Lorraine Veach recently overheard two women talking about a divisive proposal to build workforce and affordable housing in Astoria’s Heritage Square downtown.

The women were bemoaning the possible loss of the block’s large public parking lot if the housing project moved forward. Vendors with the Astoria Sunday Market use the parking lot to set up booths in the late spring and summer months.

Veach laughed. A parking lot for a market where she can’t afford to buy anything was more important to the women than housing, she concluded.

Veach is homeless. She has been trying to get into housing for the last three years, without any luck.

“I have an income,” she said, referring to social security benefits she receives, “but it’s not enough.”

She believes well-off Astorians could do more to help people like her instead of, she said, “griping and moaning about what a nuisance ‘those people’ are. We’re ‘those people,’ you know.”

But tensions around issues tied to homelessness and the unhoused in Astoria are at an all time high, fueled by visible camping and police calls to the Garden of Surging Waves at Heritage Square, tents clustered around buildings, aggressive behavior by some and trash and belongings stashed in the doorways of downtown businesses.

There are also the groups that congregate outside LiFEBoat Services and the Beacon Clubhouse on Commercial Street. People have videotaped arguments and confrontations in front of the building and some business owners say they regularly deal with harassment.

City leaders are considering a suite of measures to try to curb unwanted and illegal behavior and address other issues downtown. In coming weeks, they plan to consider ordinances for camping and abandoned or dilapidated RVs that double as housing. Tonight, the city and business leaders are facilitating a community discussion about livability issues tied to a large and increasingly visible homeless population downtown.

Astoria Police Chief Geoff Spalding has said many times over the years that a small number of unhoused people cause the bulk of the problems, but opinions are mixed on how the city should respond. Spalding says the city is limited by the law — including a number of new laws — and its own scant resources. He hopes people who attend the forum walk away with a better understanding of these challenges.

Erin Carlsen, director of Beacon Clubhouse, isn’t sure what to expect from tonight’s forum. But she hopes for empathy.

LiFEBoat Services and Beacon Clubhouse offer a daytime drop-in center and provide other services for unhoused people and people transitioning off the streets. The organizations have come under fire since opening in a building downtown last summer. Some people have blamed increased issues with the homeless on the organizations’ move downtown.

Posts have proliferated on Facebook and several people started taking videos of homeless clients outside of LiFEBoat Services. The videos show people being disruptive and unruly — at their worst.

Carlsen says the videos could be helpful if they were being sent to the police department to identify people who should be arrested for violent or abusive behavior. But when the videos are being posted online, without the subject’s knowledge or consent, to prove a point, Carlsen sees only the potential for harm.

“I personally work with a lot of people with mental illness,” she said. “So if they’re having a crisis out there, whether it’s just a breakdown or they’re talking to voices or having an extreme panic attack and that gets recorded and then (people) name-call on Facebook and mock and shame, that’s really hurtful.”

It can re-trigger already severely traumatized people, she said. “People don’t even know the level of trauma that we’re working with daily.”

Monica Gibbs, who was previously a homeless client but now works for LiFEBoat, echoed Carlsen’s comments. She became homeless while escaping an abusive situation. She wishes people understood the impact when videos like the ones on Facebook are posted.

“Not everybody is mentally OK enough to deal with that and it makes people paranoid and makes them act up more,” she said.

“You don’t see the housed community being posted for acting up, and they do,” she added. “It’s very one-sided what people are posting and talking about.”

Carlsen’s partner, Osarch Orak, director of LiFEBoat Services, says there is legitimacy to the community’s complaints, but that the organizations he and Carlsen run are a part of the solution, not the problem.

“I think that there’s legitimacy in the fact that the houseless population that was already here and hanging out in town happens to be congregated in front of our building,” he said. “But we have more control over them that way. And, yes. people can see it there and it’s a thing.”

But he’s not sure it’s a bad thing.

