FRIDAY DEVELOPMENT:
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS: Yielding to mounting pressure and growing disruption, President Donald Trump and congressional leaders on Friday reached a short-term deal to reopen the government for three weeks while negotiations continue over the president’s demands for money to build his long-promised wall at the U.S.-Mexico border. Trump announced the agreement to break the 35-day impasse as intensifying delays at the nation’s airports and widespread disruptions brought new urgency to efforts to resolve the standoff.
By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com
There were 10 cars waiting in the Waldport parking lot when Simey and Marheen Luevano pulled in.
They hopped out of their SUV, popped the tailgate and began handing out bags of homemade tamales while their two young daughters sat patiently inside. Bags of pre-sold tamales were quickly gone in an exchange of hugs and $20 bills.
“Oh, I’m all sold out,” Marheen Luevano told one couple. “But how about some dessert?”
That’s how U.S. Coast Guard Boatswain’s Mate Simey Luevano and his family are making ends meet while working for a month without pay.
Luevano is stationed in Depoe Bay. At work he helps pilot a Coast Guard boat in and out of that city’s tiny harbor. But without a paycheck, Marheen Luevano cooks tamales all night in their kitchen and then twice a week hit the road to sell the tamales advertised on Facebook. On Tuesday they sold 230.
The Coast Guard stations from Astoria to North Bend have been operating since the Dec. 22 shutdown of much of the federal government. But while Luevano is working, he’s not getting paid – and on Friday will miss the second paycheck of January.
There are 329 federal employees in Lincoln County, according to figures compiled by the Oregon Employment Department. Excluding Coast Guard, Post Office and Job Corps workers who are working and getting paid, that leaves 232 federal workers in Lincoln County not drawing paychecks, said Newport-based regional economist Erik Knoder. That amounts to $1.6 million a month, he estimates.
“I think many federal workers didn’t mind a few extra days off around the holidays,” Knoder said. “But not working and no pay for this long is really unexpected.”
Some federal employees are finding temporary work to help pay bills. Communities up and down the coast are also making small efforts to help, like donating gift cards or cash to Coast Guard auxiliaries in North Bend to distribute. Some banks are offering short-term, no-interest loans.
Maddie Webb of Yachats is a diesel mechanic on the Coast Guard Cutter Pike based in San Francisco and has turned to Facebook and her small, side business “Made by Maddie” to sew custom-ordered cloth bags to help make ends meet. She’s had 21 orders so far.
“It’s to ease the everyday expenses such as gas, food, insurance, student loans, etc,” she said in a text conversation. “We have no idea when we will get paid and all the money I have in savings I’m trying not to touch because it will go for rent and car payments at the beginning of the month.”
In Yachats, it’s as simple as a pizza or a beer.
The popular Drift Inn restaurant is offering free pizza to furloughed government employees, paid for in part by a $500 donation by Greg Hetzler, father of restaurant manager Gretchen Hetzler.
Greg Hetzler worked 34 years for the Forest Service and went through a 21-day shutdown in 1993-94. Lower-level government workers, Hetzler said, live paycheck-to-paycheck.
“I just feel sorry for them. For me, the Forest Service will always be part of my family,” Hetzler said. “This is my way of giving back.”
On Friday Yachats Brewing + Farmstore said it will give a 25 percent discount off their total bill to any Coast Guard member or any furloughed government employee and their children under 12 can eat for free. “We realize that quite a few of our community are being affected by the government shutdown and this does not sit well with us,” the restaurant said on its Facebook feed.
Waldport is headquarters for the Central Coast Ranger District of the Siuslaw National Forest. It has a skeletal staff working.
Forest Service officials would say little about the shutdown’s effects on operations, except to say it has called back some workers to “protect health, safety and assets.”
“The agency is also evaluating and proceeding with some work using non-appropriated funds to continue critical business functions and public services,” John Haynes, a Forest Service information officer in Washington, D.C. wrote in an email to YachatsNews.com. “These choices continue to evolve as the lapse in funding status persists and more critical needs emerge.”
The state estimates the Forest Service has 60 employees in Lincoln County. Law enforcement officers are still patrolling the Central Coast District; two agency rangers and 18 volunteers are keeping the Cape Perpetua Visitor Center open. The district has also called back several employees who prepare timber sales so that timber harvests won’t grind to a halt.
While Knoder estimates there could be 30 Forest Service employees working countywide, for the most part the district headquarters just east of U.S. Highway 101 in Waldport is a sea of parked Forest Service rigs and dark offices.
The Angell Job Corps Center in Yachats, which is funded by an arm of the Forest Service, is largely unaffected by the shutdown, said director Brian Wilson. The center has 109 students.
There are 50 employees and 20 contractors, mostly teachers and counselors, working at the center, Wilson said, and everyone there is being paid.
But any issue that needs off-site help – hiring, payroll and the like – is not getting resolved, he said.
“All outside support services are gone,” Wilson said.
