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About Eugene weekly. (Eugene, Oregon) 1993-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 21, 2014)
NEWS Join the Eugene SLUG Queens as they slime around downtown Eugene visiting local businesses. The SLUG Crawl departs Kesey Square at 4 pm, but you can stop by participating businesses any time on Aug. 23 and use the secret code “SLUG Queen” to enjoy a special discount. Participating businesses include: Townshend’s Tea, MECCA, Harlequin Beads, Heritage Drygoods, Party Downtown, Out on a Limb Gallery and more. Applications are now being taken for the daytime or evening option of the OSU Extension Service Master Gardener Program in Lane County, one of the most popular volunteer programs in Oregon. The evening term option will be on Thursday nights starting Sept. 11 and again Jan. 15. The daytime option will meet Wednesdays starting Jan. 7. Applications and more information are at the OSU Extension Service, 996 Jefferson St., or online at wkly. ws/2m. ChickTech will be hosting a workshop Aug. 23-24 at OSU to encourage high school girls to enter computing and technical fields. The nonprofit based in Portland fosters a more inviting culture for women in technology. The workshops culminate with a free show from 4:30 to 5:45 pm Sunday, Aug. 24, at the Kelley Engineering Center on the OSU campus. The Active 20-30 Club of Eugene, a charitable organization serving underprivileged children, has partnered with Valley River Center on a school supply drive for students in need. The club is collecting new school supplies, including backpacks for elementary school students, through Friday, Aug. 22. The items can be dropped off at Valley River Center customer service booth outside of the JCPenney’s mall entrance. Donations will be distributed Aug. 23. LANDWATCH OPPOSES NEW HOUSES ON FORESTLANDS FUNDING FOR FULL-DAY KINDERGARTEN STILL UNCERTAIN Weyerhaeuser is a name long associated with timber, but back in 2010 the company became a REIT — real estate investment trust. Local land-preservation advocates from LandWatch Lane County say that Weyerhaeuser is one of the many landowners in the region moving property lines around on forestland to allow more houses to be built on what’s called an “impacted forest zone” on the edges of towns in Oregon. Pointing to a document that was filed with the Lane County Land Management Division, Lauri Segel of LandWatch shows how one tax lot may consist of several deeds. One deed might be for a tiny bit of land, not large enough for a home. Another bit of land is nowhere near a driveway. Some of the deeds date back to the 1800s, she says. Landowners then apply to move property lines and build more homes — basically building a small subdivision in an otherwise rural area. Landowners in the area who have applied to move property lines include Weyerhaeuser’s subsidiary WREDCo. (Weyerhaeuser Real Estate Development Company) and local developer Greg Demers, according to the documents LandWatch has obtained. The landowners ask the county to let them move property lines and build more homes on the tax lot while maintaining the property’s forest tax deferral. One application proposed to change 48.17 acres to a 5-acre property and a .55-acre property to 31.46 acres. “If it’s legal, I don’t think the Oregon land use system had this in mind,” Bob Emmons of LandWatch says. Emmons adds, “What we are opposing now is Weyerhaeuser as a real estate company. We lose the [forest] resource, but they don’t lose the forest deferral.” Matt Laird and Keir Miller of the Land Management Division say moving the property lines is indeed legal under Oregon state law. Impacted forestland is land that is closer to developed areas, Miller says, and consists of a smaller parcel size (80 acres or less) than the nonimpacted forestland that makes up most of Lane County. Laird says most of the forestland in the county is protected from development under Oregon’s zoning laws. And he says that while moving the property lines on the impacted forestlands “might allow some rural home sites,” it “doesn’t allow you to extend out into deep rural areas.” He says the template for building homes on the impacted forestland forces clustering when new homes are built. Segel says, “Lane County forestland is being parcelized without using subdivision and partitioning