“In a way,” he said, “this is drumming up a conversation that’s needed to be had.”

The Astoria Warrenton Area Chamber of Commerce is one of the facilitators for tonight’s forum. Executive Director David Reid hopes for balance.

“The conversation is very different than it was a year ago,” he said. “A year ago the conversation was very much, ‘What do we do for our homeless population?’ And today the conversation is about, ‘What do we do about our homeless population?’”

“I’m hoping that we get somewhere in the middle,” he added, “where we’re both doing something for people and doing something about the problems that we’re seeing.”

Astoria’s businesses have already struggled through several very difficult years under the cloud of the coronavirus pandemic, Reid noted. The issues they are encountering with some of the city’s unhoused are not helping.

Still, Veach and others who camp downtown are not convinced the city’s various proposals will actually help fix anything.

There are people on the streets, Veach said, who are not interested in respecting others or the community. There are people who, if they face punishment under new city ordinances for their behavior, will claim it’s just a personal attack, a grudge.

Greg Pietarila, a formerly homeless person who is now precariously housed and looking for a more permeant solution, has been paying attention to the city and community discussions for a while now. Though he hopes for solutions, he isn’t sure where things go next.

“I’m flummoxed,” he said, adding, “I was born in this town — not that that brings me up — but I come back to this town and I’m cast out on the street.”

Tonight’s forum will be held at the Liberty Theatre. Admission is free. Doors open at 5:30 p.m. and the facilitated discussion begins at 6:30. KMUN is covering the event and a recording will be available at kmun.org later this week.

By Joanne Rideout

[Scroll down to listen, script below]

Judy Geiger is vice president of patient care services at Columbia Memorial Hospital in Astoria.

Judy Geiger: “We’ve seen an uptick in COVID but it’s staying right around the four to five patient range with positive COVID patients. We are doing a fair amount of preparation for this current surge that we believe we will start seeing the affects of in the very near future.

She said the hospital is poised to halt surgeries as necessary, and turn an area of the hospital into a COVID ward as they did previously during the Delta variant phase of the pandemic.

Jason Plamondon is Chief Nursing Officer at Providence Seaside Hospital. He said the hospital has more COVID patients than last month but so far it’s manageable. He said residents have gotten the message not to come to the ER for testing.

Jason Plamondon: “Our outpatient clinic and our drive through COVID testing have been very successful. Big numbers there which means those people aren’t ending up in the emergency room.”

Geiger said the advance of Omicron is impacting hospital staff:

Judy Geiger: “What feels different about this surge from previous ones is we’re truly seeing more caregivers out sick as well and that impacts our ability to care for patients.”

She said the COVID crunch elsewhere in the state is making it difficult to move patients to facilities when they need more care:

Judy Geiger: “Every day it becomes more and more difficult to transfer patients to Portland. Our emergency room calls every hospital that has a higher level of care, between Seattle and all of Oregon. Just seeing if we can transfer patients. We I think almost always have at least one patient that really should go to a higher level of care. Because they need to go to a cath lab for a heart procedure or they have some other issue going on that they would really benefit from being in a larger facility with more resources. And we’re unable to transfer them.”

Interim County Health Director Margo Lalich said the department has seen an increase in people getting vaccinated, particularly boosters.

Lalich said the health department will soon be receiving a supply of at home tests. But the tests will be used in the health care community to monitor and control the spread of covid there.

Margo Lalich: “And they will be used and prioritized for staffing and continuity of our operations. And of course some of our highest priority are EMS, first responders, high risk congregate living situations – as well as our caregivers.”

She said that while tests are not widely available for purchase, the county is testing primarily symptomatic people. Patients need to realistic about what to expect.

Margo Lalich: “People want testing and they would like results now. But some tests are sent out and we aren’t all providing results in the same manner, based upon our capacity, our work flows. And so at the county testing sites we are able to give both PCR and antigen test results onsite at that time. But that’s not necessarily the case with both types of testing at the hospital. And so that’s something for the public to understand as well – you may get tested but you may not get your results right away.”

