Brief Power Outage
High winds yesterday was the apparent cause of a power outage south of the Siuslaw River Bridge. According to Central Lincoln PUD a tree landed across power lines causing about 700 homes and businesses to be without power for a brief period yesterday. The initial outage happened around 1:45 in the afternoon and most of the power was restored by 2:15. Central Lincoln reported small outages after that time and their twitter feed asked people to be patient that they were working on the problem. As always, in case of downed power lines people are asked to stay clear and report them. Power was completely restored by 4:15 yesterday afternoon. High wind gusts are still expected to remain for the next several days.
Grant To Establish School Clinics
PeaceHealth has announced a $350,000 grant awarded to Western Lane Behavioral Health Network to provide behavioral health services for youth in Western Lane County. The award will be used as capital investment toward renovating spaces at Siuslaw Elementary and Mapleton Middle schools with clinics planning to open by the beginning of the fall school year. Dr. Ron Shearer says this grant will help with child mental health.
“I think there are a lot of issues going on with young people in town that kind of get ignored to some extent, and child psychiatry will help that and counselors as well.”
The PeaceHealth grant complements a three-year, $600,000 Federal Office of Rural Health Policy grant awarded by the Health Resources and Services Administration to the WLBHN last year to expand behavioral health care for youth.
Community Foundation Announces Scholarships
Western Lane Community Foundation has announced grants for continuing education. It is their 5th annual dispersion of funds totaling $18,500 for 2019. Scholarships are available for traditional 4 year universities, colleges, community colleges and accredited trade schools as well as special arts programs. Student recipients are evaluated on several criteria including financial need, outside activities, work history and volunteerism. Deadline for applying for scholarships is June 30th. applications can be picked up at Lane Community College or by going online to wlcfonline.org.
Gas Prices Drop
Gas prices are finally on the decline after sharp increases during spring driving and maintenance schedules. This past week Oregon saw a 5 cent drop in prices while here in Florence are averaging $2.97 a gallon. Gas prices in Florence have dropped .47 cents a gallon since late May and the trend according to AAA Oregon’s Marie Dodds is that prices will continue a slow decline with higher reserves even though demand is still strong across the market.