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Monday Mailing

Year 22 • Issue 14 21 December 2015 1.

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Rural Webinar Series Engaging Citizens: A Review of Eight Approaches to Civic Engagement East Portlanders See Gentrification Coming, Call For Action Steps to Highly Engaging Plan Documents Financing Infrastructure Through Resilience Bonds Oregon Community Foundation's Community Grant Program New Web Resources From Natural Hazards Center Public Review Underway for Bicycle and Pedestrian Plan An Ocean’s Worth of Opportunity Through Neighborworks Umpqua’s Enterprise Development 10. 'Significant' Potentially Damaging Wind Storm Monday; Snow Levels Dip To Valley Floor By Christmas Day 11. 8 TED Talks To Help You Focus On What Really Matters 1. Rural Webinar Series Starting January 13, 2016, the Rural Business Program at the University of Texas at San Antonio – Institute for Economic Development is teaming up with the University of Nebraska, Sam Houston State University and the University of Minnesota to bring you a quality rural webinar series.

Quote of the Week: “The snow doesn't give a soft white damn whom it touches.” ~E.E. Cummings Oregon Fast Fact: The Oregon Trail is the longest of the overland routes used in the westward expansion of the United States. The Trail used from 1840 to 1860 began in Missouri and ended in Oregon. It was about 2,000 miles long.

This no-cost webinar series will focus on positive trends impacting the Great Plains states from Minnesota to Texas and places in-between. This monthly series is offered to local elected officials, economic development specialists, housing agencies, and others engaged in rural development practices. These webinars are educational in focus and will lead up to the Minnesota Symposium on Small Towns June 8-9, 2016 and the Texas Rural Challenge on June 9-10, 2016.

Save the Dates. Here’s a sneak peek at the upcoming webinar series. All webinar times are Noon - 1pm.

Jan 13 Welcome: Rewriting the Rural Narrative Feb 24 Brain Gain of the Newcomers to Rural America Mar 23 Leadership Demands in Rural America Apr 6 Baby Boomers and the Rural Housing Supply May 4 Rural Entrepreneurship and the Quest for an Empowered Rural Economy June 1 Great Plains Opinions and Attitudes For more information (including registration), click here.

2. Engaging Citizens: A Review of Eight Approaches to Civic Engagement Twenty years ago, Robert Putnam wrote about the rise of “bowling alone,” a metaphor for people participating in activities as individuals instead of groups that can lead to community. This led to the decline in social capital in America. The problem of individual participation as opposed to community building has become an even bigger problem since the invention of smartphones, the Internet as the source of all information, social networking, and asynchronous entertainment. We never need to talk Page 1 of 6

to anyone anymore and it often feels like an imposition when we ask for an answer we know we could find online.

Putnam posited that the decline in social capital is a cause for decline in civic engagement and participation in democracy. If we aren’t engaged socially with the people around us, we don’t have as much incentive to care about what is going on that might affect them. Local elections have low voter turnout in part because people aren’t aware of or engaged in local issues.

In an attempt to chip away at this problem, platforms that attempt to encourage people to engage in civic life with government and local communities have been popping up. But how well do they actually engage people? These platforms are often criticized for producing “slacktivists” who are applying the minimum amount of effort possible and not really effecting change. Several of these platforms were evaluated to see how they work and to determine how well they actually promote civic engagement.

To access the full story, click here.

3. East Portlanders See Gentrification Coming, Call For Action Rising rents have pushed vulnerable Portlanders east -- past 82nd Avenue, past Interstate 205 and into the city's most diverse and low-income neighborhoods, far from the public eye and political influence.

But east Portland residents and advocates said at a public event Monday that the area is no longer immune to the city's red-hot rental market and record low vacancy rates.

In emotional testimony Monday, immigrants, low-income residents and advocates said Portland's leaders can and must do more to ensure that they aren't pushed out of their neighborhoods and the city itself as gentrification moves east.

To access the full story, click here.

