News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
Plans for a student-run cafe in Sisters have been shelved by the school district in the face of budget cuts.
"With the additional cuts we no longer have the capacity to provide the operation off-site for the cafe concept," School Superintendent Steve Swisher told Community Action Team of Sisters Director Lorri Craig in a letter last month.
CATS had secured a $25,000 grant from the Central Oregon Community Investment Board (COCIB) for the project.
According to Craig, COCIB agreed on Thursday, October 3, to reduce the grant amount from $25,000 to $12,500 to fund an on-site culinary arts program at Sisters High School and a "coffeehouse" at the SOAR facility at Sisters Middle School.
According to nutrition services coordinator Janice Comfort, Sisters High School will host a "restaurant" called A Taste of Our Own serving lunch for students and staff.
The menu will be simpler than that planned for the Outlaw Cafe.
The CATS newsletter reported that SOAR's teen coffee house will be called the Cabana Club.
"The middle school teen center is being remodeled to accommodate the coffee house concept," the newsletter states. "Once the transformation is completed, it will be open after school Monday through Friday for middle school students. On Friday and Saturday nights it will provide a positive alternative social setting for high school students.
"Half of the room will be set up as a coffee house and the other half will be a game area, with foosball, pool and air hockey. It will have a South American motif, with open microphone time, movies and live entertainment."
The Outlaw Cafe proposal had met with mixed response in Sisters, with some restaurateurs upset at the notion of using public funds to create a business that would compete for clientele and workers with private businesses.
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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