The Boot

Although it hit a couple of potholes along the road - the worst being the purchase of some second-hand buses that turned out to be lemons - Bend Area Transit has become an important part of the city's transportation system. It provides close to 6,000 rides a week, many of them to people who have no other way of getting around.
 
Now the City of Bend, facing a $12 million budget shortfall, wants to cut back service on BAT as well as on Dial-a-Ride, the companion system that provides transportation for seniors and the disabled. We understand that the city has to make tough choices now that the easy-money days of the real estate bubble are gone. But this is a bad choice, at a bad time.

Once upon a time a developer had a bright idea. "Let's build a high-end, gated golf community out among the junipers and jackrabbits in the high desert," he said.
"How can we do that?" his partner asked dubiously. "Oregon's land use laws won't let us put almost 400 homes way outside of any urban area."
"No problem," the first partner replied. "We'll call it a 'destination resort.'"
"But won't we have to build hotels and rental condos for the tourists to stay in?" his partner asked.

"Don't sweat it," the first guy reassured him. "The county won't
enforce the law. And even if they wanted to, the law doesn't have any
teeth."
"Brilliant!" the other guy said. "What should we name it?"
"How about 'Pronghorn'?" the first guy said.
 

Oregon's SMART (for "Start Making a Reader Today") program got started in 1992 with a handful of volunteers and one simple idea: that having a grownup spend a little time each week reading with a young child would encourage a love of books and improve the child's reading skills, confidence and school performance.

Bend pioneers - i.e., anybody who was here before 1990 or thereabouts - can remember when downtown had no parking problem at all. About half the storefronts were boarded up, and you could park pretty much anywhere you wanted at any time of day.
 
Those days, fortunately, are long gone, and downtown Bend now suffers from the more pleasant problem of too many cars and not enough parking spaces. It's tried various solutions, most notably the creation of a 571-space multi-story parking garage.
Incomprehensibly, even as the city built the parking garage it was eliminating city-owned parking lots in the downtown core. The one on Bond Street next to the D&D Lounge and another at Wall Street and Greenwood Avenue have been sold to developers.

Five years ago David Black made a big mistake. He got into an illegal nighttime drag race against two other cars on O.B. Riley Road.
 
Danielle Gates, the driver of one of the other cars, lost control of her car on a curve and slammed into the side of an oncoming van. Gates and the passenger in her car were killed, and the young woman driving the van was seriously injured.
A year later, David Black made his really big mistake. Convinced he was not guilty of the charge of second-degree manslaughter that Deschutes County District Attorney Mike Dugan had brought against him, he decided to go to trial instead of cutting a deal.

It’s a hell of a racket: Take one of the most abundant natural substances on Earth — something that literally falls from the sky for free — put it in bottles and sell it for $8 a gallon or more. 

To hear all the hype, you'd think ethanol is the miracle drug of this or any other century, able to cure everything from America's addiction to foreign oil to global warming to hemorrhoids.

There are traditions that are inspiring, like laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier on Memorial Day. There are traditions that are fun, like trimming the Christmas tree or ridiculing American Idol.