4. 4 Steps to Highly Engaging Plan Documents Plan documents. You know the type - long, squinty PDFs that can take forever to download and even longer to read. Agencies want to share their plans and priorities with the public, but they’re typically not at the top of anyone’s reading list, and they certainly don’t provide opportunity for feedback. What’s a community to do?

Believe it or not, plan documents actually CAN be engaging. The problem is not with the information itself, but rather with the presentation of it. People want to be drawn in, not forced to wade through long, text-heavy pages in search of points that are relevant to them. People want to experience information, not just read it. And if the content can be accessed on-the-go, quickly and easily, that’s a big plus too. Organizations that go the extra mile to engage the public through dynamic plan documents will reap the benefits of a more interested and involved audience.

To access the full story, click here.

5. Financing Infrastructure Through Resilience Bonds Cities across the United States and around the world are facing increasingly frequent severe weather events. Many local governments and public utilities are overexposed and underinsured for these risks.

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They are also coping with aging and failing infrastructure systems that increase the potential for catastrophic losses.

One way for cash-strapped local governments to increase both protection and insurance against disasters is through a new financial tool called resilience bonds. In a new report, my co-author James Rhodes and I lay out how these would work.

The idea is to link insurance coverage that public sector entities can already purchase (such as catastrophe bonds) with capital investments in resilient infrastructure systems (such as flood barriers and green infrastructure) that reduce expected losses from disasters. This connection between insurance and infrastructure is important because just as life insurance doesn’t actually make you physically healthier, catastrophe bonds do not reduce physical risks and only payout when disasters strike.To access the full story, click here.

6. Oregon Community Foundation's Community Grant Program Community Grant applications are now being accepted via MyOCF. The application window will close at midnight on January 15, 2016. Please review the Application Process tab for more information.

Guiding Principles   

We believe that creative and sustainable solutions come from people who work in partnership to address common needs and aspirations.

We give high priority to investments that create positive, substantive change and attempt to resolve problems at their source.

We recognize and respect Oregon's diverse regions and populations, and we seek to advance equity, diversity and inclusion through our programs.

Program Details As a responsive arm of OCF, the Community Grant Program awards about 300 grants each year, mostly to small- and moderate-size nonprofits. The average grant is $20,000. OCF typically receives 350 to 425 proposals per grant cycle. Concerns central to OCF’s evaluation of proposed projects include:   

The strength of local support for the project The strength of the applicant organization Whether the project addresses a significant community need

Please review the full guidelines, which include tips on submitting a competitive proposal as well as guidance on capacity-building and capital requests. OCF will also consider how well the project fits the following list of funding priorities.

For more information, click here.

7. New Web Resources From Natural Hazards Center

Affordability of National Flood Insurance Program Premiums

This two-part report by the National Academies of Sciences examines recent changes to National Flood Insurance Program premiums which, although implemented to make the program more fiscally sound, ended up making flood insurance unaffordable for many homeowners. Together, the Page 3 of 6

reports provide an overview of the program and offer alternatives for evaluating when premium increases make pricing unaffordable.

East Coast Lab: Life at the Boundary Life at the boundary of two tectonic plates is all about natural hazards—earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, and coastal erosion—and so is East Coast Lab. This project, led by a collection of New Zealand’s national and regional agencies and universities, offers opportunities to participate in citizen research, monitor hazards in real time, and discover more about the hazards off the east coast of New Zealand’s North Island.

Student Tools for Emergency Planning (STEP) The Federal Emergency Management Agency has stepped up its game for the STEP program with a recently revamped curriculum. Teachers will find updated resources, lessons, and handouts for the program, which aims to teach kids in fourth and fifth grades the basics of emergency planning, preparedness, and communication.

Temblor Many people in the United States are at risk from damaging earthquakes, and many know it. Still, it’s one thing to realize the risk and another entirely to understand it. Temblor is a beta-version webbased app that can help. Enter an address and building details, and learn the risk for experiencing quakes, what a serious quake would cost, and how much cheaper and safer retrofitting would make you.

