SIUSLAW NEWS | SATURDAY, JANUARY 19, 2019 | 7A
FORESTRY from page 5A
Job Corps is the nation’s
largest free education and job
training program for young
adults from ages 16 to 24. The
most local division is Angell
Job Corps, located in Yachats.
“It’s like a federal job train-
ing program for disadvantaged
youth,” said Bryce Crunkilton,
one of the trainers for Angell.
“They can come to Job Corps,
get their high school diplomas
or driver’s license. And it’s a
trade school, so they can learn
a trade. We have urban forestry,
plumbing, carpentry, painting,
masonry and automotive.”
The Angell students get food,
lodging, uniforms, equipment
and even a small bi-weekly al-
lowance.
“We get about $1 a day,” said
Jack Day, who was working at
the Baker site. “You get $32 a
month, and that’s if you’ve been
here for eight months. I only
get about 22 every two weeks.
“I didn’t come here for the
pay,” he added. “I came for the
training. I can’t complain.”
While Angell works with a
variety of trades, the group at
Camp Baker are in the forest-
ry program, which takes them
to different sites around the
region to learn in the field.
Here, they’re taking out dying
trees, cutting down dangerous
branches from the living ones
and making the place safe for
Scouts.
“You see these stumps here?”
Anderson asked, pointing to
two small, fresh tree stumps
in the ground. “A kid, 17 or 18,
comes up to me and points out
had they had rot in the sides. He
said, ‘We need to do something
about that, they’re not getting
enough light.’ I asked what he
recommended. He said they
needed to be removed as they
weren’t going to survive here. I
said, ‘OK, let’s do that.’ His face
just lit up. ‘An adult listened to
me!’ It was a neat experience
to see someone take his ad-
vice. He ran to his friends and
said, ‘Guys, we got a removal!’
We allow them to express their
opinions and go through with
things. We’re okay with that, we
Buying or Selling? I can help.
Aileen Sapp
Broker
541 999-5396
7th Street #1100 – Wooded 0.23 acre lot on an
undeveloped street. The Professional Offi ce/Insti-
tutional Zoning District is intended for the estab-
lishment of offi ces, medical and other institutional
uses, limited accessory services for worker’s
convenience and public space. Buyer to do due
diligence. $12,941. #2911-18257693
1749 Highway 101 • 541-997-1200
Always Something Happening
541.997.1994 | 888.968.4086
715 Q UINCE S TREET | F LORENCE , OR 97439 |
WWW . EVENTCENTER . ORG
WHAT’S COMING UP:
JANUARY
Winter Music Festival
January 25th thru 27th
FRAA Winter Arts Festival
January 26th 11 a.m. to 5 p.m
January 27th 11 a.m. to 4 p.m
FEBRUARY
Florence FoodShare’s Crab Crack Fundraiser
February 2nd, 4 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Fraudville
February 9th, 5 p.m. to 9 p.m.
Nicole Henry
February 14th 7 p.m.
FEC Indoor Yard Sale
February 23rd, 8 a.m. to 2 p.m
want our property to be right.
We trust them.”
The workers at Angell, many
of whom are still working on
their high school diplomas,
come for various reasons. Day
already had his GED before he
arrived.
“But I didn’t have too many
skills,” he said. “I wasn’t doing
too well back in my hometown,
wasn’t doing anything good.”
So he looked into Job Corps
and the training it offered.
“They make you try out
three trades to make sure that’s
the one you want. I didn’t even
try out the other two, painting
or masonry. ‘Just send me over
to forestry.’ I’ve done a little bit
of logging with family and this
just seemed the most unique
in my eyes. I didn’t even know
what an arborist was until I
saw the urban forestry trade.
Some people think they’re just
loggers. That’s what I thought
it would be. But then I found it
was a lot more.”
Day’s coworker, Jessie Fox,
agreed.
“I don’t think a lot of people
understand what an arborist is,”
he said. “I thought it was just
cutting trees. I didn’t know it
was taking care of them, prun-
ing. And now I’m doing it.”
Fox, who is 17, came to
the program for his diploma.
Along the way, he found a true
passion for forestry work.
“It’s the most hard-work-
ing trade,” he said. “It’s super
unique. I never even realized
this is how people took care
of trees. I never knew any of
this stuff before I came to Job
Corps, and I fell in love with it.
… I really enjoy climbing, I’m
not afraid of heights. It really
falls into place.”
Every worker we talked to at
the Baker site listed climbing
and delimbing as their favorite
aspect of the job, though that
aspect can be tough for begin-
ners.
