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Monday Mailing Quote of the Week: "See every problem as an opportunity to exercise creative energy."

~Stephen R. Covey

Oregon Fast Fact: Oregon’s state motto is “Alis volat propriis” (She flies with her own wings)

Year 23 • Issue 18 06 February 2017 1. Gorge Hubs Project Works to Reconnect the Historic Columbia River Highway, One Community at a Time 2. Toolkit for Working with Rural Volunteers 3. Cow Creek Tribe Takes Holistic Approach to Forest Management 4. Using Google Earth to Understand Parking Utilization 5. Oregon's South Coast Fishing Industry Gets a Boost from RDI WealthWorks Grants 6. Why We Code 7. Congress Moves to Give Away National Lands, Discounting Billions in Revenue 8. Fees Considered for Nonmotorized Boats 9. Oregon Far Short of Greenhouse Gas Emissions Goals, Report Says 10. What If Bike Paths Looked Like Subway Maps?

11. Audit Finds ODOT Excels at Road Building But Fails to Strategize, Wastes Money 1. Gorge Hubs Project Works to Reconnect the Historic Columbia River Highway, One Community at a Time Oregon has once again topped the list of a national survey of people Six communities along the Historic Columbia River Highway from Wood Village to The Dalles have banded together to develop a system of Gorge Hubs. The Hubs are a network of welcome centers, information centers, trailheads and rest areas for travelers -- especially hikers and bikers. The project aims to encourage visitors to stage their trips from these communities’ central business cores, boosting economic development.

With site design assistance provided by the Oregon Transportation and Growth Management Education and Outreach program, each city developed a hub design unique to their community, though all feature kiosks, maps, and a bike fix-it station donated by the Portland Wheelmen.

Through collaboration with Travel Oregon and the Oregon Department of Transportation, the hubs share a logo and look, with a wayfinding map for the complete route between them. Signage and mapping is consistent from city to city so visitors are able to discover each community’s special attributes.

To access the full story, click here.

2. Toolkit for Working with Rural Volunteers This is a toolkit for little places, the ones that don’t have a Volunteer Coordinator or a Development Officer or even a full-time Director, the ones that depend almost exclusively on volunteers. These communities are the sum and substance of both the Appalachian Coal Country Team and the Western Hardrock Watershed Team and it was these rural communities that provided the research base for this project.

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You will find three basic sections, each of which can provide significant insight and ideas for rural volunteers. The first is Rural Volunteer Statistics, an extensive survey of the volunteers themselves— learn just who our rural volunteers are, what they do, where they associate and how best they can be reached.

To access the toolkit, click here.

3. Cow Creek Tribe Takes Holistic Approach to Forest Management The Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians teamed up with Lone Rock Timber Management Company to create the sole proposal to buy 82,500 acres of the Elliott State Forest from the state of Oregon.

With the help and support of the Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians and The Conservation Fund, the partnership hopes to manage the land for timber harvest while providing 40 jobs per year and protecting the environment and public access.

“Tribes have always had a large role in managing the lands,” said Michael Rondeau, CEO of the Cow Creek Tribe. “Tribes didn’t own the land, the land owned them, and it’s part of their harmony with the resources available to them. We belong to the land, we’re a function of nature.”

The tribes understand that people have an important role in the ecosystem and in nature, added Tim Vredenburg, director of Forest Management for the tribe.

To access the full story, click here.

4. Using Google Earth to Understand Parking Utilization Over the past year I have been involved in a number of development permit applications. One of the key points of controversy is over how much parking will be needed—and, therefore, how much traffic will be generated. In each case, the developer, staff, and public all offer their perspective on how much parking will be needed. I am sure you have heard about, or been in, public meetings where the public raises significant concerns over the amount of traffic that will be created and whether there will be enough parking. In some cases a traffic impact study is developed that uses ITE figures to model the projected parking demand. Yet, sometimes what you really need is local data.

The typical way we would go about collecting local data is to go stand in a parking lot and count the number of vehicles and the amount of movement in and out of the parking lot over a period of time.

This is a time-consuming endeavor to capture even one observation To access the full story, click here.

5. Oregon's South Coast Fishing Industry Gets a Boost from RDI WealthWorks Grants RDI's Executive Director Heidi Khokhar and Rural Economic Vitality Consultant Amy Hause recently visited Mach-1 Industries, SeaCoast Compost, and Watson’s Live Seafood on Oregon's south coast. The businesses were recently awarded WealthWorks grants to purchase equipment and expand operations, which will also benefit the south coast fishing industry more widely.

Mach-1 Industries is a commercial diving company based out of Port Orford, which is currently expanding their business into the production and sales of dulse, a nutrient-rich seafood that tastes like bacon. The grant will enable the company to purchase equipment to increase dulse production.

