News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
Jim Cheatham, for 19 years the owner of The Gallery Restaurant, acknowledges that his business is one of those that needs a sewer most.
He is looking at spending $75-$100,000 to build a treatment system to handle his restaurant's waste disposal if a sewer isn't built.
But Cheatham believes that if septic problems and spiraling costs harm businesses, residents will be harmed, too.
"(Residents) should be concerned about the fate of the business district, because if you don't have that, you don't have a residential district," Cheatham said. "We're all tied together.
"If the business district wasn't here, you'd see, one-by-one, people moving out of town because you can't live where there's not services."
But that argument doesn't hold water for at least one sewer opponent.
City Councilor Gordon Petrie has steadfastly maintained that a sewer is "needed" only if there is a proven health threat. Such a threat has not been demonstrated, he argues.
He doesn't think the requirements of business owners should be the concern of the city residents.
"It's going to be a case of most of the residents voting their pocketbooks," Petrie said. "In that case, they wouldn't be that interested in helping, say, Cascade (Avenue)."
But Cheatham notes that more than half of the 60 people The Gallery Restaurant employs live in the City of Sisters.
"We have an annual payroll in excess of $800,000 - that goes right to the people in Sisters," Cheatham said.
And he recalls the time when many of the services the business district provides were not here.
"When I bought the restaurant, we didn't have a hardware store, we didn't have a supermarket, we had a dentist, but we didn't have a doctor," Cheatham said.
Residents commuted frequently to Bend or Redmond for supplies.
The Gallery appears more imperiled than most existing businesses by the lack of a sewer.
"We're living on borrowed time," Cheatham said. "We could be closed down if our drainfield became more saturated than it is."
Other restaurants in town have access to large amounts of land for drainfields - though maintaining them can be expensive.
However, other businesses have septic problems. Some are restricted in what products and services they can offer, and many businesspeople fear alienating the tourists they rely on for the bulk of their trade.
Petrie acknowledges that a sewer would help some people - but the cost to the majority of residents outweighs the benefits, he believes.
And he thinks concerns for the town's future are exaggerated.
"I don't think the business community is going to be impacted that greatly, and if it is, I don't think it will affect the residents," he said.
"Whether the stores are here or down in Bend doesn't make that much difference."
Jim Cornelius is editor in chief of The Nugget and author of “Warriors of the Wildlands: True Tales of the Frontier Partisans.” A history buff, he explores frontier history across three centuries and several continents on his podcast, The Frontier Partisans. For more information visit www.frontierpartisans.com.
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