Gov. Ted Kulongoski spoke Thursday at Vernonia's Washington Grade School after breaking ground on the town's new school and community center.VERNONIA – Three years ago tomorrow, the rivers that wind their way through Vernonia spilled past their banks and into hundreds of homes.
On Thursday, the eve of the anniversary, Gov. Ted Kulongoski used a backhoe to break ground on the construction of a new school for a community that found its schools soaked through after the waters receded. Many students have been in portable classrooms since the flood.
The moment marked a turning point in the community's recovery, said Mayor Sally Harrison.
"The school is the linchpin," she said after the ceremony Thursday. "You start with the schools and the rest follows."
The rest, Harrison said, includes a new senior center, a health clinic and some repairs to the town's sewer system.
Last year, district residents passed a $13 million bond as a down payment for the new school, which is expected to cost about $37 million. The new school campus will house students in kindergarten through high school. The buildings they leave behind will be torn down and a park will be laid down in their place.
Vernonia: After the flood
On Thursday, Kulongoski also announced that the state would be investing some $3.8 million in improvements to Oregon 47 and two adjoining streets around the new school to accommodate the expected increase in traffic. That comes in addition to a recent Ford Family Foundation announcement that it would create a million-dollar challenge grant to help build the schools and community center. Half the grant will go to match gifts of $100,000 or more and the other half to match gifts of $25,000 and up.
The school opening is still a ways off – fall 2012 – but a little churned ground was enough to leave some Vernonians with a sense of progress.
"It's what we've been pushing for," said Craig Tolonen, who runs the True Value on Bridge Street and has three children in Vernonia's makeshift schools. " Kids gotta have some stability. So do the adults."
Tolonen remembers the chaos after the flood. True Value was packed. His own home was in disrepair. Things have come along way since then, he said. The school is just one more sign.
That's the way Betty Holsey sees it, too.
"That's the life of the town," Holsey said. "If we didn't have a school, we wouldn't have much of a town.
"The kids have been waiting for a while."
Holsey, 74, has spent most of her years in Vernonia. "Fifty," she said at first. Then she waffled. "Maybe more." Well, definitely more.
On Thursday morning, Holsey was working at the Senior Thrift Store, just across the street from Vernonia High School, one of the schools damaged in the flood and the school Holsey once attended.
Her friend Pat Ray, also 74, walked over as she spoke. The two went to high school together. Ray's been here since 1941.
The school's important, Ray said, but "there's so many of who still need to have our houses lifted."
That's not lost on anybody. Harrison, the mayor, calls the school "just step one."
Yes, nearly 100 homes have been raised up off the ground, safe from future floods. Another 40 have been torn down. And yes, there are streets like Heather Lane, full of brightly colored homes and bikes resting on heaps of fallen leaves, that you'd never imagine were underwater three years ago.
But there are still a number of homes standing on Jenga-like piles of wood, and others that are staying put because the owners can't afford the hefty cost of a raise -- some $30,000 in most cases.
But progress is progress.
"Three years ago, exactly tomorrow, we stood here at this very spot, shocked and saddened," Kulongoski said Thursday at the groundbreaking ceremony. "The rains and winds seemed to sweep away every part of this community."
But, the community has come together to rebuild, he said. "You are the best of Oregon."
After the groundbreaking, Kulongoski made his way to Vernonia's Washington Grade School for an assembly.
On the marquee in front of the red brick building was a message: "Thank you for our new schools."
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