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resistance, quality and other safety standards.
The bill also calls for studying the environ-
mental footprint of wood building construction
— from timber harvest through manufacturing
— while analyzing potential impacts on wildlife.
Sen. Jeff Merkley, an Oregon Democrat, co-
wrote the letter with Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho.
Merkley said he is working to establish Oregon as
an industry hub for mass timber products to boost
the rural economy, using locally sourced wood.
“This bill supports innovative manufacturing
that creates jobs in the rural part of the state, and
encourages more sustainable tall wood building
construction in urban parts of the state,” Merkley
said in a statement.
Other senators who signed the letter include
Ron Wyden, D-Oregon; Maria Cantwell, D-Wash-
ington; James Risch, R-Idaho; Amy Klobuchar,
D-Minnesota; Steve Daines, R-Montana; Roger
Wicker, R-Mississippi; Gary Peters, D-Michigan;
and Angus King, I-Maine.
Supporters of the bill say it will not only create
jobs but establish a new market for small-diame-
ter trees and branches, encouraging more active
forest management at a time of increasingly large
and destructive wildfires.
“There’s a lot of forests throughout the West
that are in need of restoration,” said Timm Locke,
director of forest products for the Oregon Forest
Resources Institute. “If we don’t remove the tim-
ber, those forests are going to go up in flames.”
Mass timber construction is relatively new
in the U.S., though it has been popular since the
mid-’90s in Europe. In Oregon, the first commer-
cial-size building to use cross-laminated timber
came in 2015 at the Oregon Zoo’s Elephant Lands
habitat.
Cross-laminated timber, or CLT, is made from
planks of wood layered perpendicular to one an-
other in large sheets. Mass timber also includes
nail-laminated timber, glue-laminated beams and
laminated veneer lumber.
“It’s a new way to build commercial buildings,
which hearkens back to the old days, when almost
all buildings were made out of wood,” Locke said.
“The bill would put money toward product re-
search and development and product performance
work, so we can meet the need of code officials to
show this stuff actually works.”
Locke pointed to a 2017 study by Oregon
BEST, an economic development nonprofit for
clean technology startups, measuring the econom-
ic impacts of cross-laminated timber. According
to the study, the market potential for mass timber
nationwide could result in an additional demand
of up to 6.1 billion board-feet of lumber.
About 15 percent of wood consumed in the
U.S. comes from Oregon, Locke said. With an-
other 6.1 billion board-feet, at 15 percent market
share, he estimated that would result in 17,000
new jobs, including 6,000 direct jobs.
Arran Robertson, a spokesman for the Port-
land-based environmental group Oregon Wild,
said he is encouraged the bill will take environ-
mental and wildlife impacts into account, offering
the chance to source wood differently from the
forests, rather than industrial clear-cuts.
“This is an opportunity to create a marketplace
to reward the people who are doing things a little
bit different,” Robertson said.
Thomas Maness, dean of the College of For-
estry at Oregon State University, said there are
“significant new market opportunities” for mass
timber. Product testing, research and profession-
al training will be key moving forward, Maness
said, as the wood products and construction in-
dustries transition to using mass timber in taller
and more complex structures.
Rob Freres, executive vice president of Freres
Lumber in Lyons, said his business has already
staked its future in mass timber.
“New product development provides the
means to compete worldwide and gives rural
communities the opportunity to prosper,” Freres
said.
Wednesday, June 13, 2018
around guns as a child in Texas
and once worked for an outfitter
in the Eagle Cap Wilderness. He
also said he was unaware of any
statewide initiatives relating to
firearms when he wrote his chal-
lenge to Rue’s initiative.
Webb said he learned about
Rue’s initiative from an article in
the May 9 Blue Mountain Eagle,
and his challenge refers to the
measure as presented in the sum-
mary.
Webb believes some of the ini-
tiative’s language is so broad that
substantive legal changes to ex-
isting statutory and constitutional
law will occur if it passes. Voters
should be provided fair notice of
that possibility under the “full text
requirement” for prospective ini-
tiatives, he said.
For example, if county officials
are prohibited from enforcing any
law that restricts the right of people
to possess firearms, ammunition
and firearms accessories, then they
would be unable to enforce existing
laws that make it illegal for convict-
ed felons or certain mentally ill peo-
ple from possessing firearms. This
could “significantly increase public
safety risks for county residents,”
Webb said.
Requiring the sheriff to review
federal, state and local laws af-
fecting firearms would expand the
sheriff’s statutory responsibilities
to include judicial review, Webb
also said. He noted that the Ore-
gon Constitution prohibits indi-
viduals charged with the official
duties of one branch of govern-
ment from exercising any of the
functions of the other two.
Webb also noted that state law
The initiative
Rue told the Eagle his intent
in submitting the initiative was to
preserve the U.S. Constitution’s
Second Amendment and to “save
our gun rights.” He said he was also
reacting to “what was happening
in the (Willamette) Valley,” refer-
ring to two statewide initiatives that
would limit magazine capacity and
require gun owners to store firearms
with trigger locks or in locked box-
es.
