It was excellent. It was a great time and I know we did well (raising money) for the number of people that were there.

Once we have those expenses taken care of and the board feels we have an excess of money, we push the rest of the money into an endowment fund. This is our fifth year, and right now we're at $100,000 that we've raised so far, and that's pretty amazing for a little community like this to pull together and do something like that.

Basically it is used to supply scholarships for kids from the Gresham area. From the first year (we've held this), we've been able to give a scholarship to every kid that applies. We don't set our qualifications too high.

There's a lot of direct impact. Of course, these folks can't bring much with them, so they spend money. I just walked up from down there, and maybe the $7.2 million mutes my hearing a little bit.

During tough times, you just don't get the money you need to operate (from the state).

The locals need more money and we have to get it from grants, and the money that's available is for terrorism. It's not driven by national hazards. That leadership is not there.