22 mm 022216

Monday Mailing

Year 22 • Issue 22 22 February 2016 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

SB 1573 Takes Wrecking Ball to Land-Use Planning System Oregon Senators: Portland's Toxic Air is 'Public Health Emergency' Preparing for The Big One Takes Broad Effort Suit Seeks Federal Funds for Counties Developer of Shipping Container Subdivision in Garden City Aims to be ‘Housing Innovator’ Oregon House Passes Bill to Eliminate Coal, Double Renewable Energy Concerns Mount over Draft of State’s Bike Plan Travel Oregon Matching Grants Program HUD Better Buildings Challenge What is Walkability?

Extreme Inequality = Economic Collapse

1. SB 1573 Takes Wrecking Ball to Land-Use Planning System Salem is like a lot of towns in Oregon but we also have some special differences. Like many towns in Oregon, we grow our town in some of the most productive farmland in the world. That may be why many Salem citizens are keenly interested in how and where community development occurs.

Senate Bill 1573, the latest special interest bill from Oregon Home Builders Association, would open the floodgate to development on countless acres throughout the state, but especially farmland.

Quote of the Week: "Every morning we are born again. What we do today is what matters most." ~Siddhārtha Gautama Oregon Fast Fact: The world’s tallest barber shop pole stands in Forest Grove, Oregon.

SB 1573 takes a wrecking ball to Oregon’s land-use planning system and our unique Oregon values. Citizen involvement (the most important democratic value of all) is enshrined in Oregon’s land use planning goals. SB 1573 effectively eliminates it.

To access the full story, click here.

2. Oregon Senators: Portland's Toxic Air is 'Public Health Emergency' Federal lawmakers on Friday implored the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to respond to growing alarm over what they said were dangerous amounts of toxic pollution in Portland's air.

As state regulators remained silent about plans to address the city's cancer-causing air pollution, Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley and Rep. Earl Blumenauer asked for the EPA to intervene, calling the situation a public health emergency.

The three Oregon Democrats escalated the already high-profile chorus of political leaders suddenly prodding environmental officials to take decisive action.

To access the full story, click here.

Page 1 of 5

3. Preparing for The Big One Takes Broad Effort The sleeping giant. The Big One. The geologic record is clear. The world’s most severe earthquakes can and do occur in our region.

We know that the last Big One occurred 316 years ago on Jan. 27, 1700. We can date it precisely by combining geologic evidence with Japanese historical records noting an “orphan tsunami.”

Movement in the Cascadia subduction zone that runs offshore from northern California to British Columbia triggers these large earthquakes at irregular intervals, approximately every 200 to 400 years.

We know from the oral traditions of the Pacific Northwest’s indigenous peoples that these earthquakes and tsunamis are part of our landscape, causing legendary damage — lives lost, homes and villages gone.

But we now have the means to prepare for disaster. We have the technology to provide sufficient warning to save lives and accelerate our recovery from an earthquake.

To access the full story, click here.

4. Suit Seeks Federal Funds for Counties Curry County might join Lane County and others this summer in lawsuit against the Bureau of Land Management, claiming the agency has violated the terms of the 1937 O&C Lands Act that addresses timber production on federal lands.

If the lawsuit is successful, it would allow loggers to increase timber production on federal land, likely resulting in more money for county coffers.

“This is the most important piece of litigation Curry and the other 17 O&C counties could ever be involved in,” said Curry County Commissioner David Brock Smith, who sits on the board of the Association of O&C Counties (AOCC).

The AOCC recently distributed requests for financial assistance in the lawsuit to the 18 counties it represents, said Tony Hyde, Columbia County commissioner and AOCC president.

Lane County has chipped in $84,000 toward the $530,000 in legal fees. It would cost Curry County $20,000 if it joins in the suit, which could be filed as early as May or June. The Portland law firm Stoel Rives would represent the AOCC. To access the full story, click here.

5. Developer of Shipping Container Subdivision in Garden City Aims to be ‘Housing Innovator’ The man behind what may be Idaho’s first-ever shipping container subdivision isn’t trying to sell something he wouldn’t buy.

David Herman, the son of a Sacramento, Calif., shipping company executive, has had a lifelong fascination with the giant steel containers used to move goods on ships, trains and trucks. He had a business converting containers into equipment shelters for cellular towers in the late 1980s and early 1990s. He even lived in a shipping container house in central Oregon for a couple of years (an upgrade from a mobile home he described as a “tuna can with windows”).

During a trip to Montreal in 2013, he was wowed by a three-story hospitality building made with containers for the city’s summer festival.

Page 2 of 5

“It was a really extraordinarily innovative structure,” he said.

To access the full story, click here.

6. Oregon House Passes Bill to Eliminate Coal, Double Renewable Energy A utility-backed bill aimed at eliminating coal use and doubling renewable energy in Oregon has advanced in the state legislature. On Monday, the Oregon House of Representatives passed H.B.4036 in a 39-20 vote, and the legislation now goes to the state Senate for consideration.

