Earlier this year, Washougal High School Principal Sheree Clark asked Ethan Mills, the school’s Associated Student Body president, to deliver some “inspiring life advice” to his fellow seniors at the school’s graduation ceremony. Recognizing the challenge in front of him Mills laced his reply with a hint of good-natured sarcasm.
In the past two years, local residents have supported the East County Fire and Rescue district (ECFR) by approving a fire levy lid lift and a six-year emergency medical services renewal levy. Without that assistance, ECFR, a small district that generates its revenue almost exclusively through property taxes, would certainly be facing more severe economic hardships right now than it already is.
“It’s like having gasoline out there,” said Brian Steinhardt, forest fire zone manager for Prescott and Coconino national forests in Arizona, in a recent Associated Press story about the increasingly fire-prone West.
Global and domestic competition in the paper industry is among the changes and challenges faced by the Georgia-Pacific mill, in Camas. That is according to Joe Ertolacci, the vice president of manufacturing for the mill. There is increased global competition in the production of copy paper in China and South America and other communications papers and new domestic producers of tissues, paper towels and napkins in the commercial and consumer private label industry.
