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2A | WEDNESDAY, MAY 26, 2021 | APPEAL TRIBUNE Trees make more money. And he wants to stop them before they cut any more of the blue-dotted trees in his city. “I mean, these trees are 60, 80 years old, it’s going to take that long for this to rejuvenate,” he said. “So that’s what we’re facing in this here. When they just clear-cut all this stuff out, we’re facing, you know, a whole generation before this ever comes back.” The mayor’s fears are compounded by firsthand reports from multiple peo- ple who worked on the state’s hazard tree removal project. Eric Phillips is one of several whistle- blowers who told lawmakers about the problems he saw while working for an ODOT contractor on Highway 224. “It was a very ‘Hurry up. Let’s get trees cut and cut as many trees as we can,’” Phillips said in a recent legislative hearing. “There’s so much mismanage- ment. So much lack of accountability. It’s like people just want to get paid.” He said workers with no arborist ex- perience were marking trees for removal that he saw contractors falling trees into wetlands and cutting trees that weren’t marked as hazardous, and that he didn’t see anyone making sure the rules were followed. “There’s no oversight out there in the field at all,” he said. After the hearings, Sen. Jeff Golden asked the governor to stop the project and order an investigation. “We’d better get real clear on what’s going on out there now, soon,” the Ash- land Democrat said. If we’ve gone astray, if this project has gone astray, let’s find out and correct it right now.” He worries the state could lose feder- al disaster funding. So far, ODOT and its contractors say they’ve fixed many of the reported prob- lems. ODOT manager Mac Lynde told law- makers his agency has hired an inde- pendent arborist to review the tree-cut- ting operation in response to the litany of complaints. In a hearing Monday, Lynde told the Senate Committee on Natural Re- sources and Wildfire Recovery that the state hired Galen Wright, president of Washington Forest Consultants, Inc. and an arborist with 30 years of experi- ence in hazard tree identification. “We’re up to 1,200 people on this pro- ject,” Lynde told lawmakers. “I have a high degree of confidence that it’s going well, but let’s face it. That’s a lot of peo- ple and a lot of moving parts. So, we’re asking him to come on and quite quick- ly, review the operation in several fire corridors.” Over the next three weeks, Lynde said, Wright will be reviewing the qual- ifications of the arborists and foresters working on the state project, the criteria being used to mark trees for removal and the overall process the state is using to mark and remove hazard trees. “He won’t be looking at every single tree again or really every fire corridor, every mile we’ve covered, but we’re ask- ing him to look at a representative sam- ple and confirm before the trees come down that it matches with the expecta- tions of what our program is designed around,” Lynde said. “We hope this will build more confidence with others around our project. At minimum, I think it will validate some of the work that’s been going on or it will help inform addi- tional changes.” Lynde said the Oregon Secretary of State will also be auditing the project, and that the state’s monitoring firm, CDR Maguire, has initiated its own in- ternal review in response to the whistle- blower allegations. “As more information comes out about what those reviews identify, we’ll certainly take swift action,” Lynde said. But environmental groups are still calling on the governor to stop the tree- cutting and activists recently forced the work to stop by occupying a tree-remov- al site east of Eugene. ODOT has also re- ported some activists spray painting over the blue dots on marked trees to prevent falling crews from cutting them down. At a rally in Salem last week, protes- ters dressed up in various costumes and chanted: “Governor Brown, stop the cut!” ODOT and the governor say wildfire recovery is too important to stop the re- moval of hazardous trees. They want to make sure roads can reopen and home- owners can rebuild on their burned properties, and they say the state can continue to address the reported prob- lems without stopping the project alto- gether. Right now, the state is about a quar- ter of the way through marking and re- moving an estimated 140,000 hazard trees left by last year’s wildfires. “Certainly our emergency response operation is an adaptive operation, and it looks a lot different today than when we started,” Lynde told lawmakers on Monday. “This is something that has never happened before in Oregon. Never has a program this size been launched. As we recover from these wildfires, we’re constantly refining our operation and learning from our experiences.” what we’re looking for, what we’re needing. “I heard some people say, ‘The ask is too much,’ but I had some other people say, ‘No, this is what you need, right?’ We’ve got to go back and ask ourselves in our school community and in our community in general, is there a lower number that makes sense to you and is there any number that makes sense to you.” The district has been awarded a $4 million grant from the state to make building improvements, but it will lose that money if a new bond is not ap- proved by voters. Monmouth residents were passing its bond to build a new city hall by a siz- able 11-7 margin. Monmouth asked voters to fund the replacement of the city hall, council chambers and court building at its cur- rent location through a $3 million bond. If the proposed bond passes, $6 mil- lion of the construction costs would come through other sources, including $2.3 million from the city’s reserves and $3.6 million from urban renewal mon- ies. The bond would tax residents at 19 cents per $1,000 of assessed value for 30 years. Residents in the Woodburn Fire Dis- trict’s service area were passing its $12.7 million bond by a comfortable 3-2 mar- gin. The district asked voters to approve a new 26 cent per $1,000 bond over 20 years that