Monday Mailing 121619

Monday Mailing

Year 26 • Issue 15 16 December 2019 1.

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Schools Plan, Businesses Worry – An Old Timber Town Prepares For Oregon’s New Tax (Katie McFall) How the Wine Industry Has Transformed Oregon’s Economy Road to Recovery Planning for Future Leaders A Culture of Health – Rural Prize Winners Reshape How Communities Look at Health CDFIs ‘Make Dreams Come True’ by Creating Opportunity in Rural Spaces Trump Administration Tightens Work Requirements For SNAP, Which Could Cut Hundreds Of Thousands From Food Stamps Big Money Is Building A New Kind Of National Park In The Great Plains As Climate Change Worsens, A Cascade of Tipping Points Looms RESOURCE – ChangeLab Solutions Releases Long-Range Planning For Health, Equity & Prosperity, A Primer For Local Governments

1. Schools Plan, Businesses Worry – An Old Timber Town Prepares For Oregon’s New Tax Quote of the Week:

“I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says, "Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again.”

- Lewis Carroll

Oregon Fast Fact #32

Discovered in 1874 the caves located in Oregon Caves National Monument are carved within solid marble.

Across Oregon, school districts that have long been underfunded are trying to decide how to spend an influx of money – about $1 billion a year – made possible by a new tax on businesses. That tax takes effect Jan. 1.

All the detailed rules of the tax aren’t done yet, nor are the schools’ plans.

As the clocks tick down, OPB spent time in one community – the Coast Range town of Philomath – to see how it’s preparing.

“I think it’s going to help us level the playing field so that the kids who are struggling now have the opportunities to be successful,” said Philomath Superintendent Buzz Brazeau.

With six schools and about 1,600 students, the Philomath School District isn’t Oregon’s largest or smallest district. According to state estimates, the district will receive $1 million from an account in the Student Success Act. But there are still a lot of decisions to be made about how districts like Philomath will spend their money.

And businesses are trying to plan too. One family-run logging operation in Philomath, called Emerald Valley Thinning, is worried the state’s new tax will take too large a bite out of small profits.

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“They’re putting it all on the backs of businesses, which ends up being the backs of workers,” said office manager Jessica Yandell. She’s a graduate of Philomath’s public schools and now has a child attending them.

To access the full story, click here.

2. How the Wine Industry Has Transformed Oregon’s Economy

McMINNVILLE, Ore. — McMinnville, 1971. When a handful of pioneering farmers bought land on the outskirts of this modest rural town and decided to plant wine grapes, people called them crazy. Wine grapes wouldn’t grow in the Northwest, they said.

Third Street in McMinnville, 2019. People scuttle between high-end boutiques, local businesses and fine dining. Baskets of petunias hang from lamp posts like colorful chandeliers. And on the corner where a JCPenney store once stood, there’s a wine tasting room.

In this growing city where urban and rural worlds intersect, the wine industry has signed its autograph. In 2016 alone, Yamhill County, of which McMinnville is the seat, raked in more than $15 million in wine-related property taxes.

Michael Rogers, resident of McMinnville since 1976, has watched the transformation.

“It’s been an incredible change,” said Rogers. “We went from a small Oregon town with a bunch of turkey farms to a classy city of wineries.”

McMinnville is one grape on the vine. Across Oregon, the industry has profoundly impacted the state’s economy and indirectly shaped its demographics and culture.

The industry continues to grow. In 2010, according to the Oregon Vineyard and Winery Report, there were 567 vineyards statewide. By 2017, that number more than doubled to 1,144.

To access the full story, click here.

3. Road to Recovery

The colorful mural inside the newly renovated Historic Central Hotel in the Eastern Oregon town of Burns is a reminder of this remote farming community’s once vibrant economic past. The mural depicts the heyday of the now-closed Hines Lumber mill, located in nearby Hines.

In the 1960s, it was one of the largest pine mills in the world, producing more than 134 million board-feet of lumber.

