Rogue Valley News, Tuesday 10/26 – Grants Pass Tiny Home Transitional Housing To Open, Rep. Marsh Holds Community Forum On Illegal Marijuana In Southern Oregon Tonight

The latest news stories of interest in the Rogue Valley and around the state of Oregon from the digital home of Southern Oregon, Wynne Broadcasting’s RogueValleyMagazine.com.

Tuesday, October 26, 2021

Rogue Valley Weather

Today– A chance of rain before 11am, then a chance of showers after 11am. Cloudy, with a high near 56. South southeast wind 6 to 9 mph. Chance of precipitation is 40%.

Wednesday– A 20 percent chance of showers before 11am. Patchy fog between 8am and 11am. Otherwise, mostly cloudy, with a high near 63. Calm wind.

Thursday– Mostly sunny, with a high near 71. Calm wind.

Friday– A 20 percent chance of showers. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 64

Saturday– A slight chance of showers. Partly sunny, with a high near 65.

Grants Pass Tiny Home Transitional Housing To Open

Construction on Foundry Village began in March of this year. On Wednesday, AllCare and Rogue Retreat plan to hold a press conference to formally introduce the finished development of the tiny home village on SW Foundry Street in Grants Pass

“In an effort to provide solutions for people who are homeless, AllCare Community Foundation built a tiny home community based on the successful model of Hope Village created by Rogue Retreat in Medford,” the organization said in a statement.

At Foundry Village, staff from Rogue Retreat will work to help stabilize the homeless and unsheltered by first providing housing and supportive services “so that each person has the opportunity to reach their highest potential.”

The gated village is not intended to provide permanent housing, but to help build skills and confidence in residents so that they can go on to find permanent housing.

Rogue Retreat executive director Chad McComas and AllCare Community Foundation board member Doug Walker plan to go over the history of the project on Wednesday and explain how the management of the property will work.

Earlier this month, Rogue Retreat and AllCare confirmed that they were working on a separate initiative to establish an urban campground modeled on the Biddle Road property in Medford.

Rep. Marsh Holds Community Forum On Illegal Marijuana In Southern Oregon Tonight

State Representative Pam Marsh will host a community forum Tuesday night via Zoom to address the growing issue of illicit marijuana grows across southern Oregon.

The Jackson County Board of Commissioners declared a state of emergency earlier this month as a result of the influx of grows recently — a phenomenon that has been building for years, though officials say that this year was particularly extreme.

Southern Oregon was already a lodestone for cannabis and hemp grows operating within the state’s legal framework, due in part to the area’s conducive climate.

For the same reason — and because the presence of legal operations provides a certain level of reasonable doubt for illicit operations — black market operations have flourished.

The operators grow marijuana, process it, and ship it to states where cannabis remains illegal. Particularly in a severe drought years like 2021, one of the biggest issues is how these operations obtain large quantities of water. The other issue is one of labor, with law enforcement officials claiming that there are humanitarian issues with the way migrant laborers are exploited on black market grows.

Sen. Wyden Requests Pharmacy Closures to be Investigated

Oregon Senator Ron Wyden is asking the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to review pharmacy closures nationwide.

Earlier this year, Eugene-based BiMart announced it’s closing 56 pharmacies in the Northwest and handing over the clients to Walgreens.

BiMart cited increasing costs and reimbursement pressure as the reason. Wyden says he wants to know whether fees imposed by Medicare Part D and middlemen known as pharmacy benefit managers are driving the closures.

Oregon reports 2,293 new confirmed and presumptive COVID-19 cases, 12 new deaths

There are 12 new COVID-19 related deaths in Oregon, raising the state’s death toll to 4,295. The Oregon Health Authority reported 2,293 new confirmed and presumptive cases of COVID-19 bringing the state total to 359,733.

The new confirmed and presumptive COVID-19 cases reported today are in the following counties: Baker (6), Benton (53), Clackamas (203), Clatsop (8), Columbia (34), Coos (42), Crook (21), Curry (7), Deschutes (231), Douglas (79), Gilliam (2), Grant (2), Harney (5), Hood River (19), Jackson (108), Jefferson (38), Josephine (46), Klamath (61), Lake (9), Lane (203), Lincoln (43), Linn (150), Malheur (16), Marion (187), Morrow (7), Multnomah (329), Polk (31), Tillamook (10), Umatilla (32), Union (17), Wasco (24), Wallowa (7), Washington (223) and Yamhill (40).