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SeaCoast Compost is a business located in Charleston that transforms highly nutritive waste products from local sources, including timber, cow manure, and fish waste, into biodynamic compost. Funding support will allow them to scale up production of their compost product.

To access the full story, click here.

6. Why We Code Within the last half-century, some 30 million buildings have degraded cities and reduced landscapes.

Must we tolerate this comprehensive disaster in exchange for the, perhaps, three thousand great buildings that great architects have produced? Such a win-loss ratio is as unacceptable in architecture as it would be in any other field. We are compelled to intervene and have found that codes are the most effective instruments of reform.

We must code because the default setting in contemporary design is mediocrity and worse. Those who object to codes imagine that they constrain architectural masterpieces (their own, usually). But great buildings are few and the more likely outcome is kitsch. Codes can assure a minimum level of urban and architectural competence, even if in so doing they constrain certain possibilities.

We use codes because those who are charged with designing, supervising and building communities tend to ignore education and avoid exhortation, but they are accustomed to following codes. It was the achievement to the mid-century generation of planners to have embedded codes in the political and legal process. We must take advantage of this.

To access the full story, click here.

7. Congress Moves to Give Away National Lands, Discounting Billions in Revenue In the midst of highly publicized steps to dismantle insurance coverage for 32 million people and defund women’s healthcare facilities, Republican lawmakers have quietly laid the foundation to give away Americans’ birthright: 640m acres of national land. In a single line of changes to the rules for the House of Representatives, Republicans have overwritten the value of federal lands, easing the path to disposing of federal property even if doing so loses money for the government and provides no demonstrable compensation to American citizens.

At stake are areas managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), National Forests and Federal Wildlife Refuges, which contribute to an estimated $646bn each year in economic stimulus from recreation on public lands and 6.1m jobs. Transferring these lands to the states, critics fear, could decimate those numbers by eliminating mixed-use requirements, limiting public access and turning over large portions for energy or property development.

To access the full story, click here.

8. Fees Considered for Nonmotorized Boats Driftboaters, kayakers, sailors and others running boats without motors may soon - for the first time - start paying toward their playing on Oregon's public waterways.

The Oregon State Marine Board will ask the Oregon Legislature to create and fund a new nonmotorized boating program that would help pay for upkeep of boat ramps, other facilities and marine patrol programs heretofore paid largely by fees charged to motorized boaters.

The program would also offer grants to public agencies to buy, build, expand or renovate facilities for nonmotorized boats as the Marine Board currently does through its facilities program. Money also would be available to put marine patrols on waterways heavily used by nonmotorized boats and Page 3 of 4

House Bill 2320 would authorize the program and establish fees for transferable permits boaters would have to carry when rowing or sailing their boats.

To access the full story, click here.

9. Oregon Far Short of Greenhouse Gas Emissions Goals, Report Says Oregon is not reducing carbon dioxide emissions fast enough to meet its goals for 2020 and beyond, a new report finds. In fact, it's not even close.

Those are the findings of a biennial report the Oregon Global Warming Commission will deliver to state lawmakers this week, and they come despite ambitious legislation passed to cut emissions from the electricity and transportation sectors.

One culprit: Higher emissions from cars, trucks, trains and buses as more Oregonians drive more miles and buy less fuel-efficient cars because of population growth, a strong economy and cheap gas.

To access the full story, click here.

10. What If Bike Paths Looked Like Subway Maps?

CityLab readers: Sometimes you scare us.

Not only are you intimidatingly smart, many of you are professional experts in the topics we try to cover. Others are self-taught aficionados in urban planning or cartography—in other words, obsessive city-stuff superfans.

That may be the case with Michael Graham, who sent CityLab an actual snail-mail letter a few weeks back with a QR code linking us to his Spider Bike Maps page.

His cool idea: Make maps for bike infrastructure as if the lanes, trails, and paths constituted a connected transit system.

To access the full story, click here.

11. Audit Finds ODOT Excels at Road Building But Fails to Strategize, Wastes Money SALEM -- An independent review of the Oregon Department of Transportation shows that while the agency's overall performance is at par with other states, there's room to improve and prevent taxpayer money from being left on the table.

Certain, mostly small projects managed by the transportation agency run late and over-budget, costing taxpayers millions of dollars, according to the 69-page report released to The Oregonian/OregonLive Monday in response to a public records request. Auditors also found "mixed success" in ODOT's organizational structure, which it said leaves senior officials at odds with their oversight commission, the Legislature and the governor's office.

The audit, which cost $1 million, was conducted by national consulting firm McKinsey & Co. at the direction of Gov. Kate Brown. The fitness of the transportation agency to manage large construction projects is an essential question as lawmakers weigh whether and how to launch a substantial road construction package that ODOT would lead.

To access the full story, click here.

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