News
Blue Mountain Eagle
Wednesday, February 28, 2018
A3
Options presented for aging
Forest Service buildings
Allowing
structures to
‘melt in place’ is
a viable option
By Richard Hanners
Blue Mountain Eagle
Sharon Livingston
Rancher calls for
filling natural resource
adviser position
County court
will bring matter
back March 14
By Richard Hanners
Blue Mountain Eagle
In a personal and “from
the heart” talk to the Grant
County Court on Feb. 21,
Long Creek rancher Sharon
Livingston emphasized the
need for protecting natural
resources — water, timber
and grazing land — and
called for the court to fill
the position for a natural
resource adviser.
Livingston
described
the efforts she’s taken to
maintain her ranch in a pro-
ductive state and the various
groups she has represented
in Salem lobbying on behalf
of agriculture.
She expressed her frus-
tration over how government
agencies manage natural re-
sources in Grant County. She
said the Forest Service has
not properly managed the
land adjacent to her ranch in
40 years, noting that she has
to repair the fence between
the properties to keep out
cattle grazing on leased for-
est lands.
A natural resource ad-
viser for the county needs
to be capable of writing
documents and representing
Grant County in the legis-
lature, Livingston said. She
praised past Eastern Oregon
legislators but noted that
they often were outvoted in
the state House and Senate.
County residents Jim
Sproul and Sam Palmer
thanked Livingston for her
talk and supported her call
for the court to fill the nat-
ural resource adviser posi-
tion. Sproul said the person
chosen by the court should
be a local who makes deci-
sions based on “good solid
science.”
Commissioner Jim Ham-
sher asked that the matter be
put on the court’s next agen-
da, and the court agreed.
Judge Scott Myers noted
that the county had received
three responses to requests
for proposals that it issued
last year, and all three were
locals.
• The court approved a
request from Julie Ellison,
county treasurer, to present
the fiscal year 2019 cost-
of-living adjustment wage
increase to the county bud-
get committee. The COLA
is determined by the federal
consumer price index, in
accordance with a contract
with the union represent-
ing the sheriff’s office, and
then applied to the rest of
the county’s wage earners,
she said. The COLA for the
next fiscal year will be 2.13
percent.
• The court approved a re-
quest from Josh Wolf, cor-
rections manager for Grant
County Jail, for two ex-
ternal hard drives to store
body camera video files,
several night-vision cam-
eras for outside the jail and
several rugged heavy-du-
ty radio microphones with
an estimated total cost of
$5,224. The court also ap-
proved a request to lease a
dishwasher from Ecolab at
$94 per month for one year.
Myers said he had
signed a $15,105 contract
with North River Electric to
update the lights inside the
jail with LED fixtures. With
a $10,574 rebate from Ore-
gon Trail Electric Coopera-
tive, the cost will be $4,532
to be paid from the jail ex-
pansion fund.
• Citing an unusual
amount of juvenile delin-
quency cases, the court ap-
proved moving $5,370 from
the county’s all-department
contingency fund to the
Community
Corrections
fund.
• The court approved
creating a half-time county
position for about 20 hours
to assist Veanne Weddle,
senior programs manager,
clear a backlog on a list of
inactive seniors and other
office matters.
• A request by Mindy
Winegar, fair manager, to
change the job descrip-
tions for a secretary and a
groundskeeper that would
save the county about
$6,000 was approved by the
court.
• The court approved a
funding request by Katee
Hoffman, veteran services
officer, so she could attend
a women’s veterans confer-
ence in April.
• The Grant County Court
will meet again March 14.
Selling aging Forest Ser-
vice buildings, finding new
uses for them or even letting
some “melt in place” — any-
thing but tearing them down.
That was the message
a handful of residents told
Malheur National Forest of-
ficials during a meeting on
the forest’s recently com-
pleted draft Facilities Master
Plan held at Grant County
Regional Airport Feb. 20.
