Thank you for your interest in reading The Astorian. Here are a few stories that you might have missed this week:

•••

Lili Miller, the quarterback for the Seaside High School girls flag football team, grew up playing catch with her father and brothers.

“I had a lot of fun playing football with my brothers and my dad, just learning like that,” she said. “I would always play catch on the beach or neighborhood and I just fell in love with throwing the ball.”

Seaside and Astoria girls are in their second seasons of flag football, part of an expanding pilot program at high schools in Oregon.

Nationally, flag football is an emerging sport that can help fulfill the mission of Title IX, the federal law that provides equal opportunity for women in education and has fueled the explosive growth in women’s sports.

See the story by Paul Matli by clicking here.

•••

On a recent April morning, Sgt. AJ Duryea set out along Commercial Street in his police cruiser, scanning the sidewalks for sleeping bags and tents.

Duryea, who’s served the Astoria Police Department for a dozen years, remembers a time when camping was prohibited downtown. As laws have changed, however, so have his interactions with people who are homeless. These days, he starts most mornings pulling up to campsites, waking people up and reminding them of the rules under the city’s camping ordinance.

The ordinance requires campers to pack up by 7 a.m. to avoid citations — a reality homeless residents like Jackie Marshall are no strangers to. Every day, Marshall wakes up, drops her tent and begins packing away her clothes and belongings. Then, in the evenings, she finds a new spot to sleep where she’ll repeat the same process all over again the next morning.

“It’s beyond exhausting,” she said.

Marshall’s experience is one window into camping regulations that play out on the ground in Astoria. It also points to a larger question about how far cities can go to regulate homelessness — a conversation that is now on the national stage.

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in Grants Pass v. Johnson, a case that originated in a federal court in 2018 when several homeless people alleged the city’s regulations unconstitutionally punished them for being homeless. A federal district court judge agreed, and on appeal, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that the city had violated the Eighth Amendment’s provisions against cruel and unusual punishment by criminalizing homelessness.

Now, the nation’s highest court is revisiting the decision.

Read the story by Olivia Palmer by clicking here.

•••

Bus service will return to Warrenton in May for the first time in over a year.

The Sunset Empire Transportation District leadership announced the return of Warrenton Route 15 at a board meeting in Seaside on Tuesday night.

After a financial collapse in April 2023, which led to an abrupt shutdown of public transportation in Clatsop County, the transit district restored partial service on the U.S. Highway 101 route and the Pacific Connector route, as well as reinstating partial paratransit and Dial-A-Ride services.

In October, the agency restored Route 10 — which provides service around Astoria — and Route 20, which takes riders to Seaside and Cannon Beach.

The transit district held off on reinstating service on Route 15 because of concerns about the long-term sustainability of the route given the district’s precarious financial situation.

Take a look at the report by Rebecca Norden-Bright by clicking here.

•••

We invite you to help sustain local journalism on the North Coast. Please consider subscribing. We have several options available at: www.dailyastorian.com/subscribe-now/

— Derrick DePledge