More than 300 individuals in Oregon who have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 have died of the virus since the beginning of the pandemic, according to the state’s health department.

  • The majority of vaccinated people who died of COVID-19 in Oregon were aged 80 and older
  • No fully vaccinated individuals aged 12 to 29 died of COVID-19 in the state
  • Oregon has recorded more than 359,700 total COVID-19 cases

Health officials say that COVID-19 deaths among fully vaccinated residents in Oregon are still rising even as infection rates continue to drop across the United States. As of Oct. 21, 325 fully vaccinated people in the state died of COVID-19 and the deaths represent 1% of Oregon’s fully vaccinated population, according to the state Health Authority’s weekly breakthrough report.

At least 48% of the vaccinated people who died of COVID-19 had received the two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech shot, 24% received the two-dose Moderna vaccines and 13% got the single-dose Janssen shot by Johnson & Johnson, the report said. 

Of the 325 total breakthrough COVID-19 deaths, 51.3% occurred in individuals aged 80 and older, 26.4% were in people aged 70 to 79, 16.3% were in people aged 60 to 69, 3% occurred in people aged 50 to 59, 2.1% were in residents aged 40 to 49 and 0.6% occurred in residents aged 30 to 39. 

As of Oct. 21, no fully vaccinated residents in Oregon belonging to the 12 to 19 and 20 to 29 age groups died of COVID-19. 

In the week beginning Oct. 10 and ending Oct. 16, Oregon health officials recorded 1,977 new breakthrough COVID-19 infections, putting the state’s overall number of coronavirus cases among the fully vaccinated to 32,954. At least 848 cases were recorded in people aged 12 to 17.

Statewide, the health department recorded a total of 359,733 COVID-19 cases and 4,295 deaths among the unvaccinated and vaccinated as of Monday. However, the agency said the totals may still increase after they experienced server issues on Friday and Saturday.

Across the U.S., the daily case average has dropped by nearly 43% over the past month. Florida, Mississippi and Louisiana, have reported their average number of cases dropping by nearly 90% since August. 

Despite the drop in COVID-19 case rates in most U.S. states, several areas in the Northeast and the Upper Midwest are still experiencing surging numbers of infections, including Minnesota and Michigan, according to Johns Hopkins University.

The United States has so far reported 45,544,939 coronavirus cases and 737,316 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic, data from Johns Hopkins University stated.

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Wyden and Merkley Call For Investigation Of Oregon’s Chemawa Indian School

Chemawa Indian School, Oregon’s only federally-run boarding school for Native American students, may be facing a federal investigation at the urging of the state’s U.S. senators.

In a pointed letter to the inspector general of the U.S. Department of Interior, Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley, both Democrats from Oregon, lay out a series of concerns about Chemawa Indian School. The letter highlights numerous problems and questions that have not been adequately addressed, in the senators’ view.

Wyden and Merkley cited multiple previous inquiries, dating back to a 2013 Government Accountability Office review, and a GAO follow-up in 2014, as well as previous Interior Department investigations released in 2015.

Wyden and Merkley tie the school’s difficulties back to student achievement, noting that a July 2015 investigation by the Interior Department inspector general — the same investigating unit the senators want looking at Chemawa again — “determined that ‘the Chemawa Indian School was not properly assessing the academic needs of its students,’ and that the school was ‘unable to effectively prioritize its resources to ensure the successful educational achievement of its student population.’” In their letter, Wyden and Merkley say that the inspector general’s reviews in 2008 and 2014 found “merely ‘adequate’” measures in place to prevent violence at the school, involving staff and students.

Wyden and Merkley are calling for the inspector general investigation after their own efforts left them with what they consider too many unanswered questions. Among the questions the senators’ letter seeks answers to are seemingly basic issues, such as “does Chemawa’s budget receive audits?” and “does the school have a functioning school board?”

It’s not the first time the senators have asked for information that seems like it should be easy to get. In 2019, Merkley had to make a written request for a map of the school’s campus along Interstate 5 in Salem.

The letter sent to the inspector general on Monday acknowledged that since OPB’s reports on Chemawa in 2017, and in response to the GAO report from five years earlier, the Bureau of Indian Education released its “2018 Strategic Direction” which included a policy to “provide technical assistance to […] high risk schools.” The senators asked if Chemawa is among the schools considered “high risk” given that “our offices have continued to receive complaints about alleged misuse of financial resources at the school.”

