Bulletin Daily Paper 06/18/10

Page 1

Also in Sports: Amateur golfer fights for win in

They’re ready to ride

Oregon Open

Road cycling championships in Bend • AROUND COMMUNITY LIFE

WEATHER TODAY

FRIDAY

Partly cloudy High 74, Low 43 Page C8

• June 18, 2010 50¢

Serving Central Oregon since 1903 www.bendbulletin.com

What do cuts mean for Bend’s teachers?

So long, Staccato Upscale Bend restaurant Staccato at the Firehall will be closing its doors on Monday after a 5-year run • BUSINESS, B1

Some hotel guests due for refunds, Bend audit discovers

BEND ELKS OPEN AT HOME TONIGHT

Employee concessions include cost-of-living freezes, loss of days By Sheila G. Miller The Bulletin

Parents and students know what the recent Bend-La Pine Schools budget cuts mean for them. They know because school ended Tuesday instead of Thursday. They know because parents had to arrange extra day care, and students had to finish term papers a Inside few days early. • A breakdown They know of what because they’ll teachers have fewer and school school days officials are next year, fewlosing, er new textbooks, fewer Page A6 teachers. Parents and students know how the budget cuts have affected them. But they might not know what it means for teachers, administrators and other district employees. To balance the school district budgets, employee concessions have produced nearly $14.7 million in savings. Teacher concessions alone will have saved the district $10 million by the end of the 2010-11 school year; before the most recent cuts, the district planned to operate in 2010-11 on a $120 million budget. “We’ve worked hard to make it as fair as possible across the board,” said Superintendent Ron Wilkinson. “I don’t think they believe what we’re doing is unfair. ... But I think everyone is saying, ‘This is really hard now.’” The cuts started in early 2009, when the state announced it faced an $850 million state budget shortfall for the fiscal year ending in June 2009. Cuts deepened as state revenue shortfalls continued to come in. See Teachers / A6

Six hotels collected $340K more than they were due, auditors say By Scott Hammers The Bulletin

Some visitors who stayed at Bend hotels in recent years may be eligible for refunds, but the city isn’t sure how to go about getting that money to those who are entitled to it. Auditors hired by the city recently completed an audit of eight Bend hotels, looking for discrepancies in how hotel operators reported room taxes, the 9 percent fee paid on overnight lodging. Auditors found problems at six of the hotels, where operators appear to have collected nearly $340,000 more than was due between 2006 and 2008, and did not send the money on to the city. The difference is primarily due to a meal deduction that was stripped out of the city’s code in 2009. Until then, hotel operators that offered a free breakfast in the price of their rooms were allowed to deduct $10 per person up to $40 when calculating the room tax. A $100 room occupied by four people would be taxed at $60. The amount of money at stake for any single stay in a hotel is relatively small. A couple who stayed one night in a $100 room with free breakfasts would have paid $9 in room tax, $1.80 more than they would have had the meal deductions been properly calculated. See Hotels / A4

TOP NEWS INSIDE HIGH COURT rules on employer monitoring of conversations, Page A3

Dean Guernsey / The Bulletin

Bend Elks baseball infielder Chase Clair, 18, of Bend, does maintenance on the field at Vince Genna Stadium as the new scoreboard is being tested. The scoreboard went in about a month ago after the old board was struck by lightning during a game last year. The Bend Elks will have their first home game of the season tonight at 6:35 p.m. against Moses Lake.

This week’s games Opponent

Abby

E2

Business

B1-6

Local Movies

C1-8 GO! 38

Calendar

E3

Obituaries

C6

Classified

F1-8

Oregon

C3

Comics

E4-5

Sports

D1-6

Crossword E5, F2

Stocks

B4-5

Editorial

TV listings

E2

Weather

C8

Family

C4 E1-6

We use recycled newsprint The Bulletin An Independent Newspaper

MON-SAT

Vol. 107, No. 169, 82 pages, 7 sections

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• Summit grad Jason Wilson takes the mound, Page D1

Day

Time

Tonight

6:35 p.m. Moses Lake Pirates Home opener, Smokey the Bear, Ragtime Band, JW BBQ Deck

Events/Promotions

Saturday

6:35 p.m. Moses Lake Pirates Bob Thomas Free Magnetic Schedule, Anderman BBQ Deck

Sunday

5:05 p.m. Moses Lake Pirates Happy Father’s Day, bring dad to the park for free

Tuesday

6:35 p.m. Walla Walla Sweets $2 Tuesday, Central Oregon Savings Card Night

Wednesday

6:35 p.m. Walla Walla Sweets Central Oregon Little League Night, Touchmark BBQ Deck

Thursday

6:35 p.m. Walla Walla Sweets American Family Insurance BBQ Deck

www.bendbulletin.com/elks Find information on this year’s roster, schedule and an infographic tour of Vince Genna Stadium.

Source: www.bendelks.com

Sometimes, senators sport seersucker suits But why do they do it (and what is it, anyway)? By Lisa Mascaro McClatchy-Tribune New Services

INDEX

Inside

Visit www.bendelks.com for a full schedule and list of promotions.

WASHINGTON — Just when the U.S. Senate seems to be losing its sense of clubbiness — nearly one-fifth of its members are now women, and outsider candidates are running for seats this fall — along comes Seersucker Thursday. Once a year, preferably on a “‘nice and warm’ day in the second or third week of June,” according to the Senate’s website,

senators don their striped suits, turning one of the world’s most august bodies into what looks like a casting call for ice cream vendors. It makes for an incongruous snapshot: What are New Englanders like Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, or Westerners like Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., or Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, doing in that Southern standby, seersucker? See Seersucker / A4

HAITI EARTHQUAKE: THE AFTERMATH

Aid workers return to devastated country By Nick Madigan

Richard Santos and Ann Varghese, from the aid organization IMA World, are going back to Haiti to relaunch the group’s program to prevent tropical diseases.

The Baltimore Sun

BALTIMORE — Trapped in the darkness of a wrecked Haitian hotel, choking on the dust of crushed concrete, Richard Santos wondered whether anyone would ever find him and his five colleagues, two of them badly hurt. As he awaited rescue from the Jan. 12 earthquake that shook Port-au-Prince, Santos made a vow. “We knew the whole city must be devastated.... I told myself that if I got out of this alive, I would come back and be involved for as long as it would take.” Now, four months after his rescue, Santos is keeping his word. See Haiti / A4

Barbara Haddock Taylor The Baltimore Sun

When it comes to presidential power, is Obama making strides or overstepping his bounds? By David E. Sanger New York Times News Service

WASHINGTON — First there was General Motors, whose chief executive was summarily dismissed by the White House shortly before the government became the

A N A LY S I S company’s majority shareholder. Chrysler was forced into a merger. At the banks that received government bailouts, executive

pay was curbed; at insurance companies seeking to jack up premiums, scathing criticism led to rollbacks. But President Barack Obama’s successful move to force BP to establish a $20 billion compensation fund that the company

will have no voice in allocating may have been the most vivid example of what he recently called his determination to step in and do “what individuals couldn’t do and corporations wouldn’t do.” See Power / A6


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