procedures.” — Camilla Mortensen The data is in: Kids benefit academically when they attend kindergarten all day instead of half the day. An Oregon bill mandating that the state must pay for full-day kindergarten goes into effect in the 2015-2016 school year, and while the Oregon Department of Education (ODE) says it will fund the transition, some worry the funds won’t cover the full cost of implementation when districts switch from half-day to full-day. According to Karen Twain, ODE’s director of literacy development, schools are not mandated to switch to full- day kindergarten next year, but if they do, they must offer it for free, with each kindergartner receiving added funding from the state. The Eugene, Bethel and Springfield districts currently offer half-day kindergarten, and the latter two districts plan to switch to full-day next school year. Although 4J communications coordinator Kerry Delf says that while it is the district’s desire to offer full-day kindergarten, it is highly dependent on funding from the state and available classroom space. Similarly, Springfield School District communications specialist Devon Ashbridge says via email that “it is too costly to offer full-day kindergarten without state reimbursement, and many of our families would be unable to shoulder the cost themselves.” Bethel Community Relations Director Pat McGillivray says Bethel has some funds set aside for the switch, but the district is “working with legislators to see if the state can fund this mandate.” “I think everybody on the board is tremendously sup- portive of having full-day kindergarten,” 4J board member Jim Torrey says. The problem is in funding: School districts receive a certain amount of funds per student, and currently, each kindergartener is only getting funding for half a day. Next year, ODE will fund kindergarteners for a full day of school, but according to Torrey, “We’re hearing that the state may not have funds to provide enough dollars to the statewide pool, and as a result, the pool will have a reduced amount of funds for not only our students but all the students in the state.” He says members of the 4J school board are reaching out to members of the Oregon Legislature and Chief Education Officer Nancy Golden to make sure the overall dollar amount per student does not decrease. Last school year, about 38 percent of Oregon public school kindergartners attended full-day kindergarten, and Twain says that schools funded those programs in a variety of ways, from charging parents to cover the additional cost to using district general funds. Torrey says full-day kindergarten is key in helping kids read by third grade, which he notes as the “single highest predictor of success in students.” — Amy Schneider LANE COUNTY SPRAY SCHEDULE WTF Darcie Herbert sent us this photo of a fire hydrant outside the buy2 convenience store downtown. Funny? Or another slap in the face to homeless folks who have no place to go? 8 A ugust 21, 2014 • eugeneweekly.com • Coast Range Conifers, 335-1472, plans to hire Western Helicopter Services, Inc., (503) 538-9469, to aerially spray Escort, Oust, Oust Extra and/or Surfactant L-11 or LI-700 on 60 acres near Swartz Creek, using a helicopter landing pad on BLM land. See ODF notification 2014-781-00754, call Robin L. Biesecker at 935-2283 with questions. • Roseburg Resources Co., 935-2507, plans to spray 3,000 feet of its roadsides with aminopyralid, glyphosate, imazapyr, triclopyr amine and/or triclopyr ester and surfactants. See ODF notice 2014-781-00811, call Jim Hall at 997- 8713 with questions. • Weyerhaeuser Springfield Operations, 988-7502, plans to aerially spray 45 acres near Mohawk River tributaries with a long list of chemicals which includes aminopyralid, glyphosate, imazapyr, metsulfuron methyl, sulfometuron methyl, triclopyr, Climb-Water Conditioner, Odor Mask odor neutralizer, Firezone, drift control agent, surfactants and defoamers. See ODF notice 2041-771-00660, call Nikolai Hall at 726-3588 with questions. • Weyerhaeuser , 744-4600, plans to ground spray 29 acres near Congdon Creek in the Coast Range with Accord XRT II, Polaris SP, Rotary 2 SL, Sulfomet Extra, Metcel VMF, Foam Buster, Induce, Insist and/or MSO. Call Robin L. Biesecker at 935-2283 with questions. Compiled by Jan Wroncy and Gary Hale, Forestland Dwellers: 342-8332, forestlanddwellers.org.