“We’ve had foresters who
were afraid of heights,” Fox
said. “Actually, a lot. That’s
one of the reasons they joined,
which was to get over their
fear of heights. The whole pro-
fessional quality of it, the help
from other people, is a good
way to get over that fear. We
have successful people who
just could not do it their first
day. One of my good friends
who graduated two months
ago was terrified. But now he’s
climbing, he’s delimbing, he’s
topping. All of it. There are
definitely great things about a
trade like this, both personally
and work related.”
Once you get over the height
challenge, the views can be
awe inspiring.
“The view is great!” said
Wyatt Artemenko as he was
readying for an ascent.
To safely get up a tree, one
has to take a line with a weight
attached to it and throw it up
in the tree, either by hand or
slingshot. Once the line is at-
tached, which can be over 100
feet high, the climbing rope is
pulled up and the forester is
good to climb.
“I was going to do plumb-
ing, but I tried forestry and it
was a lot of fun and I really
enjoyed it,” Artemenko said
as he was readying the weight
and the line. “And I’m still en-
joying it, so might as well do it.
I like that it’s really hands on,
it’s outdoorsy. Getting a pretty
good workout, learning a lot
about trees. My first day here,
I probably learned about three
different kinds of trees. It’s
hard work, but it’s cool.”
And it can be dangerous
work, which Job Corps knows
full well.
“Absolutely it’s dangerous,”
Crunkilton said. “Once in
a while they’ll get cuts and
scrapes, but nothing major.
The main purpose of the pro-
gram, the main priority, is
always safety. We’re teaching
them the right way. It’s one of
the most dangerous fields out
there. Learning how to do it
the right way is really import-
ant. We teach them all of our
industry safety standards. If
they’re running a chainsaw
up in the tree, they always
have two separate tie ins. In
the event they cut one, it’s still
there. There are always two
hands on the saw. Wrap your
thumbs.”
The training saves lives, but
it also gives them direction.
“We’re basically giving them
a head start to get out in the
field instead of going through a
company’s training program,”
Crunkilton said. “They’re al-
ready going to be at a certain
level where they’ll be able to
get promotions and raises a lot
quicker. It helps get their foot
in the door. A lot of them ha-
ven’t had a whole lot of work
experience yet, just getting out
of high school. They can put
this down on their resumes,
and it really helps them get a
job. We get them industry cer-
tifications too, like a chainsaw
certification, first aid and CPR
cards, pesticide certification.”
Most of the students that
day were eager to start careers
in the forestry field, which is
currently in desperate need of
workers. According to an Au-
gust 2017 article in The Guard-
ian, as construction dried up
during the Great Recession, so
too did the forestry jobs; tim-
ber just was not in demand. But
when the economy came back,
the workers had moved on to
less dangerous professions.
That’s why programs like
Angell Job Corps are working
to get younger generations in-
terested in the profession again.
And so far, it’s working.
Eighteen-year-old
Tyler
Hartman had never had any
experience with forestry before
Job Corps, coming in just to
finish his high school diploma.
But now, he’s all in, hoping to
get a job in forestry or land-
scaping.
“I like the physical labor of
it,” he said. “You get your own
chainsaw, climb trees. You can
go home every day, knowing
you did something. It’s very
satisfying.”
For more information about
the Angell Job Corps Civil-
ian Conservation Center, visit
angell.jobcorps.gov/.
For more information about
Camp Baker, visit www.otcbsa.
org/baker/.
AUDIT from page 1A
cussion is the level of “ma-
teriality” that the error or
information provided to the
auditors meets. In the case of
the WLAD report, the actual
amount involved was approx-
imately $88,000. For SVFR,
the amount was less than half
of that total. That amount was
not judged to be “material.”
The much higher WLAD lia-
bility number was the reason
for the “qualified” designa-
tion for that district, although
the accounting practices used
were the same. It was the total
dollars involved that caused
the different assessment deter-
mination.
The difference in the as-
sessment does indicate there
are issues that may need to be
addressed immediately or, in
the case of the “qualified” as-
sessment given to WLAD, the
possible use of personal med-
ical plans available to PERS
employees would require the
district to increase its PERS
contributions in order to ad-
equately address this possible
future financial liability.
Mahr’s report was well re-
ceived by the SVFR Board of
Directors, but the members of
the WLAD board decided to
immediately address the pend-
ing PERS healthcare liability
issue.
