Monday Mailing 012020

Monday Mailing

Year 26 • Issue 19 20 January 2020 1. RESOURCE - Restore Oregon’s Preservation Toolkit 2. Q&A: New Maps Help Communities and Investors Focus on Opportunities 3. An Antidote to the Negativity Surrounding Rural America 4. Oregon Governor Proposes New Wildfire Protection Plan 5. A Novel Idea For Mental Health Care In Rural Washington 6. Rural Oregon Gets Attention At Big Portland Summit 7. How Police Officers Can Save Rural EMS 8. How Independence Is Becoming A ‘Smart Rural Community’ 9. As Its Latino Population Grows, Hermiston Embraces The Label Of 'Inclusive Community’ 10. GRANT OPPORTUNITIES – 2020 ‘Conversations With Funders And Partners’ Scheduled For Feb. 19- March 12

1. RESOURCE - Restore Oregon’s Preservation Toolkit

Restore Oregon’s Preservation Toolkit provides a high level guide to the process and decisions one needs to make when approaching the restoration and reuse of a historic building. It is oriented toward small-to-medium commercial properties, but much of the content will apply to homes, barns, and other types of structures.

Quote of the Week:

“We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us.

When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.”

- Martin Luther King Jr.

Oregon Fast Fact #42

Oregon's capitol building is located in Salem. Earlier capitals include the cities of Oregon City and Corvallis.

00: Process Overview Process Overview: a simple flowchart illustrating the steps for a successful preservation project.

01: Get Oriented An Orientation to Preservation & Adaptive Reuse: introductions to terminology, standards, organizations, and the National Register.

02: Assess Condition Condition Assessment Checklist: a top-to-bottom checklist for examining and documenting the current state of your property.

03: Plan Rehabilitation Creating a Viable Rehabilitation Plan: a guide to determining a feasible new use for your property, and testing the economic dollars and sense.

04: Source Funding Funding Sources & Incentives: bank loans, grants, tax credits… learn what is available and the associated stipulations.

05: Plan Maintenance Maintenance Plan: what it should include and how to approach it.

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06: Work with Preservation Professionals Working With the Right Preservation Professionals: assembling the right team and understanding the role they play can make or break your project.

07: Organize & Build Community Support Organize & Build Community Support: tips on telling your story and getting the community on board.

To access the toolkit, click here.

2. Q&A: New Maps Help Communities and Investors Focus on Opportunities

A new mapping tool provides data and information to catalog opportunities and difficulties in local rural economies.

The organization that created the maps says the data visualization tools are designed to help policymakers, investors, funders and local economic developers create jobs and development in rural communities.

The Center on Rural Innovation’s (CORI) Rural Opportunity Map was released last week. The Rural Startup Scout provides data “on broadband infrastructure, educational attainment, STEM degrees, patent activity, young companies and other local assets to highlight Opportunity Zones with emerging tech sectors. The map is designed to help Opportunity Zone investors identify rural areas that are likely to produce promising tech startups,” according to CORI. The Local Leader Action Map assists rural leaders understand their assets and provides tools for fundraising and demographic support.

The Daily Yonder’s Bryce Oates interviewed CORI Executive Director Matt Dunne about the innovation mapping project. The interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

To access the full Q&A, click here.

3. An Antidote to the Negativity Surrounding Rural America

As a rural sociologist who works at the Housing Assistance Council (HAC), a 48-year-old organization that is focused on lifting the rural poor and understanding rural America, my colleagues and I are keenly aware of the national buzz that surrounds the rural condition. Such buzz is a double-edged sword. We want conversations rooted in reality; data matters, even when it isn’t pretty. But nuance coupled with an appreciation for rural tenacity is also a requirement for addressing and understanding rural America’s condition.

A sampling of negative news headlines I’ve collected attests to the challenges in rural America: “Economic Expansion Eludes Rural America,” “The Lives of Poor White People,” “HUD: Housing Conditions for Native Americans Much Worse than Rest of U.S.,” and “A New Divide . . . An Urban Rural Mortality Gap Emerges.”

Against such headlines, there’s a reason why I’m smiling—a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) initiative called Citizens’ Institute on Rural Design (CIRD). In a nutshell, CIRD’s goal is to Page 2 of 6

enhance the quality of life and economic viability of rural America through planning, design, and creative placemaking. The NEA selected my organization as its new partner for the initiative, which will allow HAC to foster rural design, planning, and citizen participation on a national scale, all while complementing our core mission of improving conditions for the poorest and most rural places.

