Month: September 2015

Reed Market Road will be closed in both directions for two weeks beginning Tuesday morning at the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad crossing. BNSF is rebuilding the crossing and detours will be in place, city officials said. The best and least congested route around the closure is via 15th Street, Greenwood Avenue and Third Street.

An Oregon State Police forensic analyst is under investigation for “skimming” drugs from evidence she tested at the crime lab in Bend, Deschutes County District Attorney John Hummel said Thursday. Hummel said the analyst has been involved in 502 cases in Deschutes County alone, and all of those cases have to be re-evaluated. The scandal

A drug raid on a northeast Bend home led to the arrest of a resident who is accused of growing and selling marijuana to minors and also making psilocybin mushrooms. A Bend police officer conducted an investigation on Sept. 7 that showed marijuana was being sold and delivered to minors by Nicholas Edward Lane, 23,

Due to the recent pulse of moisture across Central Oregon, all public use restrictions have been dropped on the Deschutes and Ochoco national forests, the Prineville BLM District and the Crooked River National Grassland, effective immediately, officials said Thursday. The Industrial Fire Precaution Level has been reduced to Level 2 “Partial Hootowl,” meaning personal use

The picture of a man and his two children, etching their names into a railing at Tumalo Falls, went viral months ago. Now the man has been identified through tips on Facebook as 57-year old Scott Duke of Bothell, Washington. The U.S. Attorney’s Office investigated the case and fined Duke $200 for aiding and abetting

This week, the Deschutes National Forest’s Bend-Ft. Rock Ranger District is began the first stage of work to create a strategic fuel break for the City of Bend’s municipal watershed. The project area is located about 12 miles west of Bend between the Three Sisters Wilderness boundary and the Bear Wallows Inventoried Roadless Area along

Bend police said Wednesday that 28 stolen building trusses and a trailer were returned to Bend Area Habitat for Humanity’s ReStore on Third Street. The nonprofit said the 36-foot-long building materials and trailer were stolen Friday night, prompting police to issue a Crime Stoppers alert on Tuesday. Police said Wednesday they were not ready to

Despite rising housing, child care and other household costs, Oregon’s minimum wage will remain $9.25 in 2016, Commissioner Brad Avakian announced Wednesday. Each year, Avakian calculates the minimum wage by measuring the increase to the Consumer Price Index, a federal figure published by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics to track prices for a fixed

About 4,300 Pacific Power customers in southern Bend will have their electricity interrupted early Friday morning so crews may switch power supply after upgrading substation equipment, the utility said. The outage is scheduled to begin at 3 a.m. and power will be restored by 6 a.m., although power will be returned at the first opportunity.

Federal officers arrested a Warm Springs man Wednesday on charges of assault on a federal officer stemming from an armed standoff at his home on Monday. Jonathan Courtney is being held in Portland and appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge, Patricia Sullivan on Wednesday morning. In a criminal complaint, Detective Sam Williams with the Warm Springs

Pilot Butte Middle School in Bend has launched a online campaign to help raise money for its music department. Orchestra and Choir Director Amy Meyer told NewsChannel 21 on Wednesday that the class size has doubled since last year. Meyer says her students have gained an interest in the cello, but the department doesn’t have

Armed with a new federal grant, the Redmond Municipal Airport announced Wednesday it is seeking a carrier to add a direct flight to Phoenix. “We have not had a carrier go directly to Sky Harbor Phoenix before,” said airport spokeswoman Nicole Jurgensen. There are still several steps to go, and no guarantee that flights will

The U.S. Department of Transportation on Wednesday awarded Redmond Municipal Airport a grant of $500,000 for its effort to attract new flights between RDM and Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. The grant is designated to serve as a revenue guarantee and marketing of the new air service route, officials said. RDM was 1 of 49

A Post resident has been arrested on kidnap, assault and other charges, accused of holding a woman against her will in a locked cabin for several days, assaulting and threatening to kill her, before she was able to escape, Crook County sheriff’s deputies said. Here’s the full text of Wednesday’s news release from Undersheriff John

Cascade Natural Gas Corporation announced Wednesday that it has filed a Purchased Gas Adjustment with the Oregon Public Utility Commission to reflect the decrease in pipeline capacity, reservation and storage for natural gas. The overall request, which also includes the end of a year-long refund, means an approximately 7.1 percent decrease for Cascade customers in

A Portland man identified as a “significant supplier of heroin” in Deschutes County was arrested late Monday night, along with a female companion, in a guns-drawn traffic stop of a stolen car in downtown Sisters, officials said. Central Oregon Drug Enforcement Team detectives, assisted by sheriff’s deputies, arrested Richard Mercer, 35, and Katherine Roberts, 30,

The Cascades East Transit system in Bend is expanding come Monday, and OSU-Cascades is doing their part of meeting the community’s transportation goals. The expansion is a 30 percent increase in service. Three new bus routes will be added: Route 7, providing direct access from Hawthorne Station east to the medical district area;, Route 12,

While the higher speed limits authorized in House Bill 3402 for several Central and Eastern Oregon highways won’t take effect until next year, travelers are already seeing some changes as ODOT crews preform maintenance work before winter sets in. The changes include extended or added no-passing zones indicated by a solid yellow line in the

Four small fires along Highway 26 Tuesday morning about 4 miles south of Warm Springs briefly shut down the highway’s shoulders in both directions as crews put them out and mopped them up. “A vehicle of some kind went by the Warm Springs Reservation and once again dragging a chain or somehow causing sparks,” said

Central Oregon Intergovernmental Council and Cascades East Transit announced the launch of additional service for Bend fixed-route transit service, starting next Monday. The transit expansion includes: three additional routes, weekday hours of operation extended to 8 PM, weekday bus frequency increased to 30/60 minutes, and Saturday bus frequency increased to 60 minutes. Overall, the public