Stampeders officer Marion McCrae and President Rocky Burgess are enjoying some comradery at the baked bean station in the kitchen at the annual crab feed last Saturday. TRISH YERGES photo

Stampeder Scotty Payne, who made the trip to Astoria 24 hours earlier to pick up more than $18,000 worth of fresh crab, was amazed at the turnout.

“I don’t know if we’ll have enough this year,” he said as he watched the kitchen crews put out the food at a pace he’d never seen before.

Union County, Local Interest and Forest Capital Partners have failed to come to an agreement on a proposed buyback of timber in the Mount Emily Recreation Area’s Trails Unit.

Forest Capital owns two-thirds of the timber value on the MERA and is scheduled to log the Trails Unit later this year. Under certain conditions, Union County, owner of the MERA, may buy timber back unit-by-unit.

Local Interest, a citizens group hoping to preserve the old-growth trees and establish a “community forest” within the Trails Unit, offered to give the county the price of the timber buyback, estimated between $500,000 and  $600,000.

Driving down C Avenue one day, the familiar surroundings suddenly became unfamiliar to me, for I was seeing the street not as it was at the moment but how the city proposes to change it. Suddenly I felt a moment of nostalgia and a sense of ‘How dare they!’

It didn’t matter that it would turn from an unruly country lane into a neatly defined city street with proper curbing, actual driveways and controlled parking or how neat it would all look. How would it look, I wondered. That’s when it suddenly all changed and why I felt a moment of anger. It would look like a street worthy of being in the city, but I would lose all that I remembered from all these years of traveling this street. Rather juvenile, I told myself.

According to La Grande Police Chief Brian Harvey, police had received several reports of thefts from motor vehicles Monday.

One vehicle was hit at Denny’s Restaurant, and two at Eastern Oregon University. About noon Monday, a fourth vehicle was broken into at the Grande Ronde Fitness Center on Adams Avenue.

ENTERPRISE — In the past two years, Wallowa County’s job loss average was not as low as the state of Oregon’s on the whole.

This was the only surprising news in the economic reports presented Wednesday at the Wallowa County Chamber of Commerce After Business Hours meeting held at Lear’s.

Wallowa County’s job loss for 2008 and 2009 combined was 5.6 percent compared to the overall state average of 5.7 percent, said Jason Yohannan, regional economist with the Oregon Employment Department.

Students head to class this morning at La Grande High School. School now starts at 8:25 a.m. at LHS. Beginning with the 2010-11 school year, classes will begin around 8 a.m. when a new seven-period schedule takes effect. CHRIS BAXTER/The Observer

All with little additional expense to the school district.

The added instruction will be a benefit of the high school’s switch to a seven-period day from its present block schedule. The transition, which takes effect with the beginning of the 2010-11 school year, will mean LHS students will attend seven approximately 50-minute classes a day. LHS students now attend five 66-minute classes a day.

ELGIN — The capital committee for the renovation of the Elgin Opera House announced Tuesday it was awarded a $250,000 grant from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant program from the Oregon Department of Energy.

“I feel really good about this,” said Mayor John Stover, committee chairman. “After working for two years on this project, the committee is going to get something going that’s big.”

The Oregon Department of Energy announced Jan. 29 that $6.5 million in federal funds have been awarded to support 66 energy efficiency and renewable projects in Oregon city and county buildings. The Elgin Opera House renovation project is one of two projects funded in Union County by the program.

Elgin EDGE president Joe Garlitz addresses participants at the annual "In the Round" organizational conference at the Community Center. - Trish Yerges photo Elgin EDGE president Joe Garlitz addresses participants at the annual "In the Round" organizational conference at the Community Center.

Representatives from nearly 40 groups gathered Tuesday for Elgin Economic Development and Growth Endeavor’s annual “In the Round”conference at the Community Center. Their goal was to review past accomplishments and set future goals.

Tom Crooks of Joseph is a logical thinker. Building, restoring and repairing clocks is an exercise in problem solving for this former engineer.

Tom’s shop near Joseph on the Imnaha Highway is filled with clocks in every stage of repair and disrepair, covering the walls, crowding the shelves. All sizes, shapes and vintages from clocks made in the 1700s to time-only clocks popular in the ’50s and brand new models in need of adjustment.

ENTERPRISE — The Wallowa County commissioners last week agreed to the concept of joining an eight-county alliance.

The Eastern Oregon Regional County Organization includes Baker, Grant, Harney, Malheur, Morrow, Umatilla, Union and Wallowa counties. The focus of the organization would be to tackle the issues in common among its members.