That mill is long gone. It was finally shut down in 2006, the result of a decline in timber supply from federal forests. The economies of Burns and Hines have since struggled to recover from the disappearance of family-wage jobs.

Both towns’ economies rely heavily on the cyclical agricultural sector.

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But Burns and Hines are starting to see buds of growth as new businesses take root, including an agricultural-products manufacturing plant scheduled to open by March 2020 on the site of the former Hines mill. Several new recreational and tourism-centered businesses have emerged on Burns’s main street.

To access the full story, click here.

4. Planning for Future Leaders

Involving diverse youth in planning now means they’ll be engaged community members later — and maybe even become planners themselves.

When Katanya Raby was in second grade, her class read The Little House, a book about a city slowly overtaking a countryside home. It was the first time she ever considered the complexities of rural and urban environments. Those thoughts developed into a natural curiosity about the built environment that eventually led her to pursue an undergraduate degree in architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago. But it wasn't until her junior year, during courses in sociology and anthropology, that she identified the career she wanted. "I had [always had] interests in planning, but I didn't know what it was until then," she says. After learning about the profession, she went on to earn a master's degree in urban planning and policy from UIC.

Raby's experience isn't uncommon. Many would-be planners only learn about the profession through more well-known disciplines like architecture or public policy — a massive missed opportunity, says Raby, who heads up the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning's Future Leaders in Planning program, also called FLIP. "Just because planning is a silent profession, kids aren't exposed to it like doctors and firefighters. We don't wear a special suit," she says.

To access the full story, click here.

5. A Culture of Health – Rural Prize Winners Reshape How Communities Look at Health When officials in Lake County saw the results of the 2010 Healthy Kids Colorado survey, they knew they had to do something.

Substance abuse and school absences were up. Academic performance was down.

In response, leaders organized a community-wide effort to improve the lives of students in the rural Colorado county, situated along the crest of the Rocky Mountains.

Patagonia ad square The effort has started to pay off, said Brayhan Reveles, the Healthy Eating and Active Living coordinator for Lake County.

“We’re working on improved access for youth opportunities, from volunteer opportunities, to internships, to career paths that start in school, as well as getting students outdoors and being more active,” Reveles said.

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“From my perspective, there was a good shift from the youth seeing their community wasn’t really invested in them to seeing that their community was invested in their development.”

To access the full story, click here.

6. CDFIs ‘Make Dreams Come True’ by Creating Opportunity in Rural Spaces

As healthcare is central to a community’s growth, Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) present a unique opportunity for rural health efforts to receive support. But there is a general lack of awareness of these institutions in rural spaces and CDFIs that are serving rural areas often already operate at full capacity.

Kim Tieman is the Health and Human Service Program Director for Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation, which serves Pennsylvania and West Virginia. In her work trying to grow CDFIs, she has witnessed a disconnect between local efforts and the financial assistance available at their fingertips. “When the health community needs money, they think they have to go to the bank, period, and they don’t even know that CDFIs are out there and how to utilize them.”

“We, as a foundation, believe in community and economic development and that, without access to capital, people cannot make all of those dreams come true,” said Tieman. “The Benedum board has always seen [CDFIs] as a great tool in the toolbox, and we should try to build more of them.” Foundations like Benedum have stepped in to bolster CDFI capacity in order to make a direct impact for local healthcare efforts.

To access the full story, click here.

7. Trump Administration Tightens Work Requirements For SNAP, Which Could Cut Hundreds Of Thousands From Food Stamps

The Trump administration said Wednesday it had finalized a rule tightening work requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which could cut hundreds of thousands from food stamps.

The rule would apply to able-bodied adults with no dependents, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced in a call with reporters.

It arrives as part of a broader effort to limit access to the federal food safety net, the first of three such measures in the works. The USDA initially estimated up to 750,000 individuals would be dropped from SNAP if the proposal took effect. In Wednesday’s call, the USDA adjusted that figure to 688,000.

