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Monday Mailing

Year 23 • Issue 24 20 March 2017 1. Two for the Price of…FREE! 2. Smart Energy: Energy Trust Now Serving Avista Customers in Douglas County 3. Slash and Flood - Proposed Budget Threatens to Axe U.S. Flood Protections 4. Job Growth in Oregon's Thriving Software Industry Outpaced by...Booze?

5. Climate Deregulation Tracker 6. Climate Security 101 7. Learn What Location Analysis Can Bring to Your Business 8. Eugene Council Bans Dogs From Downtown But Snuffs Out AntiSmoking Measure 9. Free Webinar - Creative Placemaking: Economic Development for the Next Generation.

10. Get to Know Your Community: 7 Incredibly Useful Market Research Tools for Local Governments 11. Timelapse 1. Two for the Price of…FREE! Restore Oregon has partnered with Oregon Heritage to offer a FREE regional membership in the League of Historic American Theatres (LHAT) and Restore Oregon. This is an exclusive offer for historic Oregon theaters!

Quote of the Week: "Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving." ~Albert Einstein

Oregon Fast Fact: Oregon State University’s mens baseball team won back to back College World Series in 2006 and 2007 defeating the North Carolina Tarheels in both championships.

Our work with historic theaters started with a survey in 2015, continued with regional theater workshops throughout the state in 2016, and now expands to offer a dual membership which will start April 1st, 2017 and end March 31st, 2018. Perks of this membership combo include: LHAT  Belonging to a growing network of more than 300 historic theaters across North America.  Access to hundreds of professionals with extensive knowledge, experience and wisdom in historic theater rescue, rehabilitation, operations and sustainability.  One membership benefits your entire organization, not just one individual. As many staff and/or board members as you designate may access online resources.  Share resources, information and advice online with 400+ peers through the LHAT-CHAT NETWORK, a customized online community where members interact and collaborate to discuss innovative ideas, opportunities and challenges historic theaters face.  Online Theater Resources – archived articles, conference and seminar presentations and handouts, member survey results, sample  manuals, agreements, templates, job descriptions and much more!  Free, on-demand webinars For more information, click here.

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2. Smart Energy: Energy Trust Now Serving Avista Customers in Douglas County As of the new year, Energy Trust of Oregon’s full range of energy-efficiency services and programs are available to help Avista residential and eligible business customers in Douglas County save natural gas and lower utility bills. Energy Trust now serves Oregon customers of Portland General Electric, Pacific Power, NW Natural, Cascade Natural Gas and Avista.

Southern Oregon customers of Pacific Power already have access to cash incentives and expertise offered by Energy Trust. To date, Energy Trust has worked with almost 14,000 business and residential Pacific Power customer locations in Douglas County, helping them save more than $8 million annually in utility bills. Now Energy Trust can help customers served by both Pacific Power and Avista save even more energy and money with comprehensive support to lower electricity and natural gas use.

To access the full story, click here.

3. Slash and Flood - Proposed Budget Threatens to Axe U.S. Flood Protections Communities at risk for flooding are used to facing distinct challenges, but a recently proposed federal budget could magnify those trails.

Cuts are planned for many disaster-related programs, including rollbacks that eliminate funding for floodplain mapping, limit the ability to forecast extreme weather, and do away with programs that help prepare for and mitigate flooding. An arbitrary surcharge to flood insurance policies to support the construction of a border wall is also suggested.

The budget outline, released by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget Thursday, would decrease the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s budget by $3.6 billion