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NEWS
Blue Mountain Eagle
Maynard
Continued from Page A1
of Transportation, took them
to diff erent parts of the state.
Fortunately, Maynard said,
she always got her job back at
dispatch.
In the late 1990s, the dis-
patch
manager
position
became available and the John
Day city manager off ered May-
nard the job.
Initially she balked, tell-
ing the city manager that she
had never been a manager, to
which he said, “Now is your
opportunity.”
“That’s where it started,”
she said, “and I’ve loved it ever
since.”
One of her proudest
moments, Maynard said, was
seeing the 911 center through
its transition to an independent
agency in 2019 after John Day
announced it could no longer
foot the bill for dispatch ser-
vices for the entire county.
A $420,000 appropriation
from Oregon lawmakers gave
the dispatch center a lifeline for
a biennium, but the question of
fi nding a long-term funding
solution loomed large.
One of the options thrown
around was to outsource dis-
patch to a private company out
of Condon.
However,
many
fi rst
responders and government
offi cials wanted a local service
employing dispatchers familiar
with the county.
So, at the end of 2018, the
county and eight other commu-
nities created an intergovern-
mental agreement to oversee a
new, independent agency.
Shortly after, the agency
inked a deal to lease space in
the John Day Fire Hall for a
new dispatch center.
Later, the Legislature
passed a bill to raise a tax that
would — in part — fund 911
centers across the state. The
bill increased the monthly fee
for wireless and wired tele-
phone accounts and prepaid
wireless retail transactions
from 75 cents to $1 in 2020 and
$1.25 in 2021.
Maynard said that getting
through the transition was very
diffi cult because it did not look
like the county would have a
dispatch center at one point.
“My heart and soul went
into it,” she said. “We had to
educate everyone in the county
and all of our users and govern-
ing boards over each entity that
this is what we do, this is why
it’s crucial that we stay local.
And then, in the end, they sup-
ported that.”
There were also moments
during her career, May-
nard said, when she felt com-
pelled to stand up for what she
believed was right.
One such time was during
the occupation of the Malheur
National Wildlife Refuge in
Harney County, when May-
nard fi led a complaint with the
Department of Public Safety
Standards & Training against
former Grant County Sheriff
Glenn Palmer.
According to the complaint,
Palmer had publicly sympa-
thized with the armed mili-
tants, meeting with them twice,
and then showed up at the
community meeting where the
occupation leaders were sched-
uled to speak on Jan. 26, 2016.
Maynard said the dispatch
center did not know about the
plan by the FBI and state police
to intercept the occupation’s
key fi gures while they were en
route to the Jan. 26 meeting in
John Day that ended with law
enforcement offi cials fatally
shooting occupation spokes-
man LaVoy Finicum.
Maynard said the last straw
Wednesday, July 13, 2022
for her was when one of her
dispatchers had to take the call
when Finicum was shot.
Under normal circum-
stances, she said, the author-
ities would have let dispatch
and local law enforcement
know about the plans and that
an incident could occur in their
county.
But the state police and the
FBI felt that they could not
take the chance of someone
leaking that information, May-
nard said.
“They
didn’t
trust
(Palmer),” Maynard said.
“They didn’t trust anyone
around him.”
In the aftermath, Maynard
said, she received threats. One
cryptic message, from some-
one who said they hoped she
was not suicidal, particularly
worried her husband. She said
they did not know if some-
one was looking to kill her
and cover it up. A law enforce-
ment offi cer was parked near
her house the next day, keep-
ing watch.
There were local people,
too, who shunned her. But she
said she did not let it get her
down. She told herself that
that was the position they were
taking.
“That’s their right,” she
said.
Ultimately, Maynard said,
she had good people in her
corner.
One day, she said, while out
shopping, a clerk said someone
wanted to talk to her. She said
a law enforcement offi cer from
outside of the county who hap-
pened to be in the back of the
store just wanted to thank her.
“Those little things just got
us through it,” she said, “and
the team just stuck together.”
