>La Grande Observer | Union and Wallowa Counties' News Leader

Some things you just never want to hear.

“A family of screamers is moving in next door.”

“The tax audit should be relatively painless.”

“We can move up your prostate exam appointment an hour.”

A special bit of genius lies behind the latest college scholarships offered by the Oregon Trail Electric Cooperative. OTEC is giving four more scholarships, which brings the total to 24 in the four counties the cooperative serves. Only these new scholarships are for students returning to college or an accredited vocational or technical school for their second, third or fourth year.

It’s common knowledge that students are most vulnerable to dropping out of college after their freshman year. The new scholarships give students incentive to stay the course and complete a degree program.

Here’s a salute to the Eastern Oregon University men’s and women’s basketball teams for their success this past season. Both teams earned league championships. Both advanced to the national tournament. And both won first-round games.

The Mountaineer women’s teams have been winning league championships for several years in a row now — five straight and six of the past seven. Coach Anji Weissenfluh has built a competitive Cascade Collegiate Conference team. But not until this year was the team able to win at the national tourney.

Some people will undoubtedly hammer the Union County commissioners for hiring a director of promotions at Buffalo Peak Golf Course. These people are understandably worried about long-term financial obligations of the county-owned course, as is any member of the public who enjoys playing the beautifully designed links course on the outskirts of Union with the magnificent view over the Grande Ronde Valley.

We recommend reserving judgment until the plan has a chance to work. Buffalo Peak is not dying. In fact, the course at Union showed overall revenue gains of 11 percent last year as well as a jump in player rounds of almost 500.

March, Firor, Fast, Bodewig, Fiorito, Hills, Smith, Wandschneider, Cooke, Garoutte, Petersen

Got debt? If so, you’re not alone.

In these days of rampant materialism, it seems almost anti-American to oppose wild credit card sprees and intoxicating out-of-control consumerism.

Before you flag-waving, red-meat, true-blue, credit card-flashing Americans start sending hate mail, put on the charge card at 41 cents a letter, hear me out.

A verbal but non-specific threat against EOU sent shock waves through the La Grande campus last week. University officials took the right action in taking the possible threat seriously, initiating warnings and making sure law enforcement officials were on top of the issue.

Law enforcement officials in Central Oregon, after receiving word that a former student living in that region may have issued a threat against the university, determined that the statement wasn’t credible. University officials, though, decided that it would be better to err on the side of caution than to ignore the matter.

The Cove City Council made the right move in putting the brakes on riding ATVs on city streets. The council majority wisely considered the long-term consequences of such a move and voted against it. And, of course, the council didn’t have much choice, considering the laws governing state highways, and the fact that state law supercedes city law. State law allows ATVs on public roads only if they are being exclusively used for farm work, and sorry, but trips to the store to get milk don’t qualify.

The state law becomes problematic when you consider a state highway makes up Cove’s main drag and gives access to most of its main businesses. And those businesses would be a primary destination for many ATV trips, although the proposal also could have opened the door to the more obnoxious sorts of racing up and down streets causing havoc in the neighborhoods.

The Union County commissioners have made the right move in letting voters have a chance to weigh in on the county’s proposed plan to buy 3,700 acres of land on Mount Emily. The May advisory vote won’t be binding. But it will allow the commissioners to see which way the wind of public opinion is blowing.

Groups for and against the Mount Emily Recreation Area now have a chance to raise campaigns to increase public awareness. The area three miles north of La Grande is owned by Forest Capital Partners, and the county would buy the land in part or in whole with grants from the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department. The land would be used not just for recreation but also would be managed for timber harvest, grazing and other historical uses.