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• September 19, 2010 $1.50
Serving Central Oregon since 1903 www.bendbulletin.com
DESCHUTES COUNTY
BEND ADA COMPLIANCE
For children with parents behind bars, a mentor and a friend By Erin Golden The Bulletin
When they meet each week, Julie Schneider and the 13-year-old Bend girl she mentors don’t talk much about the circumstances that brought them together. Once in a while, the girl will bring up something about her mother, who is serving time in prison for financial crimes. But most of the time, the pair chats about the other big things in the teen’s life: school, friends and hobbies. They go for walks, swim at the pool and walk dogs at the Humane Society of Central Oregon. At a time when the girl’s life has been turned upside-down at home, Schneider tries to be a consistent presence she can depend on for guidance and support. “I want her to be happy and make smart choices, to avoid as many of the pitfalls of being a teenage girl as possible,” Schneider said. The two are one of more than 40 partnerships of volunteer mentors and children with parents behind bars, organized by a Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office program called Central Oregon Partnerships for Youth, or COPY. The program was launched in 2004 with a $62,500 grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Since then, it has made 153 matches — and always has a need for more volunteers willing to help. See Mentoring / A5
To volunteer A training session for people interested in serving as a mentor with the Central Oregon Partnerships for Youth (COPY) program is scheduled for Saturday. People interested in attending the training need to submit an application. For more information, call 541-388-6651, e-mail copy@deschutes.org or visit www.deschutes.org/copy.
TOP NEWS INSIDE POPE: Apology to abuse victims as thousands march in London, Page A2
INDEX Movies
C3
Business
G1-6
Obituaries
B6
Classified
E1-8
Oregon
B3
Abby
C2
Is that ramp on the level? Bend works to meet exacting requirements for curb ramps that must be redone if they’re off by a penny’s thickness Grading Constructing sidewalk ramps that meet Americans with Disabilities Act requirements and city standards requires attention to detail. A grade that is as little as one-tenth of a percent off can make a ramp noncompliant. A crooked truncated dome Bend’s can do the same. Inspectors must check scores of characteristics before and after each ramp is constructed to make sure ramps it is up to muster. Here’s an example of a common curb ramp design and several important points inspectors look for. Landing slope Cannot have more than a 2 percent grade in any direction.
Running slope (Up the ramp) cannot have more than an 8.3 percent grade.
≤ 2%
Cross slope (Side to side) cannot have more than a 2 percent grade.
≤ 8.3%
Flare slope Cannot have more than a 10 percent grade.
≤ 2%
≥ 4 ft. Andy Zeigert The Bulletin
Entrance Must be a minimum of 4 feet wide. This meets city standards and ADA requirements.
These yellow, textured pads must face the direction of travel.
By Nick Grube The Bulletin
It doesn’t take much for Denny Coffman to ask for a do-over. Give him a penny, and he’ll show you why. As a curb ramp inspector for the city of Bend, Coffman spends his days lugging a 4-foot-long level from corner to corner to measure gradients. It takes him about 15 to 30 minutes to evaluate each curb ramp to see if it’s compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act. This means that each day he’s in the field, he sets down his level to check the slopes of ramps to make sure they’re not too steep. He also checks the landings at the top of the ramp to ensure they don’t tilt too far one way or the other. For the ramp slope, the digital readout on his level, which measures the grade, can’t be more than 8.3 percent. Landings have even less leeway and can only have a maximum grade of no more than 2 percent in any direction. If the grade exceeds those limits, even by one-tenth of a percent, that means the ramp is noncompliant and must be rebuilt or reworked until it’s brought up to standard.
Getting it right Inspectors use forms like the one at left to document the characteristics of all of the curb ramps being built in Bend.
City of Bend employee Denny Coffman uses a smart level last week to inspect a curb ramp completed earlier in the month at the intersection of Mt. Washington Drive and Mountaineer Way in Bend. Coffman determined later that this curb ramp was indeed ADA compliant. And as Coffman will gladly demonstrate with his level, all it takes to throw off a grade that one-tenth of a percent is the thickness of a penny. “Most people don’t really understand what we go through to do this,” Coffman said. “I hope this gives some people a better idea of the work that we do and the intricacies involved.”