The National Center for Climate and Security Warriors and Weather Compilation Alone, The Economist’s video, Warriors and Weather: Climate Change and National Security in America is a useful, ten-minute look into how the U.S. Department of Defense is approaching climate issues.

But the National Center for Climate and Security takes that reporting a step further, pairing it with a list of suggested readings that range from statements by the administration to government reports and testimony.

8. Public Review Underway for Bicycle and Pedestrian Plan The Oregon Department of Transportation has released the Draft Oregon Bicycle and Pedestrian Plan and Executive Summary for public review.

The Oregon Bicycle and Pedestrian Plan is a Statewide Policy Plan and serves as an element of the Oregon Transportation Plan (OTP), which covers all modes of transportation in the state of Oregon.

This Plan supports decision-making for walking and biking investments, strategies, and programs that can help bring an interconnected, robust, efficient, and safe transportation system for Oregon.

Prioritization of needs and selection of walkway and bikeway projects are developed in processes that follow Plan adoption and will use the framework this Plan provides.

The Plan kicked off in early 2014, where ODOT developed the Plan through stakeholder involvement and public outreach.

A Policy Advisory Committee (PAC) was formed to guide the process and review plan content.

Elected officials, local agency representatives, business people, the Oregon Transportation Commission, walking and biking advocates, and other stakeholders across the state, including statewide, urban, suburban and rural interests comprised the 16 member PAC. A Technical Advisory Committee included regional and local transportation agency staff and other practitioners serving various areas of the state to help review and provide input into technical aspects of the Plan.

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The public outreach and involvement included early input through statewide listening meetings, surveys and interview to inform issues and opportunities for policy development; presentations to the Area Commissions on Transportation (ACT); and the formal review period of the Draft Plan.

The public comment period is open November 13th through February 18th. Once the comment period closes, comments will be forwarded to the Plan’s Policy Advisory Committee for consideration and will be provided in the February Oregon Transportation Commission agenda packet.

To provide comments on the Draft Oregon Bicycle and Pedestrian Plan, email them to ORBikePedPlan@odot.state.or.us.

For more information, click here.

9. An Ocean’s Worth of Opportunity Through Neighborworks Umpqua’s Enterprise Development However, Neighborworks Umpqua and the Southwestern Oregon Food Systems Collaborative— Seafood Project see hope, an ocean’s worth to be exact, in southwest Oregon’s fisheries food system.

Neighborworks is the local lead organization and sub-grantee of Rural Development Initiatives (RDI), which received Northwest Area Foundation funding to support microenterprise and smallenterprise development.

“This project is about creating linkages that don’t already exist along the value chain, so that fishermen benefit, so there can be some niche buyers, and there can be some niche processors,” says Shawn Morford, RDI’s regional coordinator and the coach for the Seafood Project.

The Seafood Project is a pilot of WealthWorks, a systematic approach to identifying enterprising opportunities that also engage a wide range of partners, including economic and community development organizations, education-based associations, and natural resource-based establishments.

Neighborworks has previous success starting businesses in areas such as property management and used building materials.

To access the full story, click here.

10. 'Significant' Potentially Damaging Wind Storm Monday; Snow Levels Dip To Valley Floor

By Christmas Day After weeks of damaging rain and flooding, forecasters say a significant wind storm Monday will likely bring down trees and branches and lead to widespread power outages across northwest Oregon and southwest Washington Monday.

While the winds are expected to be stronger on the Oregon coast, wind gusts inland in the Portland area could reach as high as 65 mph, with steady winds of 25 to 40 mph between 11 a.m. and 5 p.m.

Wind gusts to 75 mph on the Oregon coast are expected between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m., with gusts that strong from noon to 8 p.m. in the Cascade foothills and the Cascades.

Meteorologists with the National Weather Service in Portland said the approaching storm appears comparable in strength to damaging wind storms in Dec. 2012 and January 1990.

To access the full story, click here.

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11. 8 TED Talks To Help You Focus On What Really Matters It's easy to get caught up in the daily dramas of life. These talks can help you step back, slow down and appreciate the bigger picture.

To access the playlist, click here.

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