Margo Lalich: “You know, testing in information. But what’s more important is what one does with that information. And so if you know that you’ve already been exposed to someone who’s already positive, and you develop symptoms, it’s likely at this point in time that you also have COVID. So just stay home. And that’s what we do or we’re supposed to do when we’re sick, with many other illnesses, not just COVID.”

Oregon Health Sciences University’s top forecaster is projecting that Omicron covid hospitalizations will soon surge to 17-hundred per day statewide, up from a peak of 12-hundred with the delta variant:

“His forecasting was based largely on Denmark which is similar in population and vaccination rates and other key demographic rates to Oregon.”

That’s Columbia Memorial Hospital chief medical officer Chris Strier:
“Omicron is preliminarily looking to be less severe than delta, fewer icu cases, fewer ventilated patients, but it is wildly more infectious than delta and because of that, even though the surge hopefully
won’t be a lot more than delta, we expect there to be fewer health care workers to take care of these patients.”

Strier says the number could be substantially lower than 17-hundred if we see continued mask wearing, limited indoor activities and an uptick in vaccinations. But on the vaccination front, Clatsop County
Public Health Director Margo Lalich is a little disappointed:

“For our boosters, that extra dose, it’s now about 57-58 percent for sixty five and older and then it continues to go down, that 50-64 year age group, is 34-percent, and so we looked at the 12-17 year
olds, it’s one-point-seven percent.”

Lalich says the booster numbers for both residents and staff at the county’s long term care facilities are encouraging. Strier says CMH is also having problems transferring very sick non-covid acute care
patients to Portland hospitals. That happened earlier in the pandemic and resulted in several deaths at the local hospital and the current problem may get worse:

“It’s a combination of patients whose care was delayed by covid in the past who are now seeking help or couldn’t get preventative help in the past and now their disease processes are out of control.” 

CMH has just four covid patients right now while Providence Seaside, which is also bracing for a surge, has just one. One bright spot: Strier says a pill to treat covid — hardly available at all right now — will be in much better supply in the new year.

For KMUN Radio, I’m Jacob Lewin.

Astoria city officials are upbeat about compliance with the city’s covid vaccine mandate. Next  Monday is the deadline and 89% of staff have been vaccinated. Others are in the process of being  vaccinated or have been exempted but are working under restrictions. Fire Chief Dan Crutchfield says  just one volunteer and one intern out of a staff of 20 firefighters have resigned rather than get the shots: 

“I think this could have been much worse so I don’t want to paint a gloom and doom picture for you,  but we have had some impacts.” 

Human relations manager Ashley Houston says two child care workers and one worker at the aquatic  center have resigned: 

“That can impact our services and our ability to keep the pool open for the hours that we have or to  operate as many classrooms or to offer childcare to as many children as we’re taking care of.” 

Mayor Bruce Jones is happy about how things have turned out: 

“It seems clear also that the mandate had the desired effect of convincing a lot of people who were  delaying or not just taking their time making up their mind to go ahead and make that decision and get  vaccinated. I know there was concerns that more people would resign their positions and it seems that  there are very few that have done that.” 

By state law, the city is not allowed to mandate vaccines for police officers and is not sure how many of them have been vaccinated.

[Scroll down to listen]

The city of Warrenton has 20 volunteer firefighters, three paid staff, and one of the largest land areas of any municipality in Oregon. Many of those volunteers were unhappy about the vaccine mandate and

Mayor Henry Balensifer thought he might end up with a total of three firefighters:

“If this were to come to pass it would probably be one of the gravest things I’ve ever had to deal with as a mayor. Having only three people qualified to provide nitroglycerine or any kind of invasive lifesaving procedure, that’s scary.”

