Bulletin Daily Paper 05/13/12

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D E S E R T

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Central Oregon, nonprofit mecca G1

Digesting the fine print Stand-up paddleboarding: It’s what’s SUP on the Deschutes

l Oregon Healthy Living in Centra

Making the grade: Teacher/cyclist Renee Scott

Monday:

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MAY 13, 2012

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Serving Central Oregon since 1903 www.bendbulletin.com

BEND

MAY 15 PRIMARY For our complete coverage, visit www.bendbulletin.com/election.

Low voter turnout? That likely won’t last By Scott Hammers The Bulletin

Ballots have been trickling into county clerks’ offices, but officials anticipate a sharp surge in the final days before Tuesday’s election. As of the end of the day Friday, voters in Crook, Deschutes and Jefferson counties had returned between 21 and 29 percent of their ballots, largely in line with the same point in past presidential election years. If patterns hold, officials say nearly the same number of votes will make their way to election offices by Tuesday. Oregon was the first state to adopt an all-vote-by-mail system in 1998. Ballots go out to voters just more than two weeks before Election Day, and they must arrive back at the county clerk’s office by the end of the day on Election Day — postmarks don’t count — to be tallied. See Voting / A8

• A Prineville man cares for two three-legged cats, suspected victims of animal traps

A little wobble, a lot of love

• Officials are devising stricter rules for a program that offers bonus pay for community service and training By Nick Grube The Bulletin

Of the $5.5 million unionized Bend police make in salary without overtime, an estimated 10.5 percent comes through an incentive program in which officers are rewarded for taking college classes, passing a fitness exam and meeting certain training goals. That program is unique in that it includes a community service component that requires officers to volunteer anywhere from five to 25 hours in a year to get their pay bump, which can be as high as 14 percent. But while many officers tallied their volunteer hours for agencies such as Habitat for Humanity or Bend’s Community Center, officials say some have been counting work like coaching their kid’s soccer team as service to their community. As a result, the department is now trying to rein in its incentive program to make sure officers aren’t taking credit for something they likely would have done anyway. “This can’t be a gimme program,” Bend Police Chief Jeff Sale said. “I just want to tighten the program up.” See Incentives / A7

Voter turnout, now ... All ballots for the May 15 primary election must be returned by 8 p.m. Tuesday. Here’s where the current turnout stands, by county:

A generation that is graduating into debt

Crook . . . . . . . . . 27.1% Deschutes . . . . 21.1% Jefferson . . . . . 29.3%

By Andrew Martin and Andrew W. Lehren New York Times News Service

... and then To see how voting surged near Election Day in the past, see the chart on A8

TOP NEWS ROMNEY: Speech aimed at evangelical students, A3 IRAQ: U.S. might scrap multibillion-dollar police training program, A3

Perks for cops who volunteer to tighten

Photos by Rob Kerr / The Bulletin

Robert Biggs, of Prineville, holds Morris in the entrance of his RV. Morris (also pictured at top) has adapted well to the loss of his back left leg over the past year and a half. Biggs has a second cat, Marley, who just had his leg amputated, making Biggs the owner of two three-legged cats.

ADA, Ohio — Kelsey Griffith graduates today from Ohio Northern University. To start paying off her $120,000 in student debt, she is already working two restaurant jobs and will soon give up her apartment here to live with her parents. Her mother, who co-signed on the loans, is taking out a life insurance policy on her daughter. “If anything ever happened, God forbid, that is my debt also,” said Griffith’s mother, Marlene Griffith. With more than $1 trillion in student loans outstanding in this country, crippling debt is no longer confined to dropouts from for-profit colleges or graduate students who owe on many years of education, some of the overextended debtors in years past. Now nearly everyone pursuing a bachelor’s degree is borrowing, and as prices soar, a degree often comes with an enormous financial burden. See Debt / A4

By Ben Botkin The Bulletin

TODAY’S WEATHER Sunny High 88, Low 42 Page B6

INDEX Business G1-6 Books F4-6 Classified E1-10 Community C1-8 Crosswords C7, E2 Dear Abby C3 Horoscope C3 Local News B1-6

Milestones C6 Obituaries B5 Opinion F1-3 Oregon News B3 Sports D1-6 Stocks G4-5 Sudoku C7 TV & Movies C2

The Bulletin An Independent Newspaper Vol. 109, No. 134, 50 pages, 7 sections

SUNDAY

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PRINEVILLE — Robert Biggs chokes up when talking about his three-legged cats. The Prineville man has plenty of compassion for the two cats, which roam inside and outside his motor home. For the cats, the journey from four-legged normalcy to feline tripods started at different times, but reportedly the same way: an animal trap. The way Biggs tells it, each cat lost its left rear leg in a neighbor’s trap. One cat lost a leg about a year and a half ago, and the second one did in the past week, he said. On Friday, Marley, a three-legged blackand-white cat, returned home with Biggs to recover from his surgery. At the Humane Society of Redmond, a veterinarian amputated Marley’s injured left rear leg and stitched up the wound. “They mean a lot to me,” Biggs said of his cats. Marley’s recovery could be quick. The feisty male cat leapt from Biggs’ arms

Mexico’s celebration of the ‘Mother Cult’ By William Booth The Washington Post

Biggs, 55, holds Marley in the car on the trip home after surgery to amputate his back left leg. Both of Biggs’ cats survived their mishaps, but their lives — each cat’s eight remaining ones — won’t be easy.

and ran out of sight Friday, surprising his owner. Biggs says the trap that lured in his cats had a door on it that swung shut behind them, injuring a leg. See Cats / A7

MEXICO CITY — Everybody loves mothers, but Mexicans? Maybe more so. In the annual celebration of the “Mother Cult,” Mexico is especially devout, and every year on May 10 (they don’t move the date around to fall on a Sunday), the entire nation stops what it is doing in the Inside afternoon and eats some serious • $18.6 billion, and other numbers lunch with Mom. to know this “For us Mexicans, first there Mother’s Day, A7 is the Virgin of Guadalupe, and second there is our mother,” said Maxine Woodside, radio host of the popular show “Todo Para La Mujer” — “All About Women” — and herself a mother of two boys. “Mexicans are very attached to family, not like in the United States, where they throw the kids out of the house at age 18. Here we see men in their 40s who still live with their mothers, and why not?” See Moms / A7


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