Bulletin Daily Paper 03/21/12

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Fred Meyer plans more gas pumps B1 •

MARCH 21, 2012

Plus: Save on fuel costs • E1

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Serving Central Oregon since 1903 www.bendbulletin.com

TOP NEWS ILLINOIS PRIMARY: Romney wins easily, A3

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Pine Nursery Park: Build more infrastructure for parking, electricity and water that will allow the park to be expanded for additional soccer fields, multipurpose fields and tennis and basketball courts. Cost: $1.5 million

18th St.

97

Empire Ave.

Revere Ave.

27th St.

Bend Parkway

Deschutes River Trail: Work could include two new bridges, undercrossings at Colorado and Portland Avenues and upgrades to 3.5 miles of soft-surface trails. Cost: $2.25 million

Neff Rd.

Scattered showers High 52, Low 28 Page C6

Davis Park: Develop the riverfront park with improvements to the Deschutes River Trail. Cost: $1.25 million

Newport Ave. Greenwood Ave. Franklin Ave. BUS 97 97

20

Bear Creek Rd.

Wilson Ave.

Simpson Avenue parking lot: Offsite street improvements, including a new roundabout at the intersection of Simpson and Columbia avenues. Cost: $1.4 million

Mirror Pond: Fund a study to determine the best way to handle the buildup of sediment on the bottom of the pond. Cost: $400,000

27th St.

BEND

Ninth St.

Ice rink and event center: A seasonal, open-air ice rink that could be used for other purposes in the summer months. Cost: $4 million

Skate park: Improve skateboarding facilities in Bend in coordination with other another project that is planned at Ponderosa Park. Cost: $500,000

Reed Market Rd. MILES

97 0

1/2

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Colorado Dam passage and play area: Modify the dam and spillway to allow for safe passage for boaters and floaters and build a whitewater play area for kayakers. Cost: $5 million, with an additional $1 million for the whitewater play area coming from fundraising Source: Bend Park & Recreation.

Greg Cross / The Bulletin

By Nick Grube The Bulletin

T

he Bend Park & Recreation District took a timid step toward putting a $31 million bond measure on the November ballot to develop large-scale projects and buy more land.

While the wish list hasn’t been finalized, some projects could include an ice rink, a passageway for floaters and boaters at the Colorado Avenue dam, upgrades to the Deschutes River Trail, and an analysis of how to address sedimentation buildup in Mirror Pond.

TODAY’S WEATHER

The Bulletin

8th St.

Gopher Gulch Ranch: Open up the newly acquired 122-acre parcel to the public with a Deschutes River Trail connection that will take people from Awbrey Butte to Tumalo State Park. Cost: $2 million

On Tuesday, the park district board of directors said it supported the idea of asking voters to approve a property-tax-funded bond measure, but admitted there’s still a lot of research to do. “This is a very preliminary, very big, ugly, scary step,” Board Chairman Ted Schoenborn said. “Well, I shouldn’t say it’s ugly, but it is big and it is scary.” The $31 million bond measure

would be paid back through property tax assessments. According to district officials, an assessment for the average homeowner would be less than $50 a year. In addition to a nearly $20 million list of possible construction and development projects, directors discussed an $11 million list of potential property acquisitions. That discussion took place during an executive session that

was not open to the public. If any land acquisitions were a part of a bond measure, Park District Executive Director Don Horton said that property information would almost certainly be revealed. In general, he said the district is looking at property that bolsters the Deschutes River trail system and add to the amount of open space that’s available, particularly for regional parks such as Shevlin Park. Director Ruth Williamson expressed the most apprehension about the bond measure. She was concerned about whether it was the right economic climate and wanted to make sure the district was ready to undertake such an “ambitious” proposal. “If we’re going to do this,” Williamson said, “we (need to) understand that we’re going to have to give this 150 percent, nothing less, to give this a chance.” The park district last considered a bond measure in 2004. At that time, the district wanted a new tax to pay for a $25 million indoor recreational facility and pool on Bend’s west side similar to Juniper Swim & Fitness. The bond would also include $5 million to renovate the Juniper pool facilities. See Parks / A5

INDEX Business Calendar Classified Comics Crosswords Dear Abby Editorials Horoscope

B1-4 E3 F1-4 E4-5 E5, F2 E3 C4 E3

Local News C1-6 Obituaries C5 Oregon News C3 Shopping E1-6 Sports D1-4 Stocks B2-3 Sudoku E5 TV & Movies E2

