Record-holder eyes another
A piece of lumber mill history
Ashton Eaton wants to rise to the top in the decathlon, too • SPORTS, D1
COMMUNITY, B1
Bend’s scale house
WEATHER TODAY
SATURDAY
Mostly sunny High 60, Low 35 Page C8
• March 27, 2010 50¢
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Bend scouts for politically palatable tax sources
Epic Air may go to Chinese bidder $4.3 million is highest offer for Bend plane maker, but U.S. firm is challenging the legality By Tim Doran The Bulletin
An aviation company emerged as the top bidder in Friday’s auction of bankrupt Bend airplane
maker Epic Air. But who will ultimately control the company and its high-performance composite aircraft designs remains unclear.
By offering $4.3 million in the second round of bidding, Aviation Industry Corporation of China General Aviation Co. Ltd. became the prevailing bidder,
according to a report filed late Friday afternoon with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court by Trustee Kenneth Eiler. But another bidder — Harlow
Aerostructures, an aviation industry component maker in Wichita, Kan., — raised a challenge, according to the trustee’s report. Would U.S. export control laws permit the sale of Epic to Aviation Industry Corporation of China? See Epic / A6
By Hillary Borrud The Bulletin
Bend officials are analyzing residential property tax bills and the history of tax votes to figure out where people might be willing to pay more taxes to solve a longterm budget shortfall. The analysis shows the average household’s tax bill in Bend, $3,061, is simiInside lar to taxes in • How Bend’s other cities of its tax rates size, but Bend’s compare, fire and police Page A7 services get a smaller slice of the money, the city’s finance director says. Some city officials want to raise taxes to prevent cuts to public safety and fill a $21 million budget hole over the next six years. They asked Finance Director Sonia Andrews why residents still receive hefty tax bills when the city’s permanent tax rate — which pays for police and fire services and street maintenance — is the lowest among similarly sized cities in Oregon. See Taxes / A7
DROUGHT DECLARED
WHAT
WEIRD WEATHER
Ryan Brennecke / The Bulletin
The early spring snow melted quickly once the sun came out Friday morning.
By Sheila G. Miller The Bulletin
Page 1,617: Health law demands stuff that works By Alex Nussbaum, Meg Tirrell and Pat Wechsler Bloomberg News
Page 1,617 of the 2,400-page law signed by President Barack Obama this week — the most sweeping social policy in 45 years — sparked little of the debate surrounding the HEALTH public option or its tax on “CadilCARE REFORM lac” insurance plans. Yet the 43• Selling it to page measure constituents, tucked inside the bill may have a Page A3 far greater effect on medical care. The overhaul creates an institute, funded with $500 million or more annually, to spur studies of which drugs, devices and medical procedures work best. See Effective / A8
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Vol. 107, No. 86, 72 pages, 7 sections
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Deschutes County may face water troubles by next year
ABOVE: It was hard to tell it was spring Friday morning as Bend resident Hailey Garside, 29, left, and her friend Jeanne Savage, 40, of Silverton, took Savage’s 5-year-old lab, Mingo, out for a run past Columbia Park in Bend during Friday morning’s snow. The threesome ran through the snowflakes for 7 miles. Andy Tullis / The Bulletin
I
t was as if we needed a reminder of how capricious our weather can be. Friday’s dump-and-melt tops off a snow season when FallFest was snowed out, yet there was none in sight for WinterFest. Wonder what’s coming next? See Page C8. LEFT: Paige Deke, 4, tromps through the fresh snow in her monster snowshoes in Bend on Friday morning before the day warmed up. About every three steps, Paige fell flat on her face in the snow, giggling all the way. Pete Erickson / The Bulletin
It may have been snowing in Bend on Friday, but with the low amount of precipitation this year, state and local officials are preparing for spring and summer drought conditions. Because of low precipitation in the Klamath Basin, Gov. Ted Kulongoski has declared a state of drought emergency in six Oregon counties, including Deschutes, and the federal government has agreed to allow some leniency to irrigators in the Klamath basin, but water officials Inside here say the area • A lower won’t suffer as snowpack much as Klamath, than usual, at least not this Page A8 summer. “This year we seem to be in good shape, but then next year is the big question,” said North Unit Irrigation District General Manager Mike Britton. According to the state, the Klamath basin could have the worst shortage of water since 2001. As of Friday, the area’s snowpack is 59 percent of average and 2010 precipitation had been less than 2 inches, more than 1.5 inches fewer than normal. See Drought / A8
Abundance of life many miles below the icy surface By Marc Kaufman The Washington Post
Antarctica makes up more than 10 percent of the world’s land mass, but it was long assumed that — except for some hardy penguins — it had virtually no life. With ice and snow blanketing virtuANTARCTICA ally the entire continent, the © MCT env i ron ment was believed to be just too harsh and barren to support anything beyond occasional human visitors. Antarctica remains as foreboding as ever, but scientists have in recent years learned they were spectacularly wrong about its inhabitants. While the life might not be visible, it is most definitely there: in the snow, in the ice, in the lakes and streams under the ice and in the waters under the ice sheet. See Antarctica / A6