To access the full story, click here.

4. Oregon Governor Proposes New Wildfire Protection Plan

Oregon Gov. Kate Brown is calling for a major expansion in the state’s wildfire response plans in a new legislative concept lawmakers heard on Tuesday.

The draft proposal outlines the governor’s long-term vision for how the state should adapt to wildfire, reduce wildfire risks on forestland and improve fire suppression.

The plan echoes a 110-page report from the Governor’s Council On Wildfire Response, which spent about a year developing recommendations for improving the state’s ability to prevent and respond to wildfires.

It calls for land-use planning changes, new building codes and requirements for “defensible space” around homes to reduce the risk of wildfires damaging residential areas. It requires new standards for residential smoke filtration systems to protect people from the health risks of wildfire smoke.

It adds new jobs in the Office of Emergency Management that would be designed to handle wildfire emergencies, and it sets a goal of “treating” 300,000 acres of forestland a year to reduce wildfire fuel through logging, controlled burning and ecosystem restoration projects.

Over the next 20 years, the governor wants to see similar treatment on 5.6 million acres of forestland across the state, which her wildfire council estimated would cost about $4 billion in a report released in November.

To access the full story, click here.

5. A Novel Idea For Mental Health Care In Rural Washington

In tiny Dayton in southeastern Washington, the local hospital district has developed an innovative mental health program that has caught the attention of rural hospitals around the state.

The Columbia County Health System previously retained an in-house psychiatrist, but financial realities made continuing that approach impossible. CEO Shane McGuire didn’t want to give up, so he began the search for solutions.

Last July, McGuire found an opportunity to work with the University of Washington’s psychiatry program and its Advancing Integrated Mental Health Center (AIMS). The center’s primary focus is creating collaborative care models between primary care providers and their mental health care counterparts.

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Dayton’s model weaves behavioral health care directly into primary care appointments. In Dayton, a mental health screening that indicates the patient would benefit from specialty care prompts a referral right away.

McGuire says the program extends beyond the AIMS model, because the UW psychiatrists not only support the medical staff, but also work directly with patients.

“They were willing to think outside the box for us,” he says. “I don’t think they really have a name for what they’re doing here yet.”

To access the full story, click here.

6. Rural Oregon Gets Attention At Big Portland Summit

PORTLAND – Lynn Findley got his 15 minutes of fame at an extraordinary gathering in Portland last week.

Findley, former Vale city manager who is now a state representative, took the stage to vent about Oregon’s treatment of rural issues.

His forum was the Oregon Leadership Summit, an annual gathering that pulls into one place all the forces of power in the state. More than 1,000 people were there – CEOs of major corporations, leaders of the state’s biggest nonprofits, and political leaders from U.S. senators to the governor.

Findley was there for the panel on rural perspectives on Oregon’s economy. He was partnered with state Rep. Caddy McKeown, a Democrat from Coos Bay. Findley picked up on a major theme through the day – the challenge of limited affordable homes.

“In Malheur County, we’re having a tremendous problem with housing,” Findley said, his image projected on two giant screens as his voice boomed across the conference hall. “We have no affordable housing to speak of.”

He noted Malheur County built 23 homes at a time when Payette County put up 140 new homes.

To access the full story, click here.

7. How Police Officers Can Save Rural EMS

In recent months, the shortage of personnel working or volunteering for rural emergency medical services agencies has received a lot of attention. Earlier this year, there was an article in New Yorker magazine titled “In Rural America, There Are Few People Left to Drive the Ambulances.”1 In October, a report on NBC Nightly News shed further light on this shortage and its effects. Citing various reports, they noted that 70% of rural EMS agencies rely on volunteers and 1/3 of these EMS agencies are in immediate danger of shutting down due to a lack of volunteers.2 This coincides with the closure of many rural hospitals and community healthcare Page 4 of 6

centers, creating a situation where large portions of rural America are in grave danger of entirely losing access to EMS or any sort of emergency healthcare.

