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WEDNESDAY EDITION
HUFF PINS SECOND AT STATE
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INSIDE — A7
128TH YEAR ❘ ISSUE NO. 15
❘ FEBRUARY 21, 2018 ❘ $1.00
SERVING WESTERN LANE COUNTY SINCE 1890
FLORENCE, OREGON
Florence holds reception for retiring marshal Dunes City
SVFR’s Sean Barrett will be honored in a ceremony honoring his service, contributions
sets goals,
holds
T
town hall
B Y M ARK B RENNAN
Siuslaw News
hirty years is a long time to
do anything, especially if
during much of that time you are
risking your life to save others.
Sean Barrett has been a mem-
ber of the Siuslaw Valley Fire
and Rescue (SVFR) for three
decades and has recently retired
from active duty with the dis-
trict.
On Friday, Feb. 23, from 3 to
5 p.m. at SVFR Main Station on
Highway 101, the fire district is
inviting the public to a retire-
ment open house to honor
Barrett’s years of service to the
community.
Barrett was also honored at a
January Florence City Council
meeting when Florence Police
Chief Tom Turner, Florence
Mayor Joe Henry and City
Planning Director Wendy
FarleyCampbell gave feedback
on working with him over the
years.
Henry said, “When we moved
here 19 years ago, you were here
serving our community, and you’re
still here. I’ve always been proud of
the things you’ve done.”
“You have made our community
safer by being fire marshal,”
FarleyCampbell said. “We will miss
you, we thank you and we wish you
luck on your adventures.”
Turner thanked Barrett for being
a resource for the police department
over the years, and gave him a chal-
lenge coin.
“It has been a privilege of mine to
work with such great people,”
Barrett said in response. “It makes
the job go so much easier when
there are good people around you.”
In a wide ranging interview con-
ducted with Barrett as he prepares
for the next stage of his life, he
spoke of his tenure and experi-
ences and also his hopes for the
department in the future.
Barrett began his work with
SVFR as a volunteer, moving to
a part-time position and eventu-
ally a full-time role as the fire
marshal.
Now, as he has weathered
some serious medical chal-
lenges in the past couple of
years, he has decided the time
has come to step away from the
day-to-day activities of being
Florence’s Fire Marshal.
“I’ve spent a total of 30 years
as a member of the district.
Eighteen years of that time was
as a volunteer and 12 years as a
paid employee of the SVFR. I
first started working as a part-
time maintenance person. I was
taking care of all of the equip-
ment and keeping the trucks and
fire engines in service,” Barrett
said. “Then I was hired to work
on special projects. One of those
was the ladder truck, getting it
ready for bid was a big project
SIUSLAW NEWS FILE PHOTO
and it was a really fun project to
be involved with.”
The possibility of making a larger
contribution to the district’s efforts
was appealing to Barrett, so when
an opportunity to gain experience
and training by working with an
interim fire marshal presented itself,
he took it.
“We hired a guy from California
for a year as our fire marshal. Chief
Buchanan said, ‘If you are interest-
ed, work with this guy,’ and I was,
so I did,” Barrett said. “I ended up
getting a lot of the certifications I
MARK BRENNAN/SIUSLAW NEWS
needed. Then I got hired on as a
Retiring Siuslaw Valley Fire Marshal Sean Barrett (center) is hon- prevention specialist and, once I got
ored by Police Chief Tom Turner and Florence Mayor Joe Henry my final certification, I was promot-
at the Jan. 8 City Council meeting. Barrett served with Siuslaw ed to fire marshal, which was the
Valley Fire and Rescue for 30 years — as a volunteer, a part-time best job I have ever had.”
worker and as fire marshal, a full-time position. A public retire-
ment open house for Barrett will be held Friday.
See MARSHAL 6A
In a string of meetings,
councilors discuss future,
roads and marijuana
In a Dunes City Council goal-setting
meeting on Tuesday, Feb. 13, the council
laid out plans for
B Y J ARED A NDERSON
the 2018 year with
Siuslaw News
a wide variety of
topics such as good
governance, financial stability and water
quality.
One of the first topics covered was
good governance. The council spoke of
streamlining the Citizens Advisory
Committee and the Planning Commission
process, which reviews proposed city
ordinances and provides recommenda-
tions. But the process can take time, as
exemplified by the work done on the
city’s Title 15, which covers zoning and
development within the city.
“Ten years is too long to be consider-
ing changes to Title 15,” notes of the
meeting read.
The importance of completing Title 15
on time was vital, the council argued,
because regulating permits can be diffi-
cult to enforce.
Changes to the building and construc-
tion process would include a mandated
preconstruction review meeting and
developing checklists.
The council hoped that the city’s
Comprehensive Plan will be reviewed,
laying out the groundwork for what ordi-
nances should be written and passed.
The council also had interest in renewing
the periodic newsletters Dunes City used to
create, which covered various topics related
See
COUNCILORS 9A
‘For the dunes to exist, the sand needs to move’
Oregon Dunes Restoration Collaborative
brings awareness to vanishing dunes
B Y J ARED A NDERSON
Siuslaw News
INSIDE
In 2014, the U.S. Forest Service
created a strategy group tasked with
developing an “Oregon Dunes
Restoration Strategy.” In October
2016, the Oregon Dunes Restoration
Collaborative (ODRC) formed to con-
tinue the group’s work. Now, ODRC
has released a new book, “Restoring
Oregon’s Dunes: The bid to save a
national treasure.”
Developed as an image-heavy “cof-
fee table” book, “Restoring Oregon’s
Dunes” tells the story of the coastal
dunes that run from Florence to Coos
Bay, their history, why they’re disap-
pearing and the partnership that has
formed to try and save them from
invasive species.
The foreign plants that threaten the
dunes, such as European beach grass,
were originally planted in the early
1900s to protect facilities like high-
ways, jetties and towns from being
overtaken by sand.
“The sand would blow over these
and bury them,” ODRC representative
Bill Blackwell said. “(The plants)
were a good thing at the start, but they
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quickly became a problem.”
The problem was twofold.
First, the invasive species began
overtaking native plants, like the
short-lived perennial Pink Sand
Verbena.
“Species like the Western Snowy
Plover need open sand to nest in, but
they’re losing to the European beach
grass and Scotch broom,” Blackwell
said.
Second, the plants themselves are
altering the natural geological
processes of the dunes.
“For the dunes to exist, the sand
needs to move,” said Blackwell. “If
you’re out there, you can see it will
look different from one day to the
next. With the vegetation stabilizing
things, the sand can’t move, which
stabilizes the dunes and simplifies
processes.”
Because of this, dunes have been
altered drastically from where they
were before the invasive species were
planted. Aerial photographs from the
1940s compared to today shows that
much of the open sand has disap-
peared.
In 2014, the Siuslaw National
Forest, which manages the Oregon
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NED HICKSON/SIUSLAW NEWS
The Oregon dunes once moved freely with the wind. Now, a variety of vegetation, including some inva-
sive species, anchor the sand, permanently altering the changing nature of the dunes.
Dunes National Recreation Area, con-
vened a group of stakeholders —
recreation and tourism groups, envi-
ronmental groups, tribal representa-
THIS WEEK ’ S
tives, elected officials, community
members and federal, state and coun-
ty agencies — to develop a strategy
for tackling dunes restoration. It is
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there that the ODRC was conceived.
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DUNES 6A