A D V E R T I S E M E N T
A D V E R T I S E M E N T
file photo / News-Times
A new U.S. flag flies front and center at the eastern entrance to Forest Grove atop a 120-foot-tall flagpole. The giant symbol of American patriotism polarized citizens who either thought it was beautiful or figured putting anything that large on city property should have warranted at least a brief public discussion.
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In a word, 2009 was a year of transition, and we faced it head-on.
We argued over the size and placement of the flag — whether it signaled patriotism or aesthetic perversion.
We gossiped about notable “changings of the guard” in our communities, from the Forest Grove and Banks school districts to Pacific University to the city council.
Even the longtime Forest Grove postmaster licked his last stamp.
As the year began, we scratched our heads and pulled on our woolies as we encountered mounting piles of snow during the uncharacteristic “arctic blast.”
Yet by summer, we were sweltering in 100-plus degree temperatures that canceled the Forest Grove Farmers Market on July 28.
Our concern last spring over a new strain of influenza, now famously known as the “swine flu,” turned to panic this fall as folks flocked to grab hard-to-find vaccines.
Finally, multiple murders shocked us in November.
Transition ruled the past 12 months.
Not another flood! Vernonia braces for the worst
Thirteen months after a disastrous flood ravaged the small logging town of Vernonia, nestled in the foothills of the Coast Range, residents again were packing up their belongings and heading for high ground as heavy rains made it seem like the town would face a second deluge in early January 2009.
“That’s how we spent our New Year,” said Joan Glass, city recorder.
When the first flood warning came in on New Year’s Eve, Vernonia city officials held meetings every eight hours to check in on flood preparations and talk logistics. As the threat waned, the meetings stretched out to every 12 hours.
Rock Creek, which runs through the center of town, didn’t escape its banks enough to flood the town this time, but facing the possibility of another disaster left residents with a major case of flood fatigue.
All across the city of 2,300, residents were moving appliances, cars and anything else of value to higher ground.
The December 2007 flood destroyed Vernonia High School and damaged a number of other school buildings, many of which had been hit by a flood in 1996.
Flood fears extended to Forest Grove as well, as people waited for the big snow of 2008 to thaw, remembering the damage from the 1996 flood. Fortunately, the snow melt in the Coast Range was slowed by mild temperatures — providing a pleasant start to the new year.
Layoffs hit Stimson
The case of the bonkers broker
Remember the Cornelius real estate broker who partied and burgled in a pair of homes while the owners were out?
It’s not uncommon for real estate agents to show houses while owners are away, but Michael Troy Messmer, 41, wasn’t trying to sell the houses he slipped into using a passcode.
Hillsboro Police say the owner of a house in the 3600 block of Northeast Ace Avenue walked in on Messmer and a woman the evening of Feb. 5. The pair appeared to be drinking alcohol from the owner’s liquor cabinet.
After the duo’s quick exit, the owner of the home noticed that about $260 worth of items were missing from his home, including a Sony Playstation and some perfume.
Less than a week earlier, Cornelius Police investigating a burglary of another home for sale noticed Messmer’s name on the entry log for the lockbox. That list of reported stolen items included an expensive bottle of tequila, a nose trimmer and an air freshener.
Messmer admitted to the burglaries in Washington County Circuit Court, and charges of robbery were dropped. Messmer is currently serving out a 29-month sentence at the South Creek Forest Camp, a minimum security prison near Tillamook.
While winter’s deep freeze began to thaw slightly, the economic collapse triggered by the Great Recession sent shockwaves through western Washington County as two major employers announced layoffs.
Merix, Forest Grove’s largest employer, trimmed 150 jobs. Then Cedar Canyon Bottled Water’s Forest Grove facility was shuttered by its new owner, which moved operations to Portland. The closure cost the city 37 jobs.
Gales Creek Throws a Party
Gales Creek School has been a center of life in the farming and logging community since 1859, when a simple log cabin classroom was established in a location where thousands have since learned their ABCs.
To celebrate, now-retired Principal Betty Flick, parent volunteers and the entire Gales Creek student body planned a blowout 150th birthday party complete with cake, dancing and singing on Feb. 12.
“The neat thing about our school is that there is so much community and so much history here,” said Flick, who retired at the end of the 2008-09 school year.
The original one-room school building, with homemade desks, sat at the far west end of a parcel donated by E.W. Iler and his wife Caroline in 1862, according to local historian Joyce Sauber.
The first class held only 25 students.
“It’s a testament to our country education that students from our school have gone on to be doctors and lawyers and to professions in all walks of life,” said Sauber, whose father, Art Shorb, attended classes in the one-room schoolhouse when he was a boy.
Forest Grove uncorked
After a year of work, Forest Grove city officials decided on a new marketing slogan and logo they hope will turn the city into a destination: “Forest Grove, where Oregon Pinot was born.”
For the uninitiated, that’s Pinot Noir (pronounced “PEE-no Nwar”), the fruity, complex red wine that made Oregon an international player in viticulture.
Forest Grove’s economic development director, Jeff King, hopes that by hitching the city’s star to wine, he can capture a little bit of that magic and draw in tourists.
But Forest Grove is joining a cluttered field of Oregon wine towns, with the top two — Dundee and Carlton — both about a half-hour drive from the city.
“We’re not saying we’re Dundee or the center of wine country,” King said. “We’re certainly not Napa Valley, but there’s a lot of history here. It’s part of our marketing."
All told, there are about a dozen or more wineries that dot the countryside around Forest Grove, including David Hill Vineyard and Winery, which boasts 40 acres of the oldest wine vines in Oregon.
Whether Oregon Pinot was truly born in the hills of Forest Grove is still up for debate, with two other contenders rooted in Roseburg and Dundee. With the new slogan, however, hopes are ripe for Forest Grove’s future as another wine-lovers’ hot spot.Hail to the (new) chiefs
The Forest Grove School Board hired Yvonne Curtis, 58, as the district’s next superintendent Mar. 20.
Curtis took the district mantle from Jack Musser, 62, who retired June 30 after 10 years at the helm of the 6,000-student school district.
Since she arrived, Curtis has been busy making connections with district staff and community leaders. She’s also initiated improvement plans for individual schools.
Musser moved to southern Oregon in December to be near his family leaving a legacy that included a new turf field and a student health center at Forest Grove High and a reputation for caring about individual students.
Banks School District saw a leadership shuffle as well. Superintendent Marv Ott stepped down in June and high school principal Jim Foster took over as interim.Stimulus aims at Jobs, jobs jobs!
Metro, the normally uber-deliberative regional government, showed it can be nimble, quickly approving $102 million in Portland-area transportation projects in early March as part of the federal stimulus effort.
Western Washington County made out well in the process. Forest Grove was granted $1.6 million to upgrade sidewalks, streetlights and curbs throughout downtown. Cornelius was also given a boost of $350,000 to improve street surfaces, and $50,000 to buy benches and fix curbs and utility connections along Adair Street. Both projects were nearly done by the end of summer.
Hillsboro snared $2.35 million to bridge a funding gap in the construction of the second phase of Pacific University’s Health Professions Campus, located near Tuality Community Hospital.
Flag is talk of the town
One of the biggest stories of the year came when the most visible addition to Forest Grove’s skyline in years, a 60-by-30-foot American Flag, debuted in April.
Last fall some residents groused about the decision to erect the flag, feeling that the move to put such a tall structure on public property should have had more public input.
The debate heated up again when the flag made its public debut, then slowly calmed.
But just as the city’s residents learned to live with the flag, so have the city’s firefighters, who are charged with raising and lowering the banner.
In early June, the city’s firefighters were observing a test burn near the intersection of Highway 47 and Pacific Avenue when the high winds started sweeping in as part of a dust storm moving into the valley from Salem.
Chief Michael Kinkade sensed trouble and ordered the firefighters to extinguish the house fire and head back to town. The crew hoped they could make short work of getting the flag down, but the flag wasn’t so interested in cooperating.
More than a dozen volunteer and staff firefighters had to shut down Pacific Avenue while they retracted the giant flag to wrestle it down. At the time, Kinkade said he’d failed to put lowering the flag into his action plan for the coming storm, a mistake he wouldn’t make again.
When rough weather moved into the area again in November, the city experimented with a smaller flag, about half the size of the large ceremonial flag.
The thinking is, let the large flag wave on holidays and special occasions, and bring out the smaller flag when the weather is poor.
“There’s going to be more wear and tear on the bigger flag because of its size. Maybe it’d be more prudent to fly the smaller flag,” Kinkade said.Community garden project:
As spring progressed, a team of Forest Grove volunteers hit the ground with spades in hand.
In April, officials at the city’s parks department and Forest Grove Light & Power reviewed a proposal for putting a public garden on a 1.5-acre city-owned parcel on the north side of town.
Walt Wentz originally cultivated the idea for the project at a meeting of the West County Council for Human Dignity, where people discussed ways to counteract the effects of the current recession. “I don’t know how bad this recession is going to get,” said Wentz, “but part of the project is just to teach people how to garden again.”
Community gardens are enjoying a resurgence of popularity today because they can promote healthy, sustainable communities and provide food security for many low-income families, said Wentz, a longtime Forest Grove resident.
“Also, I think people just like to play in the dirt,” he quipped.
Flu fears rise and fall
As “swine flu” fears swept the nation, a probable case of H1N1 influenza at Cornelius Elementary School in early May prompted a two-day school cancellation throughout the Forest Grove School District, making it the first district in the Portland area to shut its doors in response to the virus.
The custodial staff responded with gusto, swabbing desks, door handles, railings and phones with antiseptic solution to help prevent the spread of the virus.
And while the virus’s threat slowed with the close of the school year, it came roaring back in October after classes returned.
But parents had another headache in November when shortages of vaccine limited the number of people served at county clinics.
By December, the cases of swine flu being reported across Oregon had dropped. At the same time, vaccine was finally flooding into the state, with doctors across the county getting limited amounts each week.
Fees’ foes fume
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