Around Oregon
Wednesday, July 29, 2009 10:22 AM PDT
Police acquire
crucial grants
PORTLAND (AP) — Nine of the 101 Oregon law enforcement agencies that applied for a share of $1 billion in federal stimulus money are getting just over $5 million to hire more police officers.
The White House announcement about the COPS Hiring Recovery Program grants on Tuesday was greeted with a mixture of relief and disappointment in Oregon.
‘‘It’s a very, very small dent in the budget,’’ said Jay Waterbury, president of the Oregon Association Chiefs of Police.
Waterbury, the police chief in The Dalles, said his department applied for a grant but was rejected.
‘‘I look at a lot of the agencies that applied for it and didn’t get anything, and some are really hurting moneywise,’’ he said.
Gresham led the list of Oregon grants with more than $1.56 million, followed by the Lane County sheriff’s department with $764,000 and Oregon City with $577,000.
Other cities getting grants were Springfield, Klamath Falls, Redmond, Grants Pass, Sutherlin and Astoria.
Oregon timber
harvests continue
decline
GRANTS PASS (AP) — The continuing lull in new housing starts is behind the 9 percent decline in Oregon’s overall timber harvest from 2007 to 2008, Oregon Department of Forestry economist Gary Lettman said Tuesday.
A total of 3.4 billion board feet was harvested in 2008, the lowest since the recession levels of 2001 and less than half the amount in the late 1980s when logging was at its peak, Lettman said.
‘‘We have seen initially a big harvest decline in the past because of environmental issues, like the spotted owl, marbled murrelet and clean water,’’ Lettman said from Salem. ‘‘This time we are highly correlated to housing starts. We won’t see an uptick until we see housing starts pull out.’’
The harvest for 2009 is likely to drop even further, to 3 billion board feet, Lettman said.
Though there are encouraging signs the real estate market is bouncing back, construction continues to be weak because builders still have too many unsold homes sitting vacant, economists say.
At the current sales pace, there are enough new homes for sale to last nearly nine months.
Lettman said the big declines were on private lands — particularly non-industrial private lands — where owners are waiting for better prices. Industrial timberlands harvests declined 9 percent, and non-industrial lands 35 percent.
Industrial timberlands account for 76 percent of the logs that feed Oregon’s 112 mills, and non-industrial private lands 5 percent.
Medford students back in quarantine
MEDFORD (AP) — Students from a Medford school have been quarantined for a second time on their three-week trip to China.
Frank Phillips, headmaster of St. Mary’s School, says 64 students and seven teachers are a hotel in the city of Deng Feng after a student tested positive for the swine flu virus. That student is now under observation at Henan Provincial Hospital.
The St. Mary’s students were initially quarantined at a Beijing hotel after a student detained at the airport tested positive.
All the students eventually got a clean bill of health. They were released from quarantine July 23 and headed south to Deng Feng.
Kathleen Hildreth, whose daughter Molly is in China, told the Mail Tribune newspaper that the students were told the latest quarantine could last seven days.
