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Monday Mailing

Year 23 • Issue 02 19 September 2016 1.

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Quote of the Week: “Walk with the dreamers, the believers, the courageous, the cheerful, the planners, the doers, the successful people with their heads in the clouds and their feet on the ground.

Let their spirit ignite a fire within you, to leave this world better than when you found it.”

-- Wilfred Peterson.

Oregon Fast Fact: Oregon is now the only state to prohibit self-serve gasoline.

The Rural Data Portal Get The Bike Wheels Rolling in Your Community!

Thousands Expected for Crater Lake Vehicle-Free Days What’s Up With All The Dead Trees?

League of Oregon Cities – Small Cities Regional Meetings.

How Community Engagement Can Restore Trust in Government Historic Preservation & Energy Efficiency – A Guide for Historic Commercial Buildings Rural Community Grant Program Track a Century of U.S. Development With a Tool That Centralizes Old Maps New Online Tool Provides State & Local Energy Data at Your Fingertips Free Webinar on Logic Models for Districts, Councils, Land Trusts

1. The Rural Data Portal The RURAL DATA PORTAL is a simple, easy to use, on-line resource that provides essential information on the social, economic, and housing characteristics of communities in the United States. The RURAL DATA PORTAL is targeted toward rural communities, but a wide range of information is presented for the nation, states, and counties for rural, suburban and urban areas.

Most of the information provided in the RURAL DATA PORTAL comes from Housing Assistance Council (HAC) tabulations of various public use data sets such as the 2010 Census of Population and Housing, the American Community Survey (ACS) and Home Mortgage Disclosure Act Data.

The Housing Assistance Housing (HAC) is a national nonprofit organization that supports affordable housing efforts in rural areas of the United States.

To access the full story, click here.

2. Get The Bike Wheels Rolling in Your Community!

Bicycling is an easy way to make physical activity part of your day.

More and more people in communities all across the country are getting around by bicycle, but there is still tremendous room for growth in the number of people biking on roads everywhere!

How can we change that? One of the most powerful ways to increase the amount of bicycle travel is for communities to adopt bicycle friendly laws and policies. These policies can   

remove obstacles to bicycling; create incentives for bicycling infrastructure; and make it easier and safe to get around by bike!

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Figure out where to start, and learn how to effectively use policy to promote bicycling in ChangeLab Solutions’ new publication, Getting The Wheels Rolling: A Guide to Using Policy to Create Bicycle Friendly Communities.

3. Thousands Expected for Crater Lake Vehicle-Free Days When Crater Lake National Park Superintendent Craig Ackerman, Travel Oregon leaders and Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden came up with the idea of vehicle-free days at Crater Lake a few years ago, they hoped it might prove successful.

Now, park officials are challenged with keeping the two Vehicle Free Day and Ride the Rim events from being too successful.

"We're definitely going to look at that," Ackerman said of possibly capping the number of bicyclists, walkers and runners in future years.

More than 5,000 bicyclists, walkers and runners have registered for either Saturday, Sept. 17, and/or Saturday, Sept. 24. Both days Rim Drive will be closed to motor vehicles from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. between the North Junction and park headquarters in Munson Valley. The event is free, but park admission fees apply.

To access the full story, click here.

4. What’s Up With All The Dead Trees?

Gaze across the mountains of the Northwest these days and you may notice an unusual number of dead firs, pines and other conifer trees scattered among the green ones. Drought is usually considered the prime culprit. But recent research suggests the damage that has historically been done to conifer forests by routine dry spells is being compounded by climate change.

On a clear sunny morning, I join Matt Krunglevich on the side of Mount Ashland. He points toward the hillside to the west.

“The biggest key you can see is these pockets of dead and dying trees,” he says. “The red needles, and then some of the ones that were probably from two or three years ago, that are gray now.”

To access the full story, click here.

5. League of Oregon Cities – Small Cities Regional Meetings.

The LOC Small Cities Program is a forum for members to learn and network with each other to improve their cities. Statewide, each of the eight regions meets quarterly, with one quarter each year serving as an LOC Regional Meeting. Agendas for a small cities meetings include a topic that the region chooses at the previous meeting and a round table discussion about issues facing each of the cities. The League does not solicit or accept ideas for topics other than from member cities or state agencies.

Elected and appointed officials from a city with a population of 5,000 or less are encouraged to attend these meeting. Representatives from cities of all sizes are welcome. Agencies, non-profits or private sector firms may attend these meetings to listen to the information put forth and discussed by cities and state agencies, however League ask that they not participate in the round table discussion or in the selection of topics for future meetings.