Under current law, able-bodied adults without dependents can receive SNAP benefits for a maximum of three months during a three-year period, unless they’re working or enrolled in an education or training program for 80 hours a month.

To access the full story, click here.

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8. Big Money Is Building A New Kind Of National Park In The Great Plains

A privately funded, nonprofit organization is creating a 3.2 million-acre wildlife sanctuary — American Prairie Reserve — in northeastern Montana, an area long known as cattle country.

But the reserve is facing fierce opposition from many locals because to build it, the organization is slowly purchasing ranches from willing sellers, phasing out the cows and replacing them with wild bison. Those private properties are then stitched together with vast tracts of neighboring public lands to create one giant, rewilded prairie. The organization has purchased close to 30 properties so far, but it needs at least 50 more.

"I see them coming in with big money, buying up ranches and walking over the top of the people who are already here," says ranch owner Conni French. "For them to be successful in their goals, we can't be here, and that's not OK with us."

She isn't alone. Driving around, you see signs everywhere that say, "Save The Cowboy, Stop The American Prairie Reserve."

But the project's efforts have garnered a lot of positive attention from those living outside northeastern Montana because, once it's complete, it will be the largest wildlife sanctuary in the Lower 48 states — about 5,000 square miles, nearly the size of the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania.

To access the full story, click here.

9. As Climate Change Worsens, A Cascade of Tipping Points Looms

Some of the most alarming science surrounding climate change is the discovery that it may not happen incrementally — as a steadily rising line on a graph — but in a series of lurches as various “tipping points” are passed. And now comes a new concern: These tipping points can form a cascade, with each one triggering others, creating an irreversible shift to a hotter world.

A new study suggests that changes to ocean circulation could be the driver of such a cascade.

A group of researchers, led by Tim Lenton at Exeter University, England, first warned in a landmark paper 11 years ago about the risk of climate tipping points. Back then, they thought the dangers would only arise when global warming exceeded 5 degrees Celsius (9 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. But last week, Lenton and six co-authors argued in the journal Nature that the risks are now much more likely and much more imminent. Some tipping points, they said, may already have been breached at the current 1 degree C of warming.

The new warning is much starker than the forecasts of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which critics say has until now played down the risks of exceeding climate tipping points, in part because they are difficult to quantify.

The potential tipping points come in three forms: runaway loss of ice sheets that accelerate sea level rise; forests and other natural carbon stores such as permafrost releasing those stores into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide (CO2), accelerating warming; and the disabling of the ocean circulation system.

To access the full story, click here.

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10. RESOURCE – ChangeLab Solutions Releases Long-Range Planning For Health, Equity & Prosperity, A Primer For Local Governments Where people live profoundly affects their health. City and regional planning plays a critical role in determining how healthy or unhealthy communities are.

Unfortunately, many common planning practices have made some places much healthier than others. Planning practices have also contributed to the high percentage of poor people and people of color who live in unhealthy places, widening disparities in health and wealth. By integrating health and equity considerations into planning practices, planners have the power to revise past planning decisions and create healthy, equitable, and prosperous communities.

To help planners across the country advance this important work, ChangeLab Solutions has created Long Range-Planning for Health, Equity & Prosperity: A Primer for Local Governments.

This primer poses a series of questions in order to provoke thoughts on how planners can prioritize health and equity in their work. The answers to these questions provide • •

A framework for aligning health equity policies across local government departments; and Broad guidance on incorporating equity in long-range planning, community engagement, investment, and evaluation processes.

Readers of this resource will also gain an understanding of the ways that planning can support or impede health equity, as well as insight into how to integrate health and equity into everyday planning practice and decisionmaking. The Primer is for planners, local leaders, advocates, researchers, and consultants who want to advance health and equity in their communities through long-range planning.

ChangeLab Solutions is committed to creating healthier communities for all by advancing equitable laws and policies and prioritizing communities whose residents are at the highest risk for poor health. Please join us in working to advance health equity by using the information in this primer to guide your planning practices.

To access the resource, click here.

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