Solar Eclipse Watchers May Overwhelm Small Oregon Towns
A total solar eclipse in China in 2012. Shutterstock
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Also in our State and Local Weekend Digest: Oklahoma budget puts schools in tough spot; Rhode Island’s aging gas pipes; and new worries about tick risk.
EVENT MANAGEMENT | Among the best places to witness this August’s total solar eclipse will be a handful of small towns in Oregon. But can those small towns accommodate thousands of visitors planning to head their way? Upwards of a million eclipse watchers are expected to head to the Beaver State for the Aug. 21 event. “It is coming and that’s the main thing: you really don’t have a choice,” Debbie Starkey, a Wheeler County commissioner and councilmember in the tiny town of Spray. “You could sit there like we did for a year and think it was going to go away, but it’s not.” Spray is expecting 8,000 to 12,000 visitors for the eclipse—that’s 100 visitors per one resident. That’s a difficult ratio for a town with one gas station, one motel and one convenience store. The mayor of Spray doubles as the area’s only physician’s assistant. [Oregon Public Broadcasting]
STATE BUDGETS | Uncertainty surrounding Oklahoma state appropriations is causing many local school superintendents to delay finalizing their own budgets and putting off hiring teachers for the new school year. “We’re tired of chasing rumors and ghosts,” according to the superintendent of the Collinsville Public Schools, located near Tulsa. “This is the dance we’ve been doing every year for three years, but this year, we’re in a wait-and-see pattern. We’re not going to hire anyone until June." [The Tulsa World]
Alaska’s difficult budget situation is trickling down to the local level, and that includes the Funny River Community Center on the Kenai Peninsula, home to a group of quilters furiously working to produce quilts to auction off to raise money to help the center stay open. While the community center has annual dues, it relies on state and borough funding to keep the lights on. The Kenai Peninsula Borough, like many other local jurisdictions around Alaska, are dealing with reduced levels of state assistance for localities. [Peninsula Clarion]
INFRASTRUCTURE | While many states are local jurisdictions are dealing with the realities of aging gas pipes, Rhode Island faces more problems compared to other states. It has the second-highest percentage of pipes made from cast or wrought iron (24 percent). It also has the seventh-highest percentage of bare steel pipes (8 percent) and the second-highest percentage of pipes installed before 1970 (48 percent). [Providence Journal]
A proposal being pushed by some Wisconsin lawmakers would ask the federal government to ease restrictions on implementing tolls on some interstate highways in the state. While the plan is designed as a way to help Wisconsin find new sources of revenue to pay for transportation infrastructure, trucking companies have come out against it. [Janesville Gazette]
PUBLIC HEALTH | A warmer winter in places like Pennsylvania is putting public health officials on high alert for tick-borne diseases in the coming months, including Powassan, a rare virus that causes inflammation of the brain and is fatal in about 15 percent of cases. About half of those survive Powassan have long-term neurological damage. [Patriot News / PennLive]
Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams has launched a new public campaign urging residents in New York City’s most populous borough to try to avoid going to a hospital emergency room for non-emergency medical needs. Urgent care facilities usually have wait times that are less than an hour. “Our goal is to help reduce these health care costs and, more importantly, make sure everyone gets quality medical care in a timely and efficient manner,” Adams said in one of the videos. [New York Daily News]
WILDFIRES | Firefighters in Florida continue to be occupied by numerous wildfires burning across the state, including three blazes this weekend that consumed 200 acres in Hillsborough County that temporarily closed Interstate 75. Along the Florida-Georgia border, a large blaze continues to burn through the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge and has consumed more than 135,000 acres as of Saturday and prompted some evacuations. [WFLA-TV; WJXT-TV]
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