Considering how advanced EMS has become — and how much training and continuing education is required — being a volunteer provider can be tough. In cities with “career” EMS departments staffed by full-time personnel, the role that EMTs and paramedics assume is growing, as leaders are embracing an ever-expanding number of interventions. There has been a trend of morphing units from BLS to ALS and even to critical care transports. This growing scope of practice has increased the educational demands placed on EMS providers at all levels, which has made it difficult for unpaid volunteers to commit to the training necessary to become certified.

Despite the negative headlines, however, a simple solution might lie in outsourcing rural EMS to other public safety departments. The idea of EMS operating under another department is nothing new. A sizable percentage of ambulances are run by fire departments, and nearly all fire departments respond to medical calls in some way or another. That being said, a public safety organization that has traditionally held a modest role in EMS but, in my opinion, has the potential to transform rural healthcare, is the police department. In specific regions, police officers respond to medical emergencies and, where trained and authorized as providers, routinely provide lifesaving care.

To access the full story, click here.

8. How Independence Is Becoming A ‘Smart Rural Community’

INDEPENDENCE, Ore. (KOIN) — More than two decades of hard work and planning, coupled with millions of dollars in infrastructure investments, is paying off for the City of Independence.

New businesses are popping up all over downtown, in a city with a population estimated to barely top 10,000.

“You hear kind of the typical story of small towns with the mills closed, you know the local economy dried up,” the city’s economic development director, Shawn Irvine, said.

“Independence in the ’80s and ’90s was that classic small town that was kind of starting to close up and fade away. The community really didn’t want to see that happen so they pulled together, created a plan … we’re beginning to see the fruits of that labor now in a big way.”

One of the most noticeable fruits of those labors: A 75-room boutique hotel that opened this past October on the city’s riverfront.

The Independence is the first hotel in the city. It hopes to draw in wine country tourists and outdoor enthusiasts, with features like a 24-hour bike workroom. A large number of its customers, though, have been athletes competing at nearby Western Oregon University, according to Sondra Storm, co-owner of Embarcadero Hospitality Group, one of the developers behind the hotel. They’ve had several sold-out nights already, despite opening closer to the slow season, Storm added.

To access the full story, click here.

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9. As Its Latino Population Grows, Hermiston Embraces The Label Of 'Inclusive Community’

When Hermiston School District submits demographic data to the Oregon Department of Education, sometimes they get a call letting them know they made a mistake — they marked “English” as the predominate language of origin spoken by the district’s largest racial minority.

In Hermiston, however, it’s no mistake. In 2018-2019, only 41 percent of the district’s students identified as white. Fifty-four percent were categorized as “Hispanic/Latino.”

“It’s a big difference from when I started here 12 years ago,” said Bryn Browning, the district’s assistant superintendent of teaching and learning.

Eastern Oregon’s largest city now stands at about 37 percent Hispanic or Latino overall, according to estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau. Much of Hermiston’s continued growth is being driven by its Latino population, and HSD is a bellwether for the shift.

The district accommodates students whose first language isn’t English with an array of educational supports that range from typical English Language Learner classes to the Newcomers program, which serves students who have lived in the United States for less than 18 months.

Like many Hermiston organizations, the district places value on providing written communications in both English and Spanish. HSD also has at least one fluently bilingual person in the main office of each school and provides translators for parent-teacher conferences, behavioral meetings, registration day, assemblies and other times parents visit the school.

To access the full story, click here.

10. GRANT OPPORTUNITIES – 2020 ‘Conversations With Funders And Partners’ Scheduled For Feb. 19- March 12 Grant makers offering more than $5 million in funding for FY2021 will participate in the Cultural Trust’s 2020 “Conversations with Funders and Partners” from Feb. 19 through March 12. The eight-stop series of informal information sessions will enable grant seekers to learn about funding programs available and give them the opportunity to discuss their projects and programming. Grant application writing workshops, presented by Travel Oregon, will be held in conjunction with three of the events.

Participating with the Cultural Trust will be representatives from four of its Statewide Partners – the Oregon Arts Commission, Oregon Heritage, Oregon Humanities and the Oregon State Historic Preservation Office – as well as counterparts from The Oregon Community Foundation, the James F. and Marion L. Miller Foundation, Travel Oregon, Oregon Parks and Recreation (three locations), the State Library of Oregon, the Marion Soil and Water Conservation District (Salem only) and Portland’s Regional Arts and Culture Council (Portland only); among others.

For more information on the info sessions, click here.

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