WLAD directors were unan-
imous in their meeting with
Mahr that they wanted to take
whatever action was possible
and necessary to avoid the des-
ignation of “qualified.” To this
end, the board passed a motion
to reject the report and take
internal actions to meet the
potential PERS liability issues
immediately.
This course of action would
require the district to make the
financial adjustments to cover
any type of liability to PERS.
Interim Chief Director Steve
Abel, who oversees the admin-
istration of both SVFR and
WLAD under an intergovern-
mental agreement, wants the
public to know that the report
presented by Mahr to WLAD
was a concern that the district
takes seriously.
“Both SVFR and WLAD
take their fiduciary respon-
sibility seriously and want to
ensure that we are in full com-
pliance with Oregon Laws and
accounting practices. We are
pleased that we are in com-
pliance,” Abel said. “Due to a
change in audit requirements
to fully account for reporting
potential future liabilities, we
have asked the auditor to in-
clude Post Employment Health
Benefits report in the WLAD
audit, which will allow the
audit report to be considered
‘unqualified’ — meaning that
there are no significant issues
that need to be addressed.”
The decision to ask for the
audit to be put on hold while
the necessary financial ar-
rangements were made to
cover the potential liabilities
will postpone the acceptance
and forwarding to state offi-
cials of the report but should
be accomplished within the
timelines required for filing an
audit with the state.
The use of the term “quali-
fied” means the assessment is
made with one or more issues
highlighted by auditors, which
give them pause, or to the firm’s
inability to access all the rele-
vant information for the audit.
This term also may refer to a
particular aspect of the organi-
zational accounting process or
an accounting error that can be
adjusted to alter the end deter-
mination of the report.
Generally, these “qualified”
assessments are not the result
of serious errors or the result of
any type of malfeasance; they
are used to indicate an area in
the financials that may need
closer attention. In WLAD’s
case, Mahr’s firm was con-
cerned with a potentially un-
funded future PERS liability.
Another aspect of the dis-
FRAA ART CENTER
120 Maple Street
Phone: 541-997-4435
Hours Open: Wed-Fri 10am-4pm,
Sat 10am-5pm, Sun. 10am-4pm
Classes, Workshops & Events
Acrylic Pour Art with Pam Nedder
Every 1st Saturday. Next one, February 2,
2019, 2-4 pm. Make your own acrylic pour
painting. All materials provided. Pre-
registration req’d at FRAA or w/ Pam,
pam.nedder@gmail.com .
Alcohol Ink Wine Glass Workshop
with Denise Tarvin
Saturday, February 16, 2019, 2-4 pm
Learn to apply alcohol ink to wine glasses.
All materials provided. Pre-registration
req’d at FRAA.
NEW! Basic Leather Tooling with
Tandy Leather
Saturday, February 23, 2019, 2-4 pm
Learn basic leather stamping and tooling
techniques to make a leather coaster.
All materials provided. Pre-registration
req’d at FRAA.
Big Wave Poetry 1st Tuesday
Open Mic
Tuesday, February 5, 2019 at 7:00 pm.
Celebrate the New Year with Poetry!
Admission is free and refreshments will be
available.
Writers on the River - Creative
Writing Workshop w/ Catherine
Rourke
Writing from the Heart: Find Your
True Voice
Follow your heart’s call to write!
Sat., February 16, 2019 10 am - 12 noon
Brand new program ~ 4th annual event!
All writing levels and genres, Contact:
CJReditor@gmail.com , 541-708-2120
Midnight in Florence Literary
Salon
FRAA Quarterly Member’s Meeting
Tuesday, January 22, 10:00 am. Come
learn what we have been doing, upcoming
events, and provide inputs for the future.
Saturday, February 2, 2019, 6:30-8:30 pm
Featured author-poet Jack Karasch
Writers Open Mic with Catherine Rourke
Free public event $5 donation suggested
Contact: CJReditor@gmail.com ,
541-708-2120
Winter Music Festival
Sponsored by FRAA, held at the FEC,
Saturday, January 26, 11-5 pm and
Sunday, January 27, 11- 4 pm
Join us for this annual event full of music,
food and great art.
Painting with John Leasure
Saturdays 9 am - 12 pm
No painting experience required.
Contact: jnleasure@hotmail.com or
541-991-2754 for details and fees.
For more information about classes, visit fraaoregon.org. To register for
these classes, please call or visit FRAA at our Art Center on Maple Street.
JARED ANDERSON/SIUSLAW NEWS
Job Corps members learn all the safety tips and tree
identifiers before climbing them to do necessary work.