Our new reporter, Justin Davis, started last week and hit the ground running, filing three stories in his first three days on the job. Not only will that give fellow scribe Steven Mitchell a break after serving as the Eagle’s sole reporter for the past nine months, but it creates an opportunity for us to start doing more feature stories, business coverage and some of the other kinds of reporting that we’ve been forced to put on the back burner while we’ve been short-staffed for the better part of a year. Now that we’re back at full strength, you’ll start seeing more of those stories in our pages.

In case you missed last week’s edition, we had stories from Justin on plans by local schools to make face masks optional and plans by Grant Union’s new baseball coach to restore the program to its former glory, stories by Steven on what local educators think about possible changes to high school graduation requirements and a new area of confirmed wolf activity in Grant County, and a story by EO Media’s Alex Wittwer on Oregon liquor stores pulling Russian vodka from their shelves.

And in this week’s paper you’ll find stories on the race for a seat on the Grant County Court, the new face on the John Day City Council, the latest on the law enforcement funding debate, and the prospects for the Grant Union Prospectors’ track season.

As always, I want to take this opportunity to thank our subscribers for their support. We can’t do this work without you!