The Bulletin An Independent Newspaper Vol. 109, No. 81, 30 pages, 6 sections

MON-SAT

We use recycled newsprint

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Economists sour on productivity claims By Peter Whoriskey The Washington Post

During the 2000s, as U.S. manufacturing was transformed by devastating job losses, prominent economists and presidential advisers offered comforting words. The paring of the manufacturing workforce — it shrunk by a third over the decade — actually represented good news, they said. It meant that U.S. workers and factories had become more efficient and, as a result, manufacturing companies needed fewer people. “What happened to manufacturing? In two words, higher productivity,” Robert Reich, former labor sec-

retary in the Clinton administration, wrote in 2009. “The decline in U.S. manufacturing employment is explained by rapid growth in manufacturing productivity over the past 50 years,” said Glenn Hubbard, former chairman of the U.S. Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush. But a handful of economists have begun to challenge that explanation, chipping away at the long-offered assurances that the state of U.S. manufacturing is not as bad as the jobs numbers make it look. Instead, they say, it’s significantly worse. See Productivity / A5

Deschutes could get faster help for federal contracts By Andrew Clevenger

Projects for proposed $31 million bond measure

d. yR Rile OB

Gene Whisnant called it a “family feud” and said he’s staying out of it. But two other local lawmakers, Whisnant’s fellow Republican state representatives, Mike McLane of Powell Butte and Jason Conger of Bend, said they will be endorsKnopp ing Republican (top) and Tim Knopp as Telfer are the area’s next competing state senator. in the GOP Incumbent primary in Sen. Chris Telfer, the 27th R-Bend, said she District. wasn’t expecting her colleagues to come out in support of her opposition. “I’m just surprised and disappointed that these two would put their necks out on the line like that,” Telfer said. The all-Republican Central Oregon delegation worked together well in the past two legislative sessions, Telfer said. She pointed to successes passing both a bonding bill for Oregon State University-Cascades Campus, on which Conger was the chief sponsor, and the bill that ameliorated tax concerns for Facebook, which McLane chief sponsored. “Surprise is the name of the game,” she said. “Particularly when we’ve worked on those issues together.” In the 2011 legislative session, Conger’s daughter-inlaw worked for Telfer as her legislative aide. See Race / A5

St.

The Bulletin

Spillway channel, ice rink on wish list

Th ird

By Lauren Dake

BEND PARK & RECREATION DISTRICT

14th St.

McLane, Conger say they’ll back Knopp in Senate race

A metal components production plant in Holland, Mich. Economists say the major statistic for judging worker productivity is misleading. T.J. Hamilton For The Washington Post

WASHINGTON — Deschutes County will soon learn if it qualifies for a federal program that gives priority for federal contracts to economically hardIN D.C. hit areas. In two months, the Department of Housing and Urban Development will update census data used to determine eligibility. The agency’s designation of an area as a “qualified census tract” is necessary before the area can become eligible for the Historically Underutilized Business Zone, or HUBZone, program. HUBZone uses a complicated formula that relies heavily on census data and unemployment figures to determine eligibility for the program, which gives local businesses in struggling areas a leg up in landing federal contracts. But there can be a two-year lag between the census and when the Small Business Administration, which administers the HUBZone program, revises its designation. This delay is particularly hard on Deschutes County, which did not qualify after the 2000 census, which was conducted when the local economy was booming. Because neighboring Crook and Jefferson counties did qualify as HUBZones after the 2000 census, businesses there have had an advantage in landing federal contracts, such as forest management on federally owned land. See HubZone / A5

With habitat warming up, pine beetles are booming By Daniel Strain ScienceNOW

Call it the beetle baby boom. Climate change could be throwing common tree killers called mountain pine beetles into a reproductive frenzy. A new study suggests that some beetles living in Colorado, which normally reproduce just once annually, now churn out an extra generation of new bugs each year. And that could further devastate the region’s forests. Pine beetles, which scuttle from New Mexico north into Canada, are trouble for trees, says study co-author Jeffry Mitton, an evolutionary geneticist at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Beginning in late summer along high-altitude sites in the eastern Colorado Rocky Mountains, for instance, swarms of hundreds or even thousands of these small black bugs will single out individual lodgepole pines or related trees, then advance on them en masse. Recently, pine beetles have inexplicably exploded across their range. See Beetles / A3


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