What’s on tap for this week’s weather? Check our local weather coverage.
In case you missed it, here are some of the top stories of the weekend:
Adriana Dorsey never imagined her routine mammogram would lead to a cancer diagnosis.
After her annual screening in August 2014, Dorsey got a call about questionable results. That wasn’t unusual; she’s been called back about what turned out to be harmless lumps before. She underwent more intense screening in early October and then left for a planned vacation to celebrate her 63rd birthday.
The day after her birthday, Dorsey learned she had breast cancer. The tumor in Dorsey’s right breast was small and the cancer hadn’t spread. She opted for a lumpectomy followed by radiation therapy.
Her surgeon, Dr. Jeffrey Sunshine, told Dorsey about a method of radiation, called breast brachytherapy, that’s an option for some breast cancer patients. The treatment would take only five days, as opposed to five or six weeks.
With the holidays approaching, Dorsey was ready to move on.
“I wanted to be myself as much as possible by Christmas,” said Dorsey, of Vancouver.
Few people could love their job more than Clinton Cotton, an employee of the New Seasons Market at Fisher’s Landing, loves his. And few could receive as much love back in return from fellow employees and customers who enjoy the charming man his father calls a “human magnet” who exudes joy everywhere he goes.
“I like working here a lot,” said Cotton, a 29-year-old former Columbia River High School student who was born with fragile X syndrome, a genetic syndrome that causes intellectual disability, especially among boys. “Yes I do.”
Cotton, whose duties include washing dishes, food preparation and customer service, was singled out as employee of the year during the Clark County Disability Employment Awareness Month Celebration on Wednesday at the Heathman Lodge. The recognition comes as no surprise to those who know him at New Seasons. Besides being a responsible employee, Cotton is seen by his peers as the friendliest face in a store that bills itself as the friendliest in town.
“It’s so rewarding to have someone like Clinton who enjoys his job and the people around him,” said Marta Majewska, longtime manager of the store at Fisher’s Landing, who departs this week to manage a New Seasons in North Portland.
The community’s generous and systemic response to the recent crisis at Courtyard Village Apartments means there’s plenty to celebrate. But the fact that something like a tent village has popped up on the streets around Share House in recent weeks means there’s plenty left to do.
Given the increasingly visible masses of people living on the street in West Vancouver, “We questioned whether or not to keep the celebratory theme” of Friday’s fundraising luncheon for the Council for the Homeless, executive director Andy Silver told a crowd at the Hilton Vancouver Washington. But given how Vancouver rallied — not only to rescue the population of Courtyard Village from homelessness, but also to prevent similar crises in the future — Silver added, “I feel inspired.”
Keynote speaker and Vancouver City Councilwoman Alishia Topper reviewed the story: Last December, residents at Courtyard Village Apartments, a dilapidated low-income rental complex in Rose Village, started receiving notices to vacate their units because renovations and rent hikes were on the way. Anyone who wanted to stay would have to reapply at the higher rental price.
Within five months, the entire population of Courtyard Village — 152 deeply low-income households, including many children, elderly and disabled — got 20-day notices to vacate. Those notices are called “no cause” because they’re not based on any tenant misdeeds. They’re simply at the discretion of the landlord.
It was all perfectly legal. But it’s not anymore.
Clark County Fire District 6 will ask residents to vote this election on an 18 percent increase in the property tax levy that district officials say is needed to offset years of rising expenses.
The proposed levy increase would raise property taxes for district landowners from about $1.27 per $1,000 of their assessed property value to $1.50 per $1,000 of assessed value.
For a District 6 homeowner in a $250,000 home, increasing the levy amount would mean about $57.50 more per year in property taxes paid to the district. Someone with a $250,000 home already pays about $3,000 a year in property taxes, depending on where that home sits in the district, since different taxing areas overlap.
When voters created it in 1995, the district’s regular levy was $1.50 per $1,000 of assessed value.
Barring a public vote, the total amount of property taxes collected can increase by only 1 percent per year, in keeping with a state law passed in 2007. As property values have risen, the levy rate has dropped to $1.27 per $1,000 to keep total revenue within that limit.
Even as regular 1 percent increases have increased total revenue each year, that revenue hasn’t kept pace with the district’s rising expenses, Chief Jerry Green said.
Increasing the “lid” on the levy, which is what voters will decide on come November, would give the district more flexibility in spending and planning, Green said.
Next time someone is injured after being struck by an orca or receives burns from water-skis that are on fire, health care providers will have the appropriate medical codes to bill insurers for treatment.
And public health organizations can now accurately track the number of injuries caused by people being sucked into jet engines and accidents while people are knitting.
That’s because this month, the U.S. began using the International Classification of Diseases, 10th revision, known as ICD-10, which is a list of medical situations maintained by the World Health Organization.
While the new medical code set includes plenty of humorous codes for obscure injuries, it also includes thousands of codes for diseases and procedures that didn’t exist when the last version was created. The newer version will allow for more-specific diagnoses, better tracking of health outcomes and improved disease monitoring worldwide, according to health officials.
The previous set of codes, ICD-9, had been in place since 1979. While other industrialized countries transitioned to ICD-10 after its approval in the ’90s, the U.S. continued to use the older version.
“A lot of the procedures we do today were not even dreamed about back then,” said Wayne Johnson, PeaceHealth’s ICD-10 project director. “The code set was pretty antiquated.”
Moody’s Investor Service on Thursday assigned a B3 Corporate Family Rating to the Cowlitz Tribal Gaming Authority’s $485 million financing for its casino west of La Center, a cautionary rating that takes into account potential risks involved in debt-financed casino projects by Native American tribal organizations.
The credit rating helps determine the interest rate the tribe will have to pay in order to borrow money to fund construction and start-up costs. “Obligations rated B are considered speculative and are subject to high credit risk,” according to Moody’s.
Moody’s said the B3 rating is typical for construction of a new casino, in this case reflecting “the ramp-up risk and single asset profile of the Cowlitz (tribe).” Moody’s said it also took into account as “risks common to Native American gaming issuers, including the uncertainty as to enforceability of lender’s claims in bankruptcy or liquidation.”
The ratings service noted that the casino would be the closest casino to the Portland metropolitan area and one of only two within 100 miles of the metro region. But it said that several casinos are located within a 150-mile distance from Portland, an area it considers as the Cowlitz casino’s secondary market.
Cowlitz Tribal Gaming Authority, an entity owned by the Cowlitz Indian Tribe, has already begun site improvement work on a casino-resort with a hotel and shopping center on the tribe’s new 152-acre reservation, just west of Exit 16 on Interstate 5 outside the La Center city limits.