Even two of the vaccinated volunteers were ready to walk off in solidarity. Fire Chief Brian Alsbury told each of the volunteers that if they had doubts about the vaccine, let’s talk. He aimed to knock down misinformation with information and that helped:

“Our volunteers have put a lot of their feelings aside, and personal beliefs, and now we are 99% compliant with the state mandate and you know that one percent is possibly one person that still has not given me a commitment.” 

Meanwhile Mayor Balensifer did a Facebook Live event that he thinks helped turn the tide:

“I thought it was very important not to talk down or shame our volunteers because they’ve been on our front lines as our heroes since the start.” 

Balensifer notes that with volunteers, city’s don’t have the economic leverage that employers do, but the team effort worked. Instead of losing most of his volunteers he and Chief Alsbury added four new ones for a net gain of three:

“I feel blessed. The City of Warrenton was blessed. I think the publicity really helped us.”

Blessed and very relieved. For KMUN Radio, I’m Jacob Lewin.

“I think the community needs to understand the details that we have gone to, to be able to contact trace. There’s not a kid in the district who can’t go somewhere and we don’t know where they’re at. When they’re on a bus we know what seat they’re on; when they go to lunch we know what seat they’re on. And that’s how detailed it is across the board, all day, every day.”

That’s Craig Hoppes, superintendent of Astoria schools. He said this attention to detail is making schools safe places to be, and when cases do happen, schools are catching them so quickly that spread is minimal. He said this is what it takes to keep schools open and safe right now.

“When kids are in between classes they’re constantly moving. Nobody stands around and visits. Yesterday we were dealing with a case – I have administrators with rulers out, measuring desks to see how far kids are away. So it is fine details that we have to do, but that’s what we need to do to keep kids in and we will continue to do that.”

This sentiment was echoed by other superintendents in the county press conference, as supers from Seaside, Warrenton, and Jewel also weighed in. The general consensus among them is that things with careful protocols in place, things are going well, cases are few, and action is swift when cases do arise.

While most kids are back to school in person, Warrenton and Astoria still offer online instruction for students who prefer that option. It’s also good preparedness.

Tom Rogozinski is Warrenton’s superintendent: “We are offering it as part of a regular part of our program this year as well, for parents who opted for it from the beginning of the year. And we also know we are building capacity just in case we would have to be pushed to it in a temporary setting within a classroom or a grade level.”

Hoppes said the pandemic has helped the district better understand how to serve students. Some students were very successful at online learning and wanted to continue to have that option. Now the district has something called the Astoria Choice Online Academy. The program has over a hundred kids in it, K-12, staffed by three or four different teachers.”

But that doesn’t mean kids have to miss out on school activities.

Hoppes: “If you’re in the Astoria Choice Online Academy and you want to play volleyball, you go to school at home, you come play volleyball in the afternoon.”

Seaside and Jewell are not offering online instruction currently. Seaside superintendent Susan Penrod said the district surveyed parents and found little support for online classes. Jewell superintendent Steven Phillips said some students had elected to participate in an online charter school, and the district has released them to do that.

Overall, administrators felt that their schools were safe havens.

Tom Rogozinski:

Rogozinski: “Schools are amongst the safest places for kids to be in the midst of the pandemic. Because what we’re looking at seems to suggest that cases are showing up at school and getting caught because of the protocols we have in place.”

While Clatsop County schools seem to have escaped significant COVID outbreaks so far this school year, at least one school across the Columbia River in Pacific County, Washington, is not so fortunate. The Chinook Observer reported this week that Ilwaco High School has returned to remote learning at least for a week, because of an outbreak there. Ocean Beach School District administrators think the cases are tied to the district’s athletic programs and have suspended all sports activities except for cross country.

I’m Joanne Rideout in Astoria.

Despite fears that an upsurge in COVID cases would be keeping kids lots of kids home in this new school year, Seaside schools superintendent Susan Penrod says that has not been the case:

“Attendance is great. Both students and families are excited to have kids back fulltime.”