The following year brought
more challenges.
First the Rainbow Gath-
ering, a loose-knit commu-
nity of people who congre-
gate in remote forests, brought
more than 13,000 people into
the Malheur National Forest
at Flagtail south of John Day
and strained the county’s law
enforcement to its limits.
Then the eclipse brought
thousands more to the Grant
County, which lay across the
“path of totality.”
Through it all, she said, the
dispatch center tried to hold all
the pieces together.
Looking back at it all now,
Maynard said, the fi ve-year
span that started with the Can-
yon Creek Fire and continued
through the Malheur occupa-
tion, the Rainbow Gathering,
the eclipse and the transition
to an independent agency was
both the most challenging and
the most satisfying time of her
career in dispatch.
By the conclusion of that
period, she said, people were
happy with the agency and
were pleased with the bud-
get. She said that while she
had wanted to retire earlier,
she could not manage it fi nan-
cially. But she also wanted
to be sure the agency was in
good shape before stepping
aside.
“I never wanted to quit
when we were down,” she
said. “I wanted to quit on a
high note. And we got there.”
Lead dispatcher Cammie
Haney, who has been with
the 911 dispatch center for 16
years, has stepped in as the
agency’s new director. She
said Maynard has been a good
friend and mentor to her.
“Everyone in the public
safety community just has so
much respect for (Maynard),”
Haney said.
“She’s just one of those
people who you just respect
because of her ethics and the
way that she treats people.”
Forest Service curtails salvage logging, pays $115K to settle lawsuit
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Capital Press
EUGENE — The U.S.
Forest Service has agreed
to curtail logging and pay
environmental
advocates
$115,000 to settle a lawsuit
over post-fi re timber salvage
in Oregon.
In 2020, massive wildfi res
burned 1 million acres of for-
estland in the state, including
176,000 acres in the Willa-
mette National Forest.
The fl ames swept through
two previously approved for-
est projects, prompting the
Forest Service to adjust those
plans to include post-fi re sal-
vage logging.
The Lang Dam and High-
way 46 projects initially
focused on commercially thin-
ning roughly 2,600 acres to
reduce tree density and were
not challenged in federal court.
However, the Cascadia
Wildlands and Oregon Wild
nonprofi ts brought legal action
against the revised plans, alleg-
ing they should have under-
gone additional environmental
analysis.
Last year, U.S. District
Judge Ann Aiken ruled in favor
of the environmental plain-
tiff s and issued a preliminary
Ralph Bloemers/Contributed Photo
Cutting along Highway 46 adjacent to the Breitenbush River.
injunction that blocked the
Forest Service from conduct-
ing post-fi re salvage logging.
However, that injunction
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was not permanent and the liti-
gation was allowed to proceed.
The environmental plain-
tiff s have now struck a set-
tlement deal under which
the agency has agreed not to
move forward with many of
the planned timber sale units.
Other units were modifi ed to
reduce their size or to ensure
they retain at least 60% canopy
cover.
“Generally, the vast major-
ity of post-fi re clear-cut-
ting got dropped,” said Nick
Cady, attorney for Cascadia
Wildlands.
Thinning operations that
were planned before the fi res
can mostly move forward,
though some older forest stands
will not be logged, he said.
Post-fi re logging is particu-
larly damaging to the environ-
ment because it aggravates the
erosion of vulnerable soils in
burned stands, Cady said.
The agency seized on the
opportunity to fulfi ll timber
sale contracts by cutting the
damaged trees, he said.
The
nearby
Breiten-
bush community was closely
involved in developing the
original pre-fi re projects but
wasn’t allowed to off er input
on the revised salvage plans,
he said.
“We caught the Forest Ser-
vice kind of red-handed,” he
said. “This was the Forest Ser-
vice trying to cut that commu-
nity completely out.”
The Forest Service has also
agreed to pay $115,000 in liti-
gation costs and to provide the
environmental plaintiff s with
monthly updates and at least
one fi eld trip to inspect the
operations.
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