Local News

The filing deadline may be Aug. 25, but numerous candidates for Redmond City Council have signaled their interest by filing paperwork early. The mayoral seat is open, along with three seats on the Redmond City Council. These are four-year terms. Interested parties can pick up a campaign packet from the city’s Recorder’s Office send an […]

The year was 1999. Books, magazines and newspapers still ruled the Earth. The internet, barely existent, wriggled in a puddle somewhere. Todd Dunkelberg had already earned a master’s in library and information science from the University of Texas-Austin. He’d been working as a children’s librarian when he was tapped to relocate to Central Oregon to […]

The riverways around Central Oregon were filled with more people than usual Saturday morning. However, this time around, it wasn’t for recreation. Equipped with plant guidebooks, 289 volunteers gathered in six different locations, from Tumalo State Park to Farewell Bend Park to Sunriver to pick up trash and pull invasive weeds along the riverbank. About 2,100 pounds of garbage […]

Last month, Gov. Tina Kotek’s Prosperity Council recommended scrapping the state’s controversial Climate Protection Program—commonly called the CPP— a recommendation the governor provisionally endorsed. But the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality is nonetheless moving full speed ahead with the implementation of the program. On July 9, the agency identified the nonprofit it has chosen to […]

The honking from passing drivers was incessant during the afternoon of July 11 at the downtown Bend Peace Corner. For the roughly 50 protesters mingling at the corner of NW Portland and Wall, those honks of solidarity was a good thing, if the two recent local arrests and Houston shooting death by U.S. Immigration and […]

Since the shooting deaths in Minneapolis in January, federal immigration authorities, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, have kept a lower profile despite clocking record arrests throughout the country.   That changed when an ICE agent shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston on July 7. Araujo was not wanted by immigration authorities in the lead-up to the vehicle stop that resulted in an agent shooting […]

Oregon’s landmark effort allowing adults older than 21 to access psilocybin has evolved beyond “strictly medical uses” and may be allowing more people to enroll in the program than is safe, according to a new study.  Researchers at Johns Hopkins University published their findings in mid-June in the International Journal of Drug Policy, drawing upon 2025 data […]

Rachel O’Rourke, the leader of a prominent downtown Bend business group, announced plans this month to step away from her role amid a period of major upheaval for the organization.   Days before the resignation went public, the Downtown Bend Business Association also announced it would redo the process for a recent board of directors election.   The turmoil comes after discussions over the prospect of paid parking were met with fierce pushback from […]

It’s a perennial question among Central Oregonians each Fourth of July: Less if errant fireworks will spark Central Oregon’s next blaze than — how big will it be?  This year’s Fourth saw numerous fires, most predictably on Pilot Butte, on top of which commissioned pyrotechnics set off the City of Bend’s firework display while firefighters stood at the ready to douse sections that inevitably catch fire.  Consider as a sideshow attraction: The patch of Deschutes County Fairgrounds that also caught fire during the Redmond fireworks show.  Yet […]