The Beacon

Oh wait, Brett Favre in a Vikings uniform. Make it the second sign of end times.

 
 
The city of Bend sent notice this week that the state is ready to give Bend a final word on its 25-year growth plan, which the city submitted to the state earlier this year after several long years of work by city staff, the planning commission and the council.
However, it looks as though the plan is likely to be kicked back to the city for a major re-work, according to one person with close knowledge of the formal process, who spoke to me off the record about the project.

Paddlers will be out in force tonight as the Park District hosts an open house comment period on its proposed whitewater play area/spillway redesign at Colorado Avenue. The long overdue project is still in the planning phases and citizens still have an opportunity to shape the final product, but the project already incorporates many important recreational and safety elements that the entire community should get behind, including safe passage for floaters, a whitewater play area and fish passage through an open, free-flowing channel, as well as protection of existing gravel and spawning beds below the dam.

After receiving a petition from incensed business owners, city officials decided to put a parking fee increase on hold until they have more time to discuss the plan with downtown stakeholders.
City council officials were scheduled to discuss a staff proposal to do away with the free two-hours of parking currently offered in both the north and south Mirror pond lots, but yanked the item from the agenda after roughly two dozen business owners and managers signed a petition that was submitted to the city through the Bend Chamber of Commerce.

 
This is a quick follow-up to the previous story about last night’s arrest of a homeless man who is accused of killing two other men yesterday at a homeless camp north of Bend.
I just came back from the arraignment hearing where the suspect Jason Michael Centrone appeared via video camera to hear the charges against him.

The Deschutes County Sheriff's has arrested a Bend homeless man as a suspect in an alleged double murder at a homeless camp north of Bend.

Here's a copy of the press release that just came out this morning.

 
Local non-profits made a strong showing in a new ranking of the best charitable and other not-for profit organizations in Oregon. Deschutes Public Library cracked the Top 10 in a list of the state’s larger organizations (75 or more employees), weighing in at number five in a list that was otherwise heavily dominated by Portland non-profits that was recently compiled Oregon Business magazine.

 
Central Oregon’s first-term legislators emerged on the opposite end of the spectrum on environmental issues, according to the legislative scorecard released this week by the environmental policy watchdog group Oregon League of Conservation Voters (OLCV). The non-profit has been tracking the votes of individual legislators on environmental policy issues for more than three decades and compiling the information into post-session scorecards for voters.

editor’s note: Due to a website snafu this post didn’t get up last week. So if it feels a week late, there’s a reason.

Normal 0 0 1 246 1405 11 2 1725 11.1282 0 0 0   We’ll maybe not in black, but longtime Source columnist Bob Woodward is returning as a contributor this week with a new Blog, which we’ve dubbed Off Piste.