Time for one last hike • E1
Elk hunting season kicks off Saturday D1 •
OCTOBER 13, 2011
THURSDAY 75¢
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Property values fall, as should tax bills By Hillary Borrud
Former Redmond High principal fired Wednesday night in favor of dismissal. Lemos, who has been on paid leave since late August, was not at the meeting. Board chairman Jim Erickson said the board received a recommendation from Superintendent Shay Mikalson
By Erik Hidle The Bulletin
REDMOND — Former Redmond High School principal Brian Lemos has been dismissed for “misconduct” and “performance” issues. The Redmond School District board voted unanimously
regarding Lemos in a closed executive session. “Shay has recommended for dismissal, immediate dismissal, of Brian Lemos,” Erickson said. He then explained an investigation had taken place but would not offer specifics. “What was found in the
investigation is nobody’s information but those who have heard about it,” he said. Two parents pushed the district for answers. “It was an issue around misconduct, an issue around performance,” Mikalson said. The district has kept silent
on the specifics of the situation citing privacy and legal concerns. At a September meeting, the board made a point of informing the public that no students were in any danger at the high school. See Principal / A5
The Bulletin
Central Oregon’s real estate values continued to decline over the past year, and that will mean lower tax bills for some property owners this fall and less revenue for local police, fire and other government agencies. The Deschutes County assessor certified the tax roll — the total taxable assessed property value — on Wednesday, while assessors in Crook and Jefferson counties certified them in the last few days. The property tax bills being sent out this month are based on real estate values from Jan. 1. Crook County had the largest decline: 6 percent. County Assessor Tom Green said the decline was not tied to any particular type of property. “It was just general drop in value, that heavy load of foreclosures that is kind of driving the market,” Green said. The tax rolls also shrank in Deschutes and Jefferson counties, but not nearly as much. In Deschutes County, the total taxable assessed property value was down 0.6 percent from last year, which County Assessor Scot Langton said he considered to be “pretty flat.” However, changes in property values varied significantly across the county. “Redmond probably saw the biggest (decline), about a 6.5 percent decrease in assessed value,” Langton said. The 0.6 percent decline was relatively good news for Deschutes County, since county officials budgeted for a 3.4 percent decline. It could mean about $450,000 more in tax revenue for the county general fund, Marty Wynne, the finance director and treasurer, wrote in an email. See Property / A5
By Andrew Clevenger The Bulletin
BRILLIANT BALANCE Members of the Shangri-La Chinese Acrobats spin plates on poles during a special performance for a group of Bend-La Pine fourth- and fifth-graders at the Tower Theatre on Wednesday. The kids from five local elementary schools were invited by the Tower Theatre educational outreach program to see the live performance.
WATCHING IN WONDER Ensworth Elementary fifth-graders Madison Vann, left, and Ryan Schmitt, right, watch the performance on Wednesday. Tower Theatre Executive Director Ray Solley said this was the first time the outreach program has hosted a group of local students for a performance. Photos by Pete Erickson / The Bulletin
Why some Democrats oppose Obama’s jobs bill By Rosalind S. Helderman The Washington Post
WASHINGTON — Not long before the Senate voted to block his $447 billion jobs package on Tuesday, President Barack Obama described the impending roll call as a “moment of truth.” He meant for Republicans, whom he blames for quashing his attempts to improve the economy and who voted as a bloc against the plan. But he could also have been
Senators present bill to extend rural timber payments
SPINNING AND GRINNING
talking about those moderate Democrats who face re-election fights next year, and who will be deciding in the coming months how closely to ally themselves to a president who is sinking in the polls. After some public wavering by several of those Democrats, only two bucked the president and voted against the measure: Sens. Jon Tester of Montana and Ben Nelson of Nebraska. See Jobs / A5
Mining the Internet to predict instability By John Markoff New York Times News Service
J. Scott Applewhite / The Associated Press
Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., voted against Obama’s jobs bill Tuesday, saying, “I simply can’t support raising taxes so Washington can spend more.”
More than 60 years ago, in his “Foundation” series, the science fiction novelist Isaac Asimov invented a new science — psychohistory — that combined mathematics and psychology to predict the future. Now social scientists are trying to mine the vast resources of the Internet — Web searches and Twitter messages, Facebook and blog posts,
the digital location trails generated by billions of cellphones — to do the same thing. The most optimistic researchers believe that these storehouses of “big data” will for the first time reveal sociological laws of human behavior — enabling them to predict political crises, revolutions and other forms of social and economic instability, just as physicists and chemists can predict natural phenomena. See Predict / A5
WASHINGTON — As expected, top members of the Senate Energy Committee introduced bipartisan legislation Wednesday that would extend federal payments to counties, like those in Central Oregon, with a high proportion IN D.C. of federal forest. The law that previously authorized the payments, the Secure Rural Schools and Community SelfDetermination Act, expired Sept. 30. The bill would authorize $1.5 billion over five years to rural counties dominated by federal forests to help support schools and roads. The payments began in 2000 as recognition that the federal government had injured local economies by curtailing logging on federal forests. Last week, Oregon’s congressional delegation announced that a potential deal had been struck. Wednesday’s legislation, introduced by Senate Energy Committee chairman Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., and ranking member Lisa Murkowski, RAlaska, makes it official, though the bill still must be passed by both chambers. Under the old payments law, which called for decreases of 10 percent each year, Oregon collected $134 million in 2008, $121 million in 2009 and $108 million in 2010. The new law would decrease payments by 5 percent each year. Deschutes County’s timber payments have shrunk from $4 million in 2008 to $3.2 million in 2010. Over the same period, Crook County’s payments went from $3 million to $2.5 million, while Jefferson County’s shrank from $717,000 to $581,000. See Timber / A4
The Bulletin An Independent Newspaper Vol. 108, No. 286, 42 pages, 7 sections
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INDEX Classified G1-6 Comics E4-5 Crossword E5, G2 Dear Abby E3 Editorials C4 Health F1-6
Horoscope
E3
Obituaries C5 Outing E1-6 Sports D1-6 Stocks B4-5 TV & Movies E2
TODAY’S WEATHER
Partly cloudy High 67, Low 36 Page C6
Corrections In a story headlined “A new battle over SDCs,” which appeared Wednesday, Oct. 5, on Page A1, a statement by developer Michael Walker was misreported. Walker said it cost $7,700 to hook up a house to the Terrebonne water district.
TOP NEWS In a story headlined “Former Ukraine premier jailed for abuse of power,” which appeared Wednesday, Oct. 12, on Page A3, Ukraine’s former prime minister was misidentified in an accompanying photo. She is Yulia Tymoshenko. The Bulletin regrets the errors.
MURDER PLOT: Iran leaders skeptical of U.S. accusations, A3 SALON SHOOTING: Gunman kills 8, A3