At a joint news conference Wednesday, all of Clatsop County’s schools superintendents were upbeat with most schools back to full-day everyday learning. Schools are screening kids as they come in, doing contact tracing when there are cases and, as in the case of Astoria, notifying parents of any COVID cases in the district on the day that they become aware of the cases. They say there’s good compliance with mask requirements—with some pushback at the middle and high school levels.

Antivirus measures range from adding extra lunch periods to keeping the windows open on school buses to keeping careful seating charts to help with tracing. Bill Fritz is superintendent in the Knappa district:

“Schools are the safest place in the community for children to be. The likelihood of COVID spread in schools is far lower than COVID spread in our communities at large.”

What’s going on in schools is likely playing a part in Clatsop having the state’s lowest infection rate among kids—about three percent over the past six weeks, although Fritz points out that some parents are sending sick children to school. In Warrenton schools, superintendent Tom Rogozinski says he’s seeing educational gains but being back in class is making a difference in kids’ social and emotional lives and there’s been an 80-percent reduction in kids being referred to social services over the past year:

“There are situations in which students rely on their schools and their teachers to sort of help them out against some tough situations at home.”

Schools staff are required to be fully vaccinated by October 18:

“For Astoria we are over 90%. And I was pleased, to be honest, pleased to see the large number of staff who got vaccinated based on this requirement. We weren’t sure how that was going to go.”

Superintendent Craig Hoppes.

The Astoria district will continue to operate an online academy that has attracted a hundred students. Knappa schools are also expecting a vaccination rate of over 90%:

“Unfortunately to get there we will probably have a couple of employees who are making the decision to no longer be with us. We’re saddened by that. We value all of our employees but we also understand that people need to make individual choices.”

Superintendent Bill Fritz. Fritz adds that the districts do share a problem only partially drive by COVID: a shortage of school bus drivers. It’s possible that the national guard will be tapped to help.

For KMUN Radio, I’m Jacob Lewin.

On hand for the zoom meeting were Margo Lalich, Clatsop County Interim Health Director, Julie Geiger, Vice President of Patient Services at Columbia Memorial in Astoria, and Jason Plamonden, Chief Nursing Officer at Providence Seaside. Geiger and Plamonden said their facilities have seen COVID case numbers slow down or plateau from the recent surge that threatened to overwhelm the rural hospitals.

Geiger said that during the delta surge, CMH cancelled all but emergency surgeries. Things have improved enough now that the hospital is considering taking down its temporary COVID unit, which involves something called a negative pressure room.

Geiger COVID Unit:

“Because we were seeing an influx of patients who were needing a negative pressure room, to make sure that covid is not circulating in other parts of the hospital. And we turned our same day surgery unit into a total negative pressure unit for our COVID patients.”

Negative pressure rooms have lower air pressure inside than out. This means that when the door is opened, potentially contaminated air from inside the room will not flow outward. Contaminated air is filtered.

Both officials said their hospital emergency rooms remain very busy. National Guard personnel are still on duty at both hospitals. There are 27 National Guard staff at CMH and 13 at Providence Seaside.

Plamonden said Guard personnel have provided invaluable support handling various non medical tasks, such as helping stock emergency room supplies and answering phones. He said their presence has been a big morale builder for overworked staff.

Plamonden:”Doing those things to free the nurses up so they can provide care for our patients.”

He said the national guard would likely remain on duty at Providence through the end of September and possibly longer.

Neither administrator said they had seen an uptick in cases traceable to the Hood to Coast Relay which flooded the county with visitors in late August.

Clatsop County Interim Health Director Margo Lalich said collaboration between the health department, the two local hospitals and the national guard has helped staff manage the pandemic. Also, retired health professionals in the local community have stepped up to offer their expertise to the department during the pandemic.

Lalich: “Part of the way that we cope and adapt cause we’re all exhausted and fatigued, is that we’re leveraging our assets in the community in the best possible way. And when we do that we actually multiply our resources in many ways.”

