during a Sept. 14 press conference. So far, the Oregon State medical examiner has reported 10 fire-related fatalities and 22 missing persons. Those statistics will continue to be updated daily. But on a positive note, Gov. Brown said fire crews are feeling optimistic with the current forecasted weather, which should provide help to their efforts as temperatures drop and winds subside. Additionally, calls for assistance are being answered and resource crews from all over the country and Canada have been coming to help.
“We expect structural firefighting teams from North Dakota and Michigan to join our response this week,” Gov. Brown noted. “Michigan, California and Washington are providing resources to our emergency coordination center. Vermont and Nevada have reached out asking how they can help.” Also, FEMA, is on the grounds of Oregon assisting with response. Gov. Brown said she recently sent a letter to President Donald Trump asking to declare a State of Disaster in Oregon, which will free up even more resources for state officials. Oregon is also working with the National Guard to distribute 250,000 N95 masks to agricultural workers and impacted tribes statewide as soon as possible. The masks will provide a certain level of protection to outdoor workers across the state. “The smoke blanketing the state is a reminder that this tragedy has not yet come to an end,” Gov. Brown said. Gov. Brown is encouraging everyone to donate to Red Cross
and the Oregon Food Bank for victims of these wildfires. To assist recovery efforts, the state is asking three foundations: Ford Family, Meyer Memorial Trust, and the Oregon Community Foundation, to help in the recovery efforts by kickstarting the 2020 Community Rebuilding
Fund. Other organizations will also be encouraged to donate. “We will have a long road ahead, but I’m so heartened by these foundations and all Oregonians that are coming together right now,” Gov. Brown said. “The only way out of this crisis
PENSACOLA, Fla. (AP) — Hurricane Sally lumbered ashore near the Florida-Alabama line Wednesday with 105 mph (165) winds and rain measured in feet, not inches, swamping homes and trapping people in high water as it crept inland for what could be a long, slow and disastrous drenching across the Deep South. Moving at an agonizing 3 mph, or about as fast as a person can walk, the storm made landfall at 4:45 a.m. near Gulf Shores, Alabama, after battering for hours a stretch of coastline that includes Mobile, Alabama, and Pensacola, Florida. Flash floods pushed water into homes in Alabama and Florida,
and officials in Pensacola and surrounding Escambia County, with a combined population of about 320,000, urged residents to stick to text messages for contacting family and friends to keep cellphone service open for 911 calls. More than 2 feet of rain (61 centimeters) was recorded near Naval Air Station Pensacola, and nearly 3 feet (1 meter) of water covered streets in downtown Pensacola, the National Weather Service reported. “It’s not common that you start measuring rainfall in feet,” said National Weather Service forecaster David Eversole in Mobile, Alabama. “Sally’s moving so slowly, so it just keeps
pounding and pounding and pounding the area with tropical rain and just powerful winds. It’s just a nightmare.” It was the second hurricane to hit the Gulf Coast in less than three weeks and the latest blow in one of the busiest hurricane seasons ever recorded, so frenetic that forecasters have nearly run through the alphabet of storm names with 2 1/2 months still to go. At the start of the week, Sally was one of a record-tying five storms churning simultaneously in the Atlantic, strung out like charms on a bracelet. Like the wildfires raging on the West Coast, the onslaught of hurricanes has focused atten-
tion on climate change, which scientists say is causing slower, rainier, more powerful and more destructive storms. In Orange Beach, Alabama, winds blew out walls in one corner of a condominium building, exposing the interiors of condos on at least five floors, video posted online showed. Other images showed buildings with roof damage and stranded boats shoved onshore by storm surge. At least 50 people in Orange Beach were rescued from flooded homes and taken to shelters, Mayor Tony Kennon said. “We got a few people that we just haven’t been able to get to because the water is so high,”
MAX KIRKENDALL Country Media
Oregon Department of Transportation
One of many homes that did not survive recent Oregon wildfires.
Please see Wildfires, Page 5
Hurricane Sally unleashes flooding in South
Please see Hurricane, Page 5
COOS BAY — A private investigator told the Coos Bay City Council Tuesday night that allegations of misconduct by police officers at an August protest were unfounded, and that any misconduct that may have occurred would have been justified. The investigation sprang from an Aug. 8 Black Lives Matter protest near the Coos Bay Boardwalk in the wake of the killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis. The allegations of police misconduct during the conflict between demonstrators and armed counterprotesters were twofold: First, that a police officer pushed a pregnant woman to the ground and, second, that several police officers on duty had used “white power” hand signs during the protest. Michael Hudgins, a private investigator based in Salem, said his review of videos and eyewitness testimony led him to believe that the woman had been pushed on accident, or justifiably, and that he didn’t see evidence of police using the hand signs at the protests. City Manager Roger Craddock contracted Local Government Personnel Servies, a division of the Lane Council of Governments, to investigate the allegations. LGPS ultimately contracted Hudgins, a former police officer and detective for the City of Albany and state corrections officer. “I think it was more of public image, and the fact is there have been a lot of videos that have seemed to heighten racial tensions,” Craddock said. “When I contracted with the LCOG, I was very specific that I was not looking for a directed outcome.” Craddock said that while the investigation wasn’t legally required, he launched it anyway to verify or refute the allegations that had sparked on social media and to forward any criminal misconduct to the appropriate law enforcement agency. Those allegations sprung from a TikTok video posted after the protest, which shows the crowd at the protest engaging with counterprotesters and a pregnant woman walking away from the crowd. “She had just gotten shoved down by Coos Bay police officers,” the voiceover says in the video, though the video doesn’t show the precise moment of that incident. Several protest organizers who shared the allegations, including the person who posted the TikTok, didn’t respond to a request for comment Wednesday morning in time for publication. Hudgins told councilors Tuesday that he received information from 29 emails and interviewed six citizens and six police officers to come to his conclusions. One of the witnesses Hudgins interviewed was the pregnant woman who was allegedly pushed, he said. In that interview, she told Hudgins that she thought “it could have been an accident” that she was pushed, though she Please see Exonerated, Page 5