Rue said he was also concerned
about a growing nationwide po-
litical movement that followed
several major school-shooting
incidents this year. He said gun
owners were being blamed and
he was concerned gun-ownership
rights could be impacted.
“It’s not guns that kill people
— it’s people,” he said.
Rue said he wants to see ex-
isting regulations enforced, in-
cluding background checks, that
would stop mentally ill people
from possessing firearms.
This is the first time he’s
worked on an initiative, he said,
and he’s not politically active and
not a member of the National Rifle
Association. Rue said he obtained
the language for his initiative
from similar Second Amendment
preservation initiatives submitted
in six other counties in Oregon.
The challenge
Webb said he’s a hunter, owns
firearms and is a Second Amend-
ment supporter. He grew up
requires initiatives “embrace one
subject only,” but Measure 12-72
bundles four subjects: 1) redefin-
ing the constitutional definition of
firearms to include ammunition
and accessories; 2) making any
gun-restricting law in Grant Coun-
ty unconstitutional; 3) expanding
the sheriff’s statutory duties; and 4)
prohibiting the sheriff from enforc-
ing any law that restricts the right of
people to possess firearms.
He also noted that county ini-
tiatives are limited to “matters of
county concern,” and Measure 12-
72 potentially conflicts with state
and federal laws. State law, for
example, holds that “the authority
to regulate in any matter whatso-
ever the sale, acquisition, transfer,
ownership, possession, storage,
transportation or use of firearms
or any element relating to firearms
and components thereof, including
ammunition, is vested solely in the
Legislative Assembly.”
The responses
Rue said he disagreed with
Webb’s arguments. The initiative
did not seek to change the U.S.
Constitution but “to preserve it in its
current state.”
In a May 31 declaration, Percy
explained how she determined that
Rue’s initiative met constitution-
al and statutory provisions. While
she found that the petition measure
satisfied those requirements, her
decision “was not, however, with-
out doubt.” She noted the measure
“lacked clarity and was subject to
differing interpretations.”
“While the language is very gen-
eral in nature, I assumed that it was
limited in scope to only matters of
TIMBER
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comes in panels the size of walls.
The material is catching on in ur-
ban construction, but the U.S. lags
behind its use in Canada, the Unit-
ed Kingdom and some other parts
of Europe.
Jonathan Heppner is with Le-
ver Architecture, the firm that
designed Framework. He told the
crowd earlier in the day Lever
spends a lot of discussion on how
to build to “elevate the human
experience.” But the firm did not
shirk the obligation to keep people
safe in a wood building.
Fire, after all, is the big threat.
Heppner said Lever had to
prove load-bearing beams could
withstand a two-hour fire at 2,000
degree in a furnace, the kind of
test steel and concrete also have
to pass.
Lever did that in the fall of
2016, becoming the first mass tim-
ber products in the world to pass
the test.
Framework also uses a
“self-centering design” for earth-
quake livability.
EO Media Group/E.J. Harris
Participants in the Mass Timber Rising Summit look up into
the canopy while touring a thinned section of forest Thursday
north of Union.
“This building won’t be torn
down after an earthquake — it
survives the earthquake,” Hep-
pner said.
The construction advantages
mass timber offers, he said, might
restart the timber economy in rural
Oregon.
The state already is making
investments in mass timber with
the Tallwood Design Institute at
the University of Oregon. Judith
Sheine is the director of the insti-
tute and said mass timber is push-
ing the creation of jobs, better for-
est management and even fighting
global warming.
SECOND
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ties. State police must maintain registry.”
It defines each term in a summary that
NOTICE OF FILING DEADLINE
For the City of Mt. Vernon
2018 ELECTION FOR MAYOR AND (2) CITY COUNCIL POSITIONS
Notice is hereby given under the provisions of The City of Mt. Vernon Charter
adopted July 10, 1990 the filing deadline for persons wishing to run for the
Mayor and two Council member positions to be elected during the
November 6, 2018 General Election on or before
Tuesday, August 28, 2018 By 4:00 p.m. at Mt. Vernon City Hall
Nominating filing forms and petitions will be available at Mt. Vernon City Hall
during regular business hours of 7:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Monday thru Friday.
Nominating petitions shall contain at least 34 signatures of qualified
electors residing within The City of Mt. Vernon hat are registered voters.
A fee of $10.00 must be paid by the filing deadline if a nomination petition
is not used and an individual wishes to declare his or her candidacy.
Tami Kowing, City Recorder
62657
The institute works on certif-
icate programs in mass timber
construction and work force de-
velopment, Sheine said. It helps
local governments create wood
structures, such as the Springfield
Mass Timber Parking Garage.
The university planned to use
steel to improve the west grand-
stands at Hayward Field, but the
institute convinced them to go
with wood. And Lane County is
considering a mass timber court-
house, she said, with all the source
material available within a 250-
mile radius.