would replace a 20-year bond that is set to expire in 2022. It wouldn’t start until the previous one runs out. The $12.7 million would pay for a new fire station in Gervais and pay for new equipment as it is needed. Voters in Marion County Fire District 1’s service area were overwhelmingly passing its operations levy by a 2-1 mar- gin. The district asked voters to approve a 59 cent per $1,000 operations levy for fire engine staffing, primarily at its sta- tion in east Salem. The district had to cut 14 positions af- ter its past two operations levies failed. Residents of Mill City were over- whelmingly passing its levy by a 4-1 margin. The Mill City Rural Fire Protection District operations levy would assess 30 cents per $1,000 for five years to pay the salary of fire chief Leland Ohrt. The Lyons-Mehama Water District appeared to be passing a bond by a slim 6-5 margin. The district asked voters in the com- munities to approve a $5.2 million bond to replace its current reservoirs and re- place water mains by paying $1.10 per $1,000 for 31 years. Bill Poehler covers Marion County for the Statesman Journal. Contact him at bpoehler@statesmanjournal.com or Twitter.com/bpoehler. volved via such events as regular pot- lucks and working together in the com- munity garden adjacent to the 1970s-era hall. Fundraisers like an ongoing used clothing drop-off and a pie auction help pull in money needed to keep up their work. “There’s a fair amount of grange members that want to bring back danc- ing and that sort of thing,” Catino said. She added that last year’s Martin Lu- ther King Jr. Day potluck was one of the first she worked on in Silverton — the popular event has been going on for nearly two decades. “Another program we just had (on March 6) is Seedy Saturday, a wonderful community event and free seed ex- change,” Catino said. “It’s not only com- munity-powered, but we got donations of seeds from local seed companies. We’ve done it for many years now, and between 100 to 200 people attended in March.” Becky Oswald, 71, the Silverton Grange’s newest member, said Seedy Saturday is the event that “brought me in” to the grange in March, but it’s the “Grange values” that really drew her to the group. “I assumed there would be activities and discussions involving gardening” because of her discovering Seedy Satur- day, she said. As a former Portland parks worker and plant propagator, she appreciated the camaraderie of the grange members who came out recently to help clean up the community garden. It’s clear the vision Catino, Oswald and the bulk of the Silverton Grange membership want is to match the or- ganization’s mandate to become “an in- clusive community center promoting projects and service which engages and strengthens Silverton and the broader world.” Freelance writer/photographer Geoff Parks is based in Salem. Have story ideas about Silverton? Email him at geoffparks@gmail.com. Continued from Page 1A ODOT’s goal in the state’s ongoing hazard tree removal operation is to pro- tect people from burned trees that could fall onto roads or buildings. But deciding which trees actually pose that risk is complicated, and a growing number of people say ODOT’s contractors are hast- ily marking too many trees for removal — including trees that aren’t actually hazardous. The operation faces multiple allega- tions of mismanagement and excessive tree-cutting. Gov. Kate Brown has al- lowed the work to continue despite calls to stop the project and order an investi- gation, but state lawmakers are asking a lot of questions, and critics like Car- mickle are taking a closer look at the trees marked for removal. He invited Till and Shaw to come check the state’s work by examining some of the trees with blue dots. Shaw uses an axe to scrape away a thin layer of blackened bark on a Doug- las fir tree that’s marked with a blue dot. Just under the surface, the bark is gold- en brown. “See how limited the char is?” he said. “That’s not really severe bark char. It’s not really deep.” But the top of the tree doesn’t look very healthy, he said, so he wouldn’t challenge that removal decision. In con- trast, Shaw points to another tree with a blue dot that has black bark but is full of green needles on top. That’s probably going to live, he said, so it doesn’t need to be cut down for safety. “The crown is completely undam- aged,” he said. “I don’t know. I’m suspi- cious about this tree. I mean, that one in particular doesn’t really look like a high likelihood of mortality.” Carmickle says that kind of conclu- sion adds to his concerns that ODOT contractors are over-cutting trees just to Elections Continued from Page 1A lion school bond was narrowly failing Tuesday. In Tuesday night election results, voters in cities including Turner and Aumsville, as well as unincorporated communities, were voting against the bond by a 6-5 margin. Voters in Cascade’s district were asked to approve a 92 cents per $1,000 of assessed value increase in property taxes, which would have raised the total to $2.13 per $1,000, including a previous bond from 2005. When the previous bond is paid off in 2026, the new bond would have continued at the $2.13 per $1,000 rate through 2045. “I think sometimes in our community any ask is too big, right?” Cascade Su- perintendent Darin Drill said. “I think it’s an opportunity for us to define truly Grange Continued from Page 1A Trucks and cars now thunder just feet from the building’s original main en- trance and both sides of the road are thick with strip malls and fast-food res- taurants. The Silverton Grange’s vision state- ment wants the membership to move into the future and become a “commu- nity of neighbors,” Catino said. “And if we want to be that, we have to start with our neighbors.” She said that means getting them in- Dave Shaw, Oregon State University professor and forest health specialist, scrapes char off the bark of a burned tree marked for removal off Oregon Highway 22. CASSANDRA PROFITA / OREGON PUBLIC BROADCASTING LOCAL ADVISORS Address: P.O. 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