She said it’s unclear yet what will happen as we head into the winter months. And even though health professionals, like the public, have been dealing with the pandemic for what feels like a long time, they’re still learning new things about vaccine efficacy, the value of booster doses, and how the fall flu season will intersect with the COVID pandemic. Officials continue to monitor for new variants.

Lalich: “ And I think the sentiment at this point is: don’t get too comfortable. Because we’re not too sure what’s going to present in the months to come.”

The National Guard facility at Camp Rilea in Warrenton is now up and running as the county’s COVID testing site. It’s open for testing Monday through Friday from 9 am to 1 pm. Appointments are required but people can often get in the same day they call. To schedule a test, call 503-325-8500.

I’m Joanne Rideout in Astoria.

At Columbia Memorial, vice president for patient services Judy Geiger says 78% of health care workers are currently vaccinated. Except for those with religious or medical exemptions, any worker with the potential for direct or indirect patient exposure must have their shots by October 18^th:

“We’re nervous about what will happen with the mandate.”

Particularly, she is concerned about employees leaving:

“The majority of the people we would possibly lose are not nurses and doctors. The majority of those people understand the science behind vaccines.” 

Geiger says those reluctant are a mix of all the other kinds of employees at CMH. While the hospital has seen a slight decrease in covid patients, those it has tend to be sicker than in the past since they can’t be transferred to over-capacity Portland hospitals. Also, county health officials believe that colder weather could lead to more cases since people will be indoors more of the time, so the hospital is trying to head off a staffing problem:

“We’re having them meet with our employee health nurse to talk about the benefits of vaccine and discuss any concern that they might have.” :08

At Providence Seaside Hospital, 80% of staff are vaccinated. Jason Plamondon is chief nursing officer:

“We’re making sure that we’re educating our employees on the importance of this, the importance of being vaccinated. Offering and making sure they know how to fill out the exemptions if that’s the pathway they want to go down. So we’re a little nervous about losing employees but we’re working really hard to make sure that we’re getting them educated and we’re getting them those exemptions.” :

Statewide 73% of health care workers have gotten their shots with younger workers being least likely to be vaccinated.

For KMUN, I’m Jacob Lewin.Local

Bangs said in the letter, quote: “While the vaccine is a valuable tool that Clatsop County will need to continue to advocate for and dispense, it is not without skeptics in our community.” Bangs also referred to COVID surges as “inevitable” and asked the governor to rely on local community based decision making.

Local health officials disagree. In a press conference last week, Interim County Health Department Director Margo Lalich stressed that measures like masking and vaccination are really the only reliable tools we have to control the pandemic.

Margo Lalich: “All it takes is one person, one person who’s infectious to create a problem that affects many.”

Clatsop County Commission Chair Mark Kujala said Bangs acted on her own in her capacity as a county commissioner and her letter to the Governor reflected her opinions only and does not speak for the entire commission.

Kujala said in an email, quote,”Having been a member of the County EOC and the Vaccine Task Force and witnessing the impact of COVID-19 over the last 18 months at Columbia Memorial Hospital – I have a unique perspective. It breaks my heart to know unvaccinated individuals are now extremely sick or dying from this virus. And to see the spread in assisted living facilities and in the workplace is tragic.”

Kujala said the vaccine has made much of this preventable. He said the benefits of getting vaccinated outweigh any costs.

On Wednesday, Clatsop County reported 22 new cases. There were 137 cases reported last week and 14 hospitalizations. As of last week’s report from the Clatsop County Vaccine Task Force, the county was at 58.4 percent vaccinated.

Columbia Memorial Hospital in Astoria reported last week that several patients have died there because they could not be transferred to larger, more specialized hospitals. While those were not COVID deaths, officials said it was overcrowding due to COVID that kept them from getting treatment.

I’m Joanne Rideout in Astoria.