In honor of this year’s Restaurant Guide issue, we mourn the loss of Bend’s only Cracker Barrel, a corporate approximation of an old country store serving microwaved approximations of old country dishes. Bend’s Cracker Barrel closed its doors on March 20, along with its locations in Beaverton and Tualatin, its departure devastating the local market […]
Jack Harvel
Jack is originally from Kansas City, Missouri and has been making his way west since graduating from the University of Missouri, working a year and a half in Northeast Colorado before moving to Bend in the Spring of 2021. When not reporting he’s either playing folk songs (poorly) or grand strategy video games, and checking out the different hiking trails in Central Oregon.
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The First E-Bus in Bend
The first electric bus in Bend is greener, quieter and could be cheaper for the district — but it’ll likely be the only one for a while
In March Bend La-Pine Schools‘ first electric school bus began running routes. The emission-free, $385,000, 16-ton Lion C school bus can fit up to 71 passengers and travels up to 155 miles on a single charge. The school district subsidized its purchase of the bus with a $157,500 grant from Pacific Power. The district is […]
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May Election Results
Results are in for the 2023 May elections. Over 45,000 Central Oregons, about 30% of voters, cast their ballots for candidates on local school boards, park districts, library districts and bonds. Results are preliminary and the county will still be counting mail-in ballots in the following weeks. We’ll update the story as more votes are […]
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St. Charles Nurses File Staffing Complaints
Nurse shortages are a focus in current bargaining between the hospital system and the 900+ nurses represented by the Oregon Nurses Association
Ten Saint Charles Nurses filed unsafe staffing complaints against the hospital system for allegedly failing to meet safe staffing levels. Nurses submitted complaints on May 5 claiming St. Charles failed to meet minimum staffing standards, didn’t direct patients elsewhere when the hospital operated over capacity and hadn’t corrected staffing law violations found in a 2022 […]
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Low-Barrier Shelter Coming to Redmond
Redmond’s homeless population doubled over the last year, and a 45-person shelter could house some as sweeps are planned around the area
Shepherd’s House Ministries is in its final stage of fundraising for a 45-bed low-barrier homeless shelter in Redmond, which currently doesn’t have a shelter of that type. On May 10 Shepherd’s House is launching a public campaign to raise $400,000 from donors. It already raised $3.1 million from private, nonprofit and public donors, including $450,000 […]
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Teachers Negotiate After Rocky Return to In-Person Learning
Union leaders and district officials began collective bargaining after six years on the same contract, and after seismic shifts in educating post-COVID
On May 1 hundreds of members of the Bend Education Association, the union representing 1,100 Bend-La Pine Schools employees, gathered outside the BLPS district office in downtown Bend to deliver the initial proposals to their bargaining agreement to district staff. The educators’ current bargaining agreement expires on June 30, and if a new contract isn’t […]
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Campus Expansion Under New Dean
OSU-Cascades aims to expand to accommodate four times as many students, and work is underway on the 30-year project
On April 17 Oregon State University-Cascades announced Dr. Sherm Bloomer would succeed interim vice president Andrew Ketsdever, becoming the first long-term leader of the university since Becky Johnson left to serve as the interim president of all of OSU in May 2021. Bloomer is joining the university as it works toward moving from a small […]
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Q&A With Oregon’s First Psilocybin Facilitators
Dave Naftalin and Jeanette Small are among the first people licensed by Oregon to facilitate psilocybin therapy. They sat down with the Source to talk about the emerging industry.
Oregon became the first state to legalize psilocybin therapy when voters approved Measure 109 in 2020. The state did so under strict parameters about the use of the drug, and people are only allowed to take the drug under the supervision of facilitators who have undergone a 300-hour course. In a recent episode of our […]
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Fagone
Oregon’s second-highest elected official resigned after her side gig with a cannabis company prompted questions about ethical violations
Oregon Secretary of State Shemia Fagan announced she’s resigning from her office effective May 8. Fagan faces an ethics investigation and calls to resign from state Republican leaders after Willamette Week reported Fagan worked as a consultant for the cannabis dispensary chain La Mota. Fagan’s office oversees the Oregon Audits Division, which recently released an […]
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Fired Up
Oregon’s wildfire risk map got published, pulled from the web and is now paused. But what happens now? And will the public accept a new one?
In June 2022, the State of Oregon released a wildfire risk map that charted the levels of wildfire risk for every property in Oregon. Along with it came a notice to property owners in the wildland-urban interface, a zone of transition between wilderness and developed land, informing them that their property had been identified as […]
