Eric Flowers

The Forest Service, an agency whose primary job is managing timber and recreation on our public lands, is used to being in the position of “damned if you do and damned if you don't.” Anyone who has ever worked for the agency can tell you that environmental groups, the timber industry and other interest groups pull the Forest Service in about 100 different directions at any one time. But the latest dust-up over a local Forest Service initiative may have even caught the agency by surprise because it seems, at least outwardly, so benign. Specifically, the Deschutes National Forest Supervisor's Office recently unveiled a plan to construct a new welcome center to help the more than two million annual users of the local forest better navigate the area. The center, which is proposed to be constructed off Century Drive using federal funds, would include about 25 parking spaces, plus a couple of RV slots, bathrooms and all the requisite signage and literature that visitors have come to expect from similar welcome centers.
But the plan isn't setting well with a sizeable contingent of locals, including the Forest Service's own Recreation Advisory Committee (RAC), which has sent a letter of objection to the plan and is preparing to appeal the government's analysis by the end of the week if the supervisor's office in Bend doesn't change direction.

At the bottom of a rimrock-shouldered canyon outside Sisters, Matt Cyrus surveys Whychus Creek as it rounds an oxbow bend and tumbles into a riffle that dances in the late morning light. The creek and surrounding meadow are part of an unprecedented salmon and steelhead reintroduction effort in the upper Deschutes Basin. The property is also a small part of ongoing discussion about how to sensibly regulate destination resort development in Deschutes County where resorts mushroomed during the housing boom and then fizzled as development capital and consumer interest evaporated.
A sixth-generation Oregonian whose family came to the state from Tennessee on the historic wagon trail, as Cyrus tells it, just ahead of the ill-fated Donner Party, Cyrus is one of the few people who still sees opportunity in the destination resort market. And perhaps with good reason. He and his family – which includes his father and family patriarch Keith Cyrus, a former head of the Deschutes County Planning Commission – have already invested a considerable sum in their Aspen Lakes community, a development perched on post-card-perfect property that looks suspiciously like many of the region's other destination resorts, complete with a golf course surrounded by million-dollar homes. Except it isn't, at least not technically. The development was approved in the late 1980s after the family purchased roughly 1,100 acres of undeveloped forestlands adjacent to their Cloverdale hay and potato farm.
Now fully built out at roughly 115 lots, the Cyruses would like to expand their development onto an adjacent 500 acres that includes the aforementioned meadow, which would be set aside for protection.

District attorney candidate Pat Flaherty has attacked incumbent Mike Dugan on his politicking, his criminal-charging protocol and his handling of the high-profile David Black case. Recently, he opened up a new front that Dugan may not be able to ignore in the final stretch of his reelection bid.
Two weeks ago, Flaherty used the League of Women Voters candidate debate, a usually tame event, as a forum to hammer his former boss, 20-plus-year incumbent Mike Dugan on an issue that Flaherty had been pushing only privately in his campaign to unseat his former boss. Answering an audience question about his views on governmental transparency, Flaherty, a fomer chief deputy prosecutor, accused Dugan of allowing a prosecutor in his office to sexually discriminate against young female employees and then promoting that prosecutor.

Securitized derivatives and interest-only loans notwithstanding, there's plenty of evidence that the collapse of the national and local housing market can be traced back to the foundation upon which all other assumptions relied – the actual value of the homes that were being bought and sold at a breakneck pace around Bend and other real estate hotbeds throughout the boom years of the last decade.
A quick glance at the most recent Multiple Listing Service (MLS) statistics confirms just how grossly inflated local real estate prices became before the fall. The median sale price for a Bend home was $347,750 in 2006, according to the Central Oregon Association of Realtors. By the first quarter of this year, the price had fallen to $190,000, a roughly 44-percent decrease – good enough to put Bend among the fastest-falling housing markets in the entire country. Florida condos and Central Valley spec homes got nothing on us.

The latest Central Oregon wilderness lands bill took a step forward today clearing Sen. Ron Wyden's public lands subcommittee in a development that could set the stage for another wilderness showdown with Sen. Tom Coburn, aka Dr. No, the Oklahoma Republican who had previously held up the Badlands designation and thrown up procedural roadblocks on all wilderness bills over what he says are unfunded costs, but looks to us just like more petty partisanship.
The Cathedral Rock/Horse Heaven Wilderness would create a pair of new federally designated wilderness areas along and adjacent to the John Day River, opening up thousands of acres of new lands to the public while moving other public parcels into the hands of private landowners. The move, if successful, would address the historic “checkerboard” ownership patterns in the John Day area where public and private lands are often intermingled, leading to conflicts between users, notably hunters who reportedly sometimes stray from public lands onto private parcels, including a Christian youth ranch located on the former Rajneesh Purim outside the tiny town of Antelope.

Cyclocross Nationals, USA Cycling National Championships, Xterra Trail Running Championships, the recent governor's conference on tourism and soon the National Beard and Moustache Championships (not a misprint). It's hard to catalogue the list of accomplishments of Visit Bend, the city's publicly funded tourism promotion agency, over the past year or so.
It's an impressive list of achievements particularly in light of the dismal tourism economy that has seen vacancies rising at most area hotels and resorts.
Many observers have attributed Visit Bend's recent success to CEO and President Doug LaPlaca, a former ski industry executive who took over the helm of Visit Bend after a rocky patch for the non-profit organization that saw the forced departure of its former CEO, Mike Glover.

After months of wrangling with residents and cyclists, the Deschutes County Commission is prepared to tighten the rules governing recreational cycling on Skyliners Road. On Wednesday the commission was scheduled to vote on an “emergency” ordinance requiring bikers to ride single file on Skyliners where neighbors have complained that cyclists are clogging the narrow road.
The commission has already tightened the reins on races by limiting the number of road events on Skyliners and forcing those that have been grandfathered to go through an application process with a fee that requires event planners to show they cannot reasonably relocate. The move to crack down on recreation riders is likely to provoke a backlash from cycle-happy Bend, particularly given the popularity of the Skyliners Road ride west of town. The county's own bike and pedestrian advisory board refused to endorse the move to restrict cyclists, saying that it sends the wrong message about sharing the road (as required by law). Rather than make the road safer, additional restrictions could make the road more dangerous by extending passing zones in practice, it wrote.

WKRP and Johnny Fever had the Turkey Drop, WLUP had Disco Demolition Night at Chicago's Comiskey Park.
In Bend, local alternative rock station 92.7 has the Pothole Giveaway, an ongoing spring promo that encourages listeners to call in and nominate Bend's best potholes. Callers qualify for ticket giveaways and will have a pothole named in their honor later this spring.
While it may not go down as one of the more celebrated radio promo gimmicks of all time, it's one that Central Oregon commuters can relate to after a winter of traveling on our region's deteriorating roadways.