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About Vernonia's voice. (Vernonia, OR) 2007-current | View Entire Issue (June 16, 2016)
june16 2016 free VERNONIA’S volume10 issue12 www.vernoniasvoice.com reflecting the spirit of our community School Bond VHS Internship Program Earns and Advanced Two Grads Assistant Ranger Jobs Refund Update Town Hall: Bond Priorities The Vernonia School District (VSD) Board needs your help in developing priorities for school facility improvements if a bond were to pass in the upcoming November 2016 election. On Tuesday, June 21 from 6:30- 7:30 pm the District will hold a Town Hall meeting in the Vernonia Schools Library to collect input on which projects are most important for use of any potential bond funding. School Bond Town Hall Tuesday, June 21 at 6:30 pm Vernonia School Library The VSD Board has approved moving forward with a $6.8 million bond request for the November 2016 election. Paying off the loans used to complete the Vernonia Schools building is the main purpose for the bond, but priorities must be set for which projects are most important to have completed with the funds remaining after these payments. Please come join the Board in developing these priorities for the District. Advanced Refund The VSD will be moving forward with an Advanced Refund of the current $13 million General Obligation Bond approved in 2009. An Advanced Refund is very much like refinancing a house in that the District will be able to take advantage of current lower interest rates and pass on the monthly payment savings to the taxpayers of Vernonia. The estimated amount of savings for each taxpayer is between eight to ten cents per thousand dollars of assessed property value. Over the life of the bond the estimated savings for all taxpayers should be between $800,000-$900,000. The actual savings realized will depend on interest rates on the date of the final transaction which is scheduled to occur sometime in mid-July. inside 3 community action team 9 sheriff’s marine partrol 11 vhs graduation 15 vhs all stars Two Vernonia High School (VHS) graduates have used prior experience they gained in an internship program through the high school to get hired at L.L. Stub Stewart State Park as full time Park Ranger Assistants (PRA) this summer. Bridger Steward, a 2014 graduate of VHS, and Quentin Skanes, a 2016 VHS grad, both participated in an internship program developed by staff at Stub Stewart State Park in partnership with VHS. Steward and Skanes served one summer together in the program in 2014 and Skanes completed a second season in 2015. Both applied for full time PRA positions this summer and both were hired and started June 1. Their season is scheduled to end September 5. Steward has been attending Mt. Hood Community College where he is finishing an Associates Degree in Forest Management. He has spent several summers working in the Backcountry Leadership Program with Northwest Youth Corps, and is also considering spending a summer doing wild land firefighting. “My five year plan is to try some different things to see what I might want to do for a career,” says Steward. He says his ultimate goal might be a position as a fish and game warden in Montana. Skanes just graduated from VHS where he won both the P.E.O. Service Award and the prestigious Senior Cup at the graduation ceremony. Steward also won the P.E.O. Service Award as a graduating senior. Skanes plans to attend Portland Community College in the fall and eventually study Biomedical Engineering at Oregon State University. According to Stub Stewart Park Manager John Mullen, Skanes is one of the youngest PRAs the Oregon State Parks Department has ever hired. According to Park Specialist Former interns Quentin Skanes and Bridger Steward have been hired as full time Park Ranger Assistants at Stub Stewart State Park this summer. Betsy Miller, the idea of a high school student internship program was introduced by park staff who developed job descriptions for intern positions and approached VHS about hosting students. VHS Superintendent Aaron Miller applied for, and was awarded a Career and Technical Education (CTE) grant and created three internships: at Stub Stewart, with the Upper Nehalem Watershed Council (UNWC), and with the Vernonia School District maintenance department. According to Stub Stewart’s Betsy Miller, the interview process for the State Park intern positions is very rigorous. “We ran them through the exact same process we use to hire full time Park Ranger Assistants,” says Miller. Miller said the paid student internships at Stub Steward were funded in their second year, and this year, by a grant from the Northwest Trails Alliance. This year Brook Naron from VHS has been hired for the internship, along with a student from Banks High School, Eric Larson. The School District and UNWC have also continued their internship programs through different funding. Interns in the program work 20 hours a week for six weeks. Having parlayed their internship experience into a full time summer position, Steward and Skanes will be working 40 hours a week and will receive a full benefits package as PRAs. “A PRA position is the starting point to becoming a state employee,” said Miller. Skanes says his summers working as an intern really helped prepare him to apply for the full time position. “All my experience in this park really helped,” says Skanes. “I already know all the trails. I know about the park and the plants and the wildlife. I know how it operates. I know how to use all the equipment we have here.” According to Miller, PRAs help with operations, doing general maintenance, checking in and out visitors, collecting fees, cleaning continued on page 22 New Hosts Welcome Guests at Anderson Park Vernonia’s Anderson Park has new park hosts and the difference has been immediate. Adam Copenhaver and Me- linda Carter took over as the new park hosts at the city RV park in March and have been hard at work cleaning things up and getting ready for what they an- ticipate will be a very busy summer sea- son. “Our goal is to make people’s stay pleasant,” says Copenhaver. Both Copenhaver and Carter are originally from the Detroit area of Michigan. They had previously worked as camp hosts at Pontiac Lake State Park in Michigan before heading to Oregon last winter to visit Copenhaver’s daugh- ter in Portland. They ended up falling for Oregon and decided to try and find a way to stay. They applied for a camp host position at Stub Stewart State Park but there were no openings, so they were directed to Anderson Park where the City of Ver- nonia was looking for a new camp host. The hard work the couple has done to clean things up and maintain the park each and every day has been notice- able and the City has received numerous compliments on the current conditions at the park. Not only do Copen- haver and Carter go out of their way to keep the park tidy and clean, they are also outgoing Adam Copenhaver and Melinda Carter are and friendly, making a point the new Park Hosts at Anderson Park. to greet and make each guest Copenhaver spent time when feel welcome. “We always go he was younger working at Disney introduce ourselves and make sure they know where we’re at in case they have World in Florida as a monorail driver and in one of the restaurants. Carter is any problems,” says Carter. continued on page 6
