AN EDITION OF
Bandon
WESTERN WORLD Thursday, August 21, 2014
theworldlink.com/bandon ♦ $1.00
For the birds:
Sports:
Inside this edition:
Shorebird Festival, see page A2 for the full story
Fall sports practice begins, see A10 for the full story
Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .A2 Bandon Police Log. . . . . . . . A3 Opinion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .A4
Arts and Entertainment . . . A5 Classifieds . . . . . . . . . . . . . .A8-9 Sports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .A10
Search begins for new city manager By Amy Moss Strong Bandon Western World
BANDON — Longtime Bandon City Manager Matt Winkel, who has been with the city for more than 20 years, will retire at the end of the year and a search is now underway for a new city manager. At a special meeting Aug. 11, the Bandon City Council voted to hire a private search consultant, the Prothman Company, an Issaquah, Washington based consulting firm that specializes in providing national and regional executive recruitment to cities, services counties and other Matt Winkel governmental agencies throughout the western United States. The city will pay the Prothman Company between $22,700 and $24,400 to conduct the search. At the Aug. 4 regular council
■ See Winkel, A6
County health has new leader By Chelsea Davis Bandon Western World
NORTH BEND — Florence PourtalStevens landed at the helm of Coos County Public Health after years of working in health care and social services around the globe. Pourtal-Stevens grew up in Pau, the capital of the Pyrénées-Atlantiques Département in France. Her father is a geologist, so for seven years of her childhood, she lived in Gabon and Morocco. “The various experience I’ve had in various cultures and various contexts and settings, the fact that I lived for more than two-thirds of my life in a culture that is not my own has helped me develop pretty good adaptation skills,” she said. “It gave me a passion for traveling, discovering our planet and working at improving the lives, health and well-being of people.” After graduating with degrees in public law and international humanitarian assistance, she hopped on board at Pharmacists Without Borders in the Clermont-Ferrand area in France. A year later, she moved back to Morocco to work for Planète Enfants in Marrakesh and Safi. In 2006, she became the emergency
Photo by Amy Moss Strong, Bandon Western World
Rep. Peter DeFazio , D-Ore. looks at a map of the Bandon Marsh National Wildlife Refuge with Roy Lowe and USFWS employees.
DeFazio meeting includes a tour of Bandon Marsh By Amy Moss Strong Bandon Western World
BANDON — On his summer tour of Southern Oregon towns last week, Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Springfield, got a first-hand look at the trenching being done at the Bandon Marsh National Wildlife Refuge to correct the problem that caused the area to be overrun with salt water marsh mosquitoes last summer. This summer the problem is negligible, with the exception of a few fly-offs that have occurred, according to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Refuge project leader Roy Lowe. Lowe led the tour, along with Bandon Marsh wildlife biologist Bill Bridgeland, marsh staff members and DeFazio’s entourage. DeFazio toured an area in front of the Bandon Marsh overlook, named after him because of his help in securing federal funding for the restoration of the Ni-les‘tun Unit in 2010. Excavators with custom-made buckets designed specifically to work in the wetland area were in use digging trenches that will allow water to flow freely to and from the river. The trenches are intended to prevent water from pooling after high tides. Such pools were determined to be a breeding ground for saltwater
marsh mosquitoes and the key cause of the problem last year. Some 46,000 feet of new tidal channels will be trenched in the marsh. The work is part of the USFWS’s integrated approach to control mosquitoes at the refuge and is expected to be completed in September, Lowe told DeFazio. Lowe said he has had a few complaints about mosquitoes this summer but upon further investigation, it appeared in at least a couple of the cases that the mosquitoes were coming from standing water on private property, with only a percentage of them being the aedes dorsalis, or saltwater species. After visiting the marsh, DeFazio toured the new facility of the Coastal Community Health Center (formerly Bandon Community Health Center), a federally qualified health clinic that moved into a roomier and completely remodeled location in the Bandon Professional Center next to the shopping center. From there, DeFazio held a town hall meeting, one of three that day in Reedsport, Bandon and Gold Beach. DeFazio updated about 45 people at the Bandon library on current federal issues affecting the South Coast and the nation that he has fought for in Congress, such as veterans’ health
care, the Affordable Care Act, dredging for small ports, rebuilding crumbling infrastructure and creating jobs, free trade agreements, making education more affordable, and managing O&C lands. DeFazio then opened the floor for questions. Resident Don Chance thanked the congressman for work he’s done regarding VA benefits, saying he is now receiving much-needed care. Chance then asked about county road closures enacted by the Bureau of Land Management, in particular at the New River boat ramp. “We always get the same answer: ‘We’re the federal government and we can do whatever we want,’” Chance said. DeFazio said he tries to keep on top of such issues. Another audience member asked about earthquakes and the Jordan Cove liquefied natural gas project planned for North Bend. DeFazio said he’s looked into earthquake early detection technology. “We don’t have it but others do, which is ridiculous,” he said. Jaime Sterling asked about federal funding to move local schools out of the tsunami inundation zone and to
■ See DeFazio, A6
■ See Health, A6
Fragrant harvest south of Bandon By Chelsea Davis Bandon Western World
By Alysha Beck, Bandon Western World
Sherri Merritt sells a variety of products made from lavender grown on Merritt Lavender Farm at the Coos Bay Farmers Market.
BANDON — Harvest season was bountiful for “the lavender lady,” whose unique arm of the farming industry has left Bandon’s countryside smelling sweet for nearly a decade. Though Sherri Merritt grew up in the rural town of Griswold, Iowa, she never imagined a life in farming. But her first thought when a real estate agent showed her undeveloped property on McTimmons Lane south of Bandon was lavender. “This was outside the box for me,” she said. “I was surrounded by rural farm life growing up, but I didn’t realize how much goes in to what you’re seeing on the table.” Today, she harvests 3,000 bouquets a year from more than 1,000 plants. That process begins with her crew of seasonal workers cutting the blooms.
Moving west After 19 years in the corporate
“The farm, as much as I love it, somebody else
could love it just as much. It’s gardening on a large, large scale.”
— Sherri Merritt, the Lavender Lady world in Minnesota, Merritt retired to Colorado. Then she started road trips up and down the West Coast. Two years in a row, she wound up in Bandon. Nine years ago this spring, she cleared the land and pinned 20,000 square feet of black landscaping fabric, while John Nuyten installed irrigation. That fall, she planted 576 lavender plants. In summer 2006, she produced 660 bouquets. “I thought, if I have a beautiful, fragrant lawn, that’ll be great,” she said. But word got around and busloads of people began showing up. They started asking about products. “I reinvented myself,” she said. “I had no business plan, no market-
ing forethought.” She dove into research and began taking custom orders, learning how to make, label and market her products along the way. She set up a card table in her garage with three products. “My sensitive skin is the litmus test for all my products,” she said. By January 2007 she had to quit her job as a medical transcriptionist to farm full time. “I felt like I had the tiger by the tail every year, hanging on for dear life,” she said.
Part of a growing trend Merritt sells her line of 20 prod-
■ See Lavender, A6