The city is under a federal order to bring its curb ramps into ADA compliance by 2014. The U.S. Department of Justice made that ruling in 2004, three years after four Bend residents lodged a complaint stating the city’s buildings curb ramps and sidewalks did not meet ADA requirements. See Ramps / A4
New drugs increase debate on basic rules of clinical trials
Perspective F1-6
By Amy Harmon
Crossword C7, E2
Sports
D1-8
Editorial
F2-3
Stocks
G4-5
Local
B1-8
TV listings
C2
Weather
B8
Growing up in California’s rural Central Valley, the two cousins spent summers racing dirt bikes and Christmases at their grandmother’s on the coast. Endowed with a similar brash charm, they bought each other matching hardhats and sought iron-working jobs together. They shared a love for the rush that comes with hanging steel at dizzying heights, and a knack for collecting speeding tickets. And when, last year, each learned that a lethal skin cancer called melanoma was
C6
New York Times News Service
We use recycled newsprint The Bulletin An Independent Newspaper
SUNDAY
Vol. 107, No. 262, 52 pages, 7 sections
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Monica Almeida / New York Times News Service
Thomas McLaughlin learned last year that he had melanoma, as did his cousin Brandon Ryan. Both enrolled in a UCLA study of a new drug shown to work on cases like theirs. McLaughlin was put on the drug, but Ryan was assigned to the control group getting chemo.
By Nick Budnick The Bulletin
SALEM — Earlier this year, state Democratic officials predicted they would keep the number of seats they had in the Legislature — especially in the state House of Representatives. But as the election draws closer, some of those same party leaders sound much more reserved about their prospects in the November general election. And one word you don’t hear them bringing up is “supermajority.” Supermajority describes what Democrats now enjoy in both the state Senate and House. It’s the same three-fifths majority that is necessary under the Oregon Constitution to raise taxes. It translates to 36 seats in the 60-member House of Representatives, and 18 seats in the 30member Senate. With the November elections looming, Republican Party officials have made eliminating the supermajority their rallying cry. The argument could help them in some legislative districts by highlighting Democrats’ leading role in pushing for two tax hikes to help balance the state budget, hikes that were approved by voters in January. Eliminating Democrats’ supermajority “is our first priority, literally,” said the top Republican in the house, Rep. Bruce Hanna, of Roseburg. He says that while people focus on the estimated $733 million worth of tax hikes approved by voters, he looks at other tax and fee increases that more than doubled that figure. Democrats say that while they think voters should choose Democrats, retaining a three-fifths majority or better isn’t even something they think about. See Election / A6
Andy Tullis / The Bulletin
Community C1-8
Milestones
Democrats, meanwhile, are quiet on the chances they’ll keep their three-fifths edge
ELECTION
≤ 10%
Truncated domes
GOP goal: Make the majority less super
spreading rapidly through his body, the young men found themselves with the shared chance of benefiting from a recent medical breakthrough. Only months before, a new drug had shown that it could safely slow the cancer’s progress in certain patients. Both cousins had the type of tumor almost sure to respond to it. And major cancer centers, including the University of California, Los Angeles, were enrolling patients for the last crucial test that regulators required to consider approving it for sale. See Trials / A7
Richard Perry / New York Times News Service
Elise Jones, a mother of two in Chatham, N.J., has noticed “a white dusty film” on her dishes and attributes it to reduced phosphates in dishwasher detergent.
Cleaner for the environment, but the dishes? Not so shiny By Mireya Navarro New York Times News Service
Some longtime users were furious. “My dishes were dirtier than before they were washed,” one wrote last week in the review section of the website for the Cascade line of dishwasher detergents. “It was horrible, and I won’t buy it again.” “This is the worst product ever made for use as a dishwashing detergent!” another consumer wrote. Like every other major detergent for automatic dishwashers, Procter & Gamble’s Cascade line recently underwent a makeover. Responding to laws that went into effect in 17 states in July, the nation’s detergent makers reformulated their products to reduce what had been the crucial ingredient, phosphates, to just a trace. See Cleaning / A6