Next Monday, Sept. 8, the process begins to remove the final remaining concrete dam on Whychus Creek, a narrow waterway that traces north past Sisters and pours into the upper Deschutes River. The project has been spearheaded by the Upper Deschutes Watershed Council and, explains Mathias Perle, Project Manager for the organization, will re-open 13 miles […]
Glass Slipper
Posted inOpinion
The Wheel Thing
September is the Bicycle Transportation Alliance statewide Bicycle Commute Challenge, in which Oregon work places compete to see which can bike more during the month, locally, in October, Commute Options host a similar event, the Drive Less Connect—all of which, to us, seems to like a perfect opportunity for the mayor and city council to […]
Posted inOpinion
Pandora’s Bong
In late July, in a rare front page editorial, the New York Times offered its endorsement for the federal government to legalize recreational marijuana. And, last week, proponents for legalizing marijuana in the State of Oregon—an initiative for November’s ballot—announced they already had raised over $1 million for their campaign. Yes, public sentiment certainly seems […]
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Trust us, we’re from the federal government
That line, while once intended to inspire confidence, instead has transformed into a punch line for Hollywood blockbusters like Men in Black and TV shows like “Person of Interest.” Yet, as comic as that adage may have become, it also is an important reality and force that steers public policies and infrastructure decisions for the […]
Posted inOpinion
Vic Atiyeh: The gold standard
Perhaps it is overly romantic nostalgia to think that politicians were once more fair and balanced, and that they once followed their hearts more than their party lines. But even if that is a rose-colored look at the past, it only makes Vic Atiyeh an even more remarkable politician—and man. The state’s governor from 1979 […]
Posted inOpinion
Freedom: Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Lose
Five summers ago, leading up to its passage, so-called Obamacare was the focus of town hall meetings across the country. Many of those community meetings turned as ugly and unruly as an English soccer game, with shoving and shouting matches. Even after the wide-reaching Affordable Care Act passed a year later, that venom did not […]
Posted inOpinion
Hold the Line
So often—and by its very nature—firefighting is reactionary. But with the Two Bulls Fire, there also has been an impressive show of some of the precautionary measures taken to manage forest fires, on several fronts. The foremost being the prolific use of social media. As the fire spread, so did the city’s public information efforts. […]
Posted inOpinion
Replacing Politics with Policies
Last week, Jodie Barram waltzed through the primary as the Democratic nominee for Deschutes County Commissioner Position One with 98 percent of the vote, while her Republican counterpart, Tony DeBone, raked in 81 percent of the vote for his party’s nomination—numbers usually reserved for the Prime Minister of North Korea or Vladimir Putin. Which isn’t […]
Posted inOpinion
Raise A Champagne Toast!
A few minutes before noon on Monday, Judge Michael McShane, who sits as a judge in Eugene for the Federal District Court, filed his opinion in Geiger v. Kitzhaber, a lawsuit challenging Oregon’s constitutional ban on same-sex marriages. Judge McShane plainly stated that same-sex couples are entitled the same privileges of marriage under the U.S. […]
Posted inOpinion
Citizen Watchdog Isn’t All Wet
Spencer Dahl, a longtime Bend resident, may like the meandering current of the Deschutes River, but he is not sitting idly by letting the debate over what to do about the river, Newport Avenue Dam and Mirror Pond just take its sweet time. He is out there trying to actually guide the conversation and make […]