boost the police budget by $116,000 a year
to pay the higher upkeep cost of the big
new building.
Other added city spending includes
$94,000 for a new climate and energy analyst
and $800,000 for a new automated carwash
for airport vehicles. — Alan Pittman
A clearcut in the Elliott State Forrest
CLEARCUTS LOOMING
ON STATE LANDS
The management of Oregon’s state forests and efforts to increase logging and
clearcutting on them came under fire at a recent Oregon Board of Forestry
meeting. Opponents fear an increase in logging will harm recreation and spotted
owls and other Endangered Species Act (ESA) listed animals that use the forests.
OSU’s Institute for Natural Resources reviewed the Department of Forestry’s
science in its evaluation of forest management plans and a strategy for dealing
with “species of concern,” including northern spotted owls, voles, amphibians,
salmon and steelhead in the Tillamook and Clatsop state forests. The department’s
plan called for an increase in logging that would bring old growth habitat to as
low as 30 percent of the forest.
Ivan Maluski of the Sierra Club, who attended the April 29 meeting, said the
science review found that the state “did a really good job figuring out how to get
the cut out,” but did not do as good a job taking into account issues like habitat
and recreation. The department, he said, was criticized for not taking the “best
available science” into account.
The INR science report “revealed a real bias for timber production” in the
way the state forests are managed, Maluski said. He said the proposed plan
“short-shrifted the assets these forests provide” to rural communities in terms of
profit from recreation.
The Elliott State Forest near the proposed Devil’s Staircase Wilderness also
came up for discussion at the Board of Forestry meeting. Josh Laughlin of
Eugene-based Cascadia Wildlands testified at the meeting and asked the board
to wait on its rulemaking process for the new forest management plan. Laughlin
said the plan would have severe impacts to ESA-listed coho salmon, spotted
owls and marbled murrelets.
The new state plan for the Elliott would move from preserving 64 percent of
the older forest habitat to only 30 percent, Laughlin said. He said scientists have
found the plan for managing riparian areas (near streams) to be faulty. Cascadia
Wildlands is calling for thinning, land exchanges and using carbon credits to
leave trees standing rather than clearcutting.
The board voted 5-2 to implement the state plan that would increase
clearcutting.
The public can submit written comments on the Elliott plan, which would
take effect in January 2012. The comment period ends Aug. 1. For more
information or to submit a comment, go to the Board of Forestry’s website at
http://wkly.ws/129 — Camilla Mortensen
8
MAY 19, 2011
EUGENE WEEKLY
PHOTO BY CHUCK GRIFFIN
STORMY CITY
BUDGET
The city of Eugene is weathering a
fiscal “perfect storm” of recession,
expiring library levy, increasing retirement
costs and dwindling reserves, but it's
boosting police spending, Eugene City
Manager Jon Ruiz told the City Council
this month in his annual proposed budget.
Ruiz projects that the city will dip into
the red in two years at the current spending
trend. But rather than closing fire stations,
pools, park restrooms, reducing library
hours or cutting jail beds, “I recommend
we monitor the economy for another year”
to see if city property tax revenue, which
dropped 3 percent last year, picks up.
The extra year, Ruiz wrote, “also allows
time for the City Council to consider new
revenue sources....The rate at which the
gap between expenditures and revenues is
growing, coupled with the importance that
citizens place on our services and the
improbability of rapid economic recovery,
requires that we explore new revenue
sources to fund city services that the
community needs.”
With property tax increases restricted
by state law and the recession, the city has
increasingly pursued a strategy of jacking
up fees and fines. “User fees are the fastest
growing source of revenues for the entire
budget,” Ruiz’s proposed budget states. In
the past decade, fee revenue has grown at
about twice the rate of property tax
revenue. The city now collects almost
twice as much revenue in fees/fines as it
does in property taxes.
To help balance the budget, Ruiz
proposes across the board cuts of 2 percent
in department general fund spending. But
some spending areas will get more money.
Employee retirement (PERS) spending
will increase by a third to 14 percent of
wages. Health benefit spending will
increase by 8.7 percent. Most employees
will get a 2 percent raise. Firefighters will
take an extra 7 days off instead of a raise.
The Police department is the most rapid
area of increased city spending. The police
budget has increased 51 percent in the last
decade and now consumes more than a
quarter of the city’s general fund.
Last year the city used “urban renewal”
financing to divert $5 million from state
school funding and local governments to
add 7 police officers to arrest homeless
people downtown. This year Ruiz proposes
renting 10 more jail beds at $35,000 each
to imprison the homeless people the new
officers are arresting.
In addition, the city last year spent $15
million to move the police headquarters
out of downtown to Country Club Road
across the river. This year, the city will
IMPROVING
SCHOOL LUNCH
School lunch: pizza, tater tots, “meat
surprise” and unidentifiable glop … That’s
what a lot of Eugeneans might remember
from childhood, but the group Eugene
Coalition for Better School Food is
working with Eugene 4J Schools to make
sure that glop is only a memory — and for
higher nutrition standards in the future.
Together with the School Garden
Project, Farm to School and Lane Coalition
for Healthy Active Youth, ECBSF is
hosting a talk by Daniel Marks, who is a
pediatric endocrinologist and director of
the Oregon Child Health Research Center
at OHSU. “Do You Know What Your Kids
Ate Today?” will focus on the way
nutrition impacts kids from conception to
adulthood, according to Ann Magee of the
ECBSF steering committee. A panel
following the Thursday, May 19
presentation will also feature an assistant
4J food service director and a local teacher,
among others.
ECBSF created an ambitious list of
goals for the 2010-11 school year,
including making nutritional information
accessible to parents and the elimination of
high-fructose corn syrup and artificial
flavors and preservatives. The 4J district
has agreed to provide ECBSF with its
entire trove of recipes and plans to
incrementally reduce some of the worst
health offenders.
Magee says that while she’d still like to
cut out unhealthy food additives, she’s
pleased that the provider of 4J school food,
Sodexo, has been willing to open a
dialogue and compromise toward healthy
goals. “Although they have not agreed to
meet with our goals, they have been
willing to work with us, provide
information and they agreed to measurable
improvements year by year.”
Bring questions and ideas to the
Jefferson Arts & Technology Academy at
6:30 pm Thursday, May 19. — Shannon
Finnell
WETLANDS
MONTH
Most people are probably unaware that
May is American Wetlands Month. But
Willamette Resources and Educational
Network (WREN) is doing its part to get
people involved and keep the celebration
aqueous with local events for Eugeneans
to check out.
On Saturday, May 7 WREN hosted a
citizen scientist “Wetland Monitoring and
Data Collection Day,” which started with
an educational session giving participants
background information on the importance
of wetlands and wetland invertebrates in
the Northwest — those little creepy-
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