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For a printable list of cities by region click here.

If you have questions about the meetings or the small cities program, please contact John Schmidt.

6. How Community Engagement Can Restore Trust in Government In communities across the nation, the public's trust in government is low. We've seen plenty of evidence of that in the U.S. presidential election and at the local government level as well. I want to say it's at an all-time low but I can't be sure of that.

Trust is a two-way street The mistrust seems to be running in both directions. The public lack trust in government agencies and government agencies lack trust in the public’s ability to contribute meaningfully to decisionmaking. This cauldron of mistrust is the arena that planners enter when conducting community engagement.

In democracies like ours, trust is a critical currency. In many ways we are paralyzed without it. It is critical to building the necessary public and political support needed to create meaningful change in our communities. And therein lies the opportunity for community engagement practitioners.

Community engagement lies at an important nexus between the public and the government. It has the ability to either erode trust further or help restore it.

This post marks the beginning of a kind of community engagement process about community engagement. It is an open invitation to contribute to a guidebook to restoring public trust in government agencies through thoughtful community engagement. Click here to receive a copy as soon as it is released.

To access the full story, click here.

7. Historic Preservation & Energy Efficiency – A Guide for Historic Commercial Buildings Pacific Power, in collaboration with the Oregon Main Street Program and Energy Trust of Oregon, recognized a need for a resource guide to assist small commercial property owners and businesspeople with energy efficiency in historic buildings.

The 44-page guide, Historic Preservation & Energy Efficiency: A Guide For Historic Commercial Buildings (PDF)offers details on how to retain existing energy-efficient features and implement new technologies while maintaining the building’s character.

Information in the booklet was compiled by the students and faculty of Clatsop Community College in Astoria, Oregon. The college offers a degree in Historic Preservation and Restoration that integrates green building practices. The program reflects the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s motto, “the greenest building is the one already built.”

To access the guide, click here.

8. Rural Community Grant Program Northwest FCS is committed to improving the economic and social wellbeing of rural communities within the states of Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington.

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Our Rural Community Grant Program provides money for projects such as building or improving facilities; purchasing necessary equipment to facilitate a program; and funding capital improvements that improve a community’s infrastructure, viability and/or prosperity.

Deadlines for grant applications are February 1, June 1 and October 1 of each year., oppose it, saying it would undermine protections for threatened and endangered species.

To access the full story, click here.

9. Track a Century of U.S. Development With a Tool That Centralizes Old Maps Early Tuesday, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) launched a Historical Topographic Map Explorer, allowing cartography lovers to easily pore through the agency's expansive collection.

With the help of ESRI, the new site gives users access to more than 178,000 of the USGS's maps dating back to 1884, also making them easily searchable by city.

For more information, click here.

10. New Online Tool Provides State & Local Energy Data at Your Fingertips The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, in partnership with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, has launched a new website that provides state and local decision makers easy access to a wealth of energy data specific to their location. The resources and data can be used to support strategic energy planning processes and deployment of clean energy projects. By entering a city and state or zip code into the State and Local Energy Data (SLED) online tool, users can see how their current electricity prices compare with the state and national averages, learn about applicable policies and incentives that could affect energy projects in their state, find available renewable energy resources, get details on alternative transportation fuel costs, and much more – all in one location. The tool also includes a video that provides an overview of how to use the tool and examples of how you may find it useful in your community.

11. Free Webinar on Logic Models for Districts, Councils, Land Trusts Wednesday, September 28, 2016 from 10:00am to 10:45am.

A logic model is a one-page graphic that communicates the link between what you do and your expected impacts. Grant proposals that include logic models are stronger because they show how you plan to achieve longer-term outcomes.

This webinar offered by your Oregon Conservation Partnership (NOWC, OACD, COLT, OCEAN) will introduce the concept of logic models, show examples, and facilitate a brainstorm of ways to use logic models in our conservation work. It is the first in a series of interactive webinars we will host this fall on various topics.

Who should attend? Council, land trust, and district program staff who plan programs, write grant proposals, plus coordinators and managers who want to tell the story of your impact, not just report your activities.

COST?—FREE. A service through the statewide partnership (NOWC, OACD, OCEAN, and COLT).

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The webinar will be recorded and available afterwards.

Why attend? It’s no longer enough to tell funders what we plan to DO with their support‌ we need to tell them the DIFFERENCE we plan to make with their investment.

Pre-registration is required to access the link.

REGISTER AT: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/3266568059599461378 After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

For more information, contact Shawn Morford, Executive Director, Network of Oregon Watershed Councils at shawn@oregonwatersheds.org, tel: 503-989-4041.

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