Oregon’s U.S. senators also are
follows descriptions of what a “Yes” and a
“No” vote mean.
Thursday’s petition argues that those de-
scriptions should be more “impartial” and
that the current version “buries the actual
major effect of the measure,” which the pe-
titioners argue is to criminalize the sale and
possession of commonly owned firearms.
Petitioners object to the use of the terms
“assault weapons” and “large capacity mag-
azines,” saying they are “prejudicial, politi-
cally charged and emotionally laden.”
COLLAR
Continued from Page A1
to use on the device, which is
now an Arduino MKR GSM
1400. The device is essential-
ly the internal parts of a cell
phone, which would eliminate
the GPS size problem.
It can download the re-
quired GPS and Geofence
data, which would work with
county concern and was not an at-
tempt to affect in any way the exist-
ing federal and state laws,” she said.
Percy said she sought legal ad-
vice from Grant County Counsel
Ron Yockim about portions of the
initiative and was told the Oregon
Supreme Court had ruled “that
when faced with such doubt, and
the need to make assumptions,
that any doubt should be resolved
in favor of the exercise of the right
of initiative.”
“As a result of this legal advice,
I concluded that the measure could
meet the tests and accepted the peti-
tion to be placed on the ballot in or-
der to allow the public to debate the
issue and in turn develop a clear un-
derstanding of the intent,” she said.
She also noted that the only peo-
ple likely to be subject to penalties
for violating provisions of the initia-
tive would be county officials.
Webb disagreed with Percy’s
interpretation — store owners who
refuse to sell firearms or ammuni-
tion and state police who enforce
existing gun laws in Grant County
might be found in violation of the
initiative, he said. He also noted that
it’s not the purpose of the initiative
process to debate its interpretation.
“It should be clearly articulated
to the voters,” he said. “That’s the
full text requirement.”
Webb said Rue’s initiative likely
will pass if it’s placed on the ballot,
but it would be unenforceable under
federal and state laws. Grant County
already has similar laws, including a
1995 ordinance on management of
public lands.
If the initiative becomes law, it
likely will be challenged in court,
Webb said.
pushing the development of mass
timber.
Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff
Merkley, both Democrats, sub-
mitted a bipartisan letter on May
23 urging the Committee on Agri-
culture, Nutrition and Forestry to
include the Timber Innovation Act
in the next Farm Bill.
The act would help the mass
timber industry on multiple fronts,
from a new research and devel-
opment program for using mass
timber products in construction
to grants to incentivise new wood
technology for construction. The
act also would extend the Tall
Wood Building Prize Competition
for the next five years. Framework
is a previous winner.
The senators are also touting
the expansion of the Collabora-
tive Forest Landscape Restoration
Program in the Senate’s proposed
Farm Bill, doubling funding from
$40 million to $80 million per
year and extending it through
2023. The Malheur National For-
est and the Blue Mountains For-
est Partners collaborative have
been securing $4 million per year
for restoration work through the
program.
The petition, backed by a coalition of
faith leaders calling itself the Lift Every
Voice Campaign, aims to block the sale of
some semi-automatic weapons with certain
features, and most magazines that hold more
than 10 rounds.
If the measure succeeds, people who own
those types of guns and magazines would
have to register them with the Oregon State
Police and submit to a background check.
The petition must get 88,184 signatures
by July 6 to qualify for the ballot.
the fence transmitter as a de-
terrent. Geofence is a virtual
geographic boundary, enabled
with GPS or RFID technology,
that allows software to respond
when a mobile device enters or
leaves a particular area.
Roblyn Brown, wolf pro-
gram field coordinator for
ODFW, said the problem in
previous collaring attempts
was the battery holding enough
of a charge to give repeated
shocks. She said the younger
generation are the innovators
of tomorrow.
“I’ve heard people talking
about the high-frequency as-
pect, and it’s something we’ve
tried,” she said. “We’re not
really a developer of things
because of funding. I think it’s
fantastic they’re working on
it, and somebody may figure
something out –– it just might
be these two boys.”
Grant SWCD Weed Control Dept.
Working for You in 2018
541-523-6377
541-963-6577
541-573-6377
Thanks to the Grant County Court and Northeast Oregon Forests Resource
Advisory Committee, Grant Weed Control is able to offer a 50% Cost
Share Program for Noxious Weed Control on Private Grazing Lands,
through a Title II funded Grant Project. This program will provide a
maximum $5,000 of noxious weed control services with a $2,500 maximum
landowner contribution to qualifying participants. To be eligible for
participation, the treatment property must not be actively irrigated and must
be primarily managed for livestock grazing, minimum of 20 acres in size,
located within Grant County, and must contain weed species listed on the
Grant County Noxious Weed List. Applications for this limited weed control
assistance opportunity will be funded on a first come first serve basis.
Contact the Grant Soil and Water Conservation District Office at
(541) 575-1554 or visit 721 S. Canyon Blvd., John Day, OR 97845 for
applications and additional information.
541-576-2160
60997
61745