When told the plan was
drafted by retired engineers
Jerry Carlson, Dick Sawaya
and Bob VinderLinden for
Northstar Technology Corp.
of Irvine, California, sever-
al residents said the survey
work should have been per-
formed by locals. The Forest
Service also needs to “look
outside the box” to find solu-
tions, they said.
If the Forest Service is
having trouble housing sea-
sonal firefighters, then why
not fix up these old build-
ings, Billy Jo George asked.
Noting that she believed
the agency didn’t try hard
enough to find the money
needed to address a mount-
ing maintenance backlog for
its facilities, George blamed
the situation on “nothing but
sheer neglect” and called the
proposal to tear buildings
down a “quick fix.”
Citing the case of a build-
ing ruined by a tree growing
out of a foundation, Howard
Gieger noted how easy it
would have been for a main-
tenance worker to kill the
tree when it was young. He
also described how he and
others long ago volunteered
to maintain the Crane Prairie
Work Center if they could use
it during winter. They ended
up being told no, he said.
“Overhead is eating you
up,” Gieger said.
Jim Sproul suggested that
people should be allowed to
“adopt” a site and agree to
fix it up if they were allowed
to use the site for 10 years.
He also suggested the Forest
Service operate more along
“capitalist” policies, in par-
ticular selling the land that
forest buildings sit on.
Sproul also likened some
restoration efforts made with
funding from the American
Recovery and Reinvestment
Act under the Obama admin-
istration to “putting lipstick
on a pig.”
He said he grew con-
cerned when he initially
heard the Forest Service
might decommission build-
ings built by the Civilian
Conservation Corps in the
1930s. He suggested the
agency “at least let them melt
down.”
Frances Preston said she
opposed decommissioning
any buildings on the Malheur
National Forest and asked
why there was an effort to
step up decommissioning.
She suggested the agency
should first offer buildings it
didn’t want to the county.
Teresa Dixon, the for-
The Eagle/Richard Hanners
Grant County resident Jim Sproul speaks to Malheur National Forest staff following
a meeting on the recently completed draft Facilities Master Plan at Grant County
Regional Airport on Feb. 20. From left, roads engineer Zeke Langum; Sproul;
forest facilities manager Keith Nickerson; recreation, lands and minerals program
manager Teresa Dixon; and recreation, engineering, lands and minerals staff officer
Mike Montgomery.
The Eagle/Richard Hanners
Teresa Dixon talks about the recently completed draft
Facilities Master Plan at Grant County Regional Airport
on Feb. 20. Attendees said allowing old buildings to ‘melt
in place’ would be better than tearing them down.
est’s recreation, lands and
minerals project manager,
explained that the Forest Ser-
vice is not allowed to set up
long-term recreation leases or
to sell the land where a build-
ing sits. Congress sets those
rules, and the Forest Service
can’t lobby for itself in Wash-
ington, D.C., she said.
Zeke Langum, a forest
roads engineer, defended the
contractors who drafted the
facilities plan. He also noted
that the plan was advisory,
and any proposal for decom-
missioning would undergo
further review.
Mike Montgomery, a rec-
reation, engineering, lands
and minerals staff officer for
the Malheur National Forest,
agreed that forest staff would
take a second look before de-
commissioning a building.
Montgomery explained
that a national study of the
Contributed photo
Contributed photo
The Raddue Guard
Station on the Malheur
National Forest was
abandoned about 15
years ago. Photo by U.S.
Forest Service.
Forest Service’s multimil-
lion-dollar
maintenance
backlog was based on a na-
tional database, but the Mal-
heur’s draft Facilities Master
Plan used information gath-
ered from on-site reviews.
The plan will enable the
forest to make good deci-
The Flagtail Lookout on
the Malheur National
Forest. Photo by Rex
Kamstra.
sions on what to do with its
aging buildings, he said. In
some cases, letting a build-
ing “melt in place” is a via-
ble option, he said.
The draft plan and com-
ment form are available at
the Malheur National Forest
website, fs.usda.gov/mal-
heur. Comments on the plan
will be accepted through
March 23. For informa-
tion, Teresa Dixon can be
contacted at teresaldixon@
fs.fed.us.
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