H.B.4036 reforms energy policy for Oregon by eliminating coal from the electricity supplies to customers of the state’s largest utilities, Pacific Power and Portland General Electric (PGE), by 2030.

It would also require that 50% of their power be generated by renewable sources by 2040.

Pacific Power and PGE collaborated with environmental advocates and The Citizens’ Utility Board of Oregon to find common ground on the bill, also known as the Clean Electricity and Coal Transition Plan.

To access the full story, click here.

7. Concerns Mount over Draft of State’s Bike Plan Staff from bike advocacy groups, from the Metro regional government and from the Portland office of the Oregon Department of Transportation are all pushing for significant changes to a document that will be the foundation of bicycle planning for the next quarter century.

Serious concerns are being expressed about ODOT’s draft of its next Bicycle and Pedestrian Plan.

Among the points of contention: the plan doesn’t explicitly say that the state should be putting complete biking and walking facilities on highways like Southwest Barbur, Southeast Powell or Northeast Lombard.

That stands in contrast to the previous state plan, published in 1995, which describes such arterial highways as “potentially the most important element of a complete network of bikeways and walkways.”

To access the full story, click here.

8. Travel Oregon Matching Grants Program The Travel Oregon Matching Grants Program makes awards available to eligible applicants for projects that contribute to the development and improvement of local communities throughout the state. These projects support Travel Oregon’s mission of ‘a better life for Oregonians through strong, sustainable local economies.’

The biennial Matching Grants Program is open. Communities, visitor associations, and tourismrelated organizations are invited to apply for funding. An applicant may apply for a grant of $2,500 – $100,000 per project and may apply for multiple projects during this cycle, however, each project requires its own application. Any applicant may apply for both Oregon Wine Country Plates and Travel Oregon Matching Grants Programs if eligible, however, successful project applications will only be approved for one grant source. Applicant must match the grant amount awarded, dollar for dollar. Up to 50% of the match may be in-kind.

Several steps need to be taken before completing and submitting the grant application. Applicants must contact both their Destination Marketing Organization and their Regional Destination Marketing Organization about their grant project idea and submit the DMO/RDMO Grant Project Page 3 of 5

Feedback Form prior to submitting a Grant Project Idea Worksheet to Travel Oregon. These details and more can be found in the Travel Oregon Matching Grants Guidelines.

For more information, click here.

9. HUD Better Buildings Challenge The Better Buildings Challenge is a voluntary leadership initiative that asks building owners, developers, and managers to make a public commitment to energy efficiency. Through the Better Buildings Challenge, the Federal Government is partnering with leaders that have committed to cutting energy waste across their portfolios, and providing their energy savings data and strategies as models for others to follow.

On December 3, 2013, the Administration expanded the Better Buildings Challenge to include multifamily housing. Already, more than 87 multifamily organizations, representing over 250 million square feet and impacting roughly 270,000 households, have made energy commitments through the Better Buildings Challenge. These leading multifamily organizations have committed to:   

Conduct an energy efficiency assessment of their building portfolio and pledge an organization-wide energy savings goal of at least 20% within 10 years Take action by showcasing energy efficiency projects and implementation models Report results by sharing energy performance data that demonstrates success

If you would like to know more about the Better Buildings Challenge or become a Partner, click here.

10. What is Walkability?

Humans are creatures of intention. We use our language to communicate thoughts and ideas in a deliberate way.

But our language is imperfect, and sometimes the intention of our communication is muddied by the words we use. Confusion can result when we use a single word that is a stand-in for a larger set of ideas. Here, nuance and caveat become increasingly important if one hopes to convey precisely what they are meaning.

Take, for example, the word “sustainability” – a term often used in the world of development and planning, but rarely, we would argue, given the space, meaning and understanding to properly convey an intended set of ideas.

And so it is with a new term: Walkability?

To access the full story, click here.

11. Extreme Inequality = Economic Collapse John Fullerton’s white paper, Regenerative Capitalism, lists eight principles critical to systemic economic health. The Capital Institute’s research group, Research Alliance for Regenerative Economics (RARE), uses recent scientific advances—specifically, the physics of flow [1]—to create a logical and measurable explanation of how these principles work to make or break vitality in the human networks of which economies are built. Here we explain why too much inequality is more than a moral problem. In fact, it drives economic systems towards collapse by sucking the life-blood out of real economies worldwide.

Page 4 of 5

According to a recent study by Oxfam International, in 2010 the top 388 richest people owned as much wealth as the poorest half of the world’s population—a whopping 3.6 billion people. By 2014, this number was down to 85 people. Oxfam claims that, if this trend continues, by the end of 2016 the top 1 percent will own more wealth than everyone else in the world combined. At the same time, according to Oxfam, the extremely wealthy are also extremely efficient in dodging taxes, now hiding an estimated $7.6 trillion in offshore tax-havens.

Why should we care about such gross economic inequality? After all, isn’t it natural? The science of flow says: yes, some degree of inequality is natural, but extreme inequality violates two core principles of systemic health: circulation and balance.

To access more information about this resource, click here.

Page 5 of 5