Greetings from City Hall –

At least summer is here. And the Fourth of July has come and gone. Well, mostly gone. I still have several folks in the city visiting and the effects of the Family Re-union/Wedding will be coming in for some time. Lots of people,5 music, conversation and fun from a big family and Maupin is the place to have it. I think about half of the folks visiting want to stay here. It is kind of fun being in a great vacation spot. Let the other 50+ people travel.

Burn Ban

The reason for the burn ban was borne out yesterday by the “second” noon siren. Only we don’t know exactly what started the fire at the bottom of a power pole across Blue Rock Road from DeOra’s house. I asked her if she knew about the burn ban and she declared no knowledge of the fire that brought out two fire trucks at the request of some folks that saw the flames and called it in. That’s the advantage of having lots of traffic near where a fire starts. It only got to be the size of our City Hall office area before it was out. My son, Mike, saw smoke from the garage roof and by the time I got up the hill, I met the yellow truck returning to station and the red Dodge was sitting there making sure the fire was really out. Nice job, fire department. As a corollary to this story, I did not hear any fireworks last night, which is an overall relief. So remember, there are no fires, open or barrel, allowed until the burn ban is over which is planned to happen on 1 November.

Summer Parking

With the Summer Season ramping up, we can expect the usual parking problems on Deschutes and other side streets. The largest number of parking spots is on Fourth Street, from Deschutes to the High School, but that doesn’t really serve the upper rafting companies, Sage Canyon and Deschutes River Adventures. We have addressed the issue in years past, sharing information and ideas with all the rafting companies so that a solution that will reduce the impact of visitors’ parking on the people that live here. That is how we came up with the parking on Fourth Street. But we still have a lot to do and are still working the issues. We have and will respond to complaints from our residents by asking the companies to monitor where their customers can find available parking that doesn’t impinge on resident parking. As our President said when talking about resolving the current economic situation, it won’t happen all at once.

That’s it. This is a short one and I know there are other things that should be noted. The Sunday Market is up and running and next Sunday, I plan to make

some time to visit it. The Fourth of July weekend of breakfasts in Wamic was great. We invaded the place on the 3^rd with about 22 people who have been amazed by the amount of food they are served anywhere in this part of Oregon. And as I said, there are still people at the house and we try to uphold that facet of visiting Maupin. So I am headed back to the short vacation I will continue till the group all disappears over the horizon by the end of the week and Donna and I can get back to what serves as normal for us. We had almost forgotten how beautiful summer can be in Maupin, but with it arriving in force, we plan to enjoy the rest of it right here. Lots of visitors, lots of things to do, lots of noise … normal summer.

Cheers, Denny