News Stories May 9, 2018

There could be a second wave of offers this year through the Warm Springs Land Buy Back program. Response time for the first offers closed in late April.  A second wave of offers could increase the number of successful transactions, said Randy Scott, Warm Springs Land Buy Back coordinator told the Spilyay Tymoo.  There has been no final order approving the second wave of Warm Springs offers, but there is a preliminary recommendation to conduct a second round, Mr. Scott said.  For the first wave of offers, the program approved the expenditure of close to $600,000 for the purchase of fractionated interests in allotments, encompassing about 1,035 acres on reservation land.

The cleaning and abatement project at the Agency Longhouse has been partly completed. The contractor estimates the work will be finished by the middle of this month, Secretary-Treasurer Michele Stacona told Tribal Council in a report on Monday, the Spilyay Tymoo reports. The completed work included abatement of the asbestos and lead paint in the building. Phase two is the abatement of methamphetamine contamination, after areas of the longhouse tested positive for meth contamination earlier this year. The Tribal Council assigned a total of $300,000 for meth abatement of public buildings on the reservation. Abatement work such as this is expensive. The budget for only the longhouse was at least $192,000. There are other building spaces around the reservation that also re-quire some meth abatement work.

Yesterday afternoon, the State of Oregon honored and remembered 183 fallen law enforcement officers during an hour-long memorial ceremony held at the state memorial which is located at the Oregon Public Safety Academy in Salem. More than 400 were in attendance which included more than 80 family members of fallen officers.  The memorial honors 183 fallen Oregon law enforcement officers who have died in the line of duty since the 1880s. This includes officers from city, county, state, tribal and federal law enforcement agencies who have served as law enforcement officers, corrections officers, and parole and probation officers. Officer Roderick Henry was one of those honored. He was a Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fisheries Enforcement officer who died while on duty on the Columbia River on September 14, 1988.