The senators’ request of the inspector general concludes with what they would like to be the two main areas of investigation: financial transparency and outside oversight. The letter essentially asks whether Chemawa gets routinely audited, and if not, then it asks “what financial oversight has BIE conducted?”

Oregon’s congressional delegation has taken several close looks at Chemawa over the last few years, starting with a visit in May 2018, which included representatives from several Oregon tribes. That visit was followed a year later by an emotional and occasionally combative congressional hearing. Reps. Suzanne Bonamici, D-Beaverton, and Kurt Schrader, D-Canby, have visited Chemawa more recently, including in 2019, when they emerged to say they felt encouraged that the school was making changes.

Students arrived back at the Salem campus last week, a year and a half after COVID-19 closed the school. According to Schrader, the school’s dorms are operating at diminished capacity due to pandemic protocols.

Redmond Beef Producer Sued For $2.7m Over E-Coli Outbreak

Lawyers representing New Seasons Market have filed a $2.7 million lawsuit against a Redmond beef producer accusing the company of negligence for delivering beef tainted with E. coli in 2019, court records show. Several people were sickened by the bacteria, prompting a wide recall.

The suit, filed this week in Multnomah County Circuit Court by the Portland-based company, names Country Natural Beef, based in Redmond.

On Nov. 8, 2019, officials from the Oregon Health Authority and the Oregon Department of Agriculture told New Seasons three cases of E. coli had been connected to ground beef sold in Portland-area stores of the grocery chain.

The chain took samples from meat cases and sent them to a state-run lab for analysis. Two came back positive for E. coli and both were determined to have come from Country Natural Beef, the lawsuit said. New Seasons pulled ground beef from shelves in all of its stores and recalled ground beef products it had sold, according to the suit. The suspension of ground beef sales lasted three months, the lawsuit says.

Many customers returned products and received refunds, and New Seasons disposed of the unsold beef products, according to the suit. New Seasons seeks money to recover costs from paying refunds, cleaning, issuing and carrying out the recall and investigating the outbreak source. The chain also seeks damages for a loss of goodwill with customers, according to the suit.

The lawsuit said Country Natural Beef has examined its internal procedures and implemented a new beef testing policy.

Open enrollment – the time to sign up for health insurance for 2022 – has been extended this year.

It runs from Nov. 1, 2021, to Jan. 15, 2022. More than 75 percent of Oregonians who enrolled through the Oregon Health Insurance Marketplace for 2021 qualified for financial help, which lowered their monthly premium to as low as $1 per month.

The Marketplace estimates that thousands of Oregonians throughout the state could see significant savings by enrolling in health coverage through the Marketplace for 2022.

Trained health coverage experts are available to help with applying for financial assistance and choosing health plans. This help comes from licensed insurance agents and community groups and is completely free to you. 

You can prepare for open enrollment by going to OregonHealthCare.gov/WindowShop to browse plans and find out how much savings for which you are eligible. This year, the tool has significant enhancements to help consumers wade through plan options. To start, go to OregonHealthCare.gov before Jan. 15 and answer a few questions to preview plans and savings available to you.

Extreme Drought Effects Christmas Tree Supply for Future Years

Extreme heat and significant drought posed serious challenges to local Christmas tree farmers this year.  You may have a harder time than usual finding a live Christmas tree this holiday season. 

Christmas tree growers in the Pacific Northwest have seen their crops decimated this year due to drought and the heat waves we’ve experienced. One grower estimates he’s lost 90% of his Christmas tree crop this year due to extreme heat.

Oregon is the nation’s leading grower of Christmas trees, according to the National Christmas Tree Association. But the drought, and the wildfires that follow, have wreaked havoc on growers: Since 2015, the acreage growing trees decreased by 24%, and the total number of trees sold dropped 27%, according to data from the US Department of Agriculture.

Christmas trees typically take between eight and 12 years to reach maturity, meaning that the decimation of this year’s seedlings could be felt as late as 2029 and beyond.

The impacts of the drought will not be too visible to the public this year, but Christmas tree prices are expected to rise because the cost of fuel has gone up, the cost of fertilizer has gone up, and the cost of labor has also gone up

However, if dry, hot summers like the one that engulfed much of the state this year persist, fewer trees will survive long enough to be harvested and those prices may increase even more.

Christmas tree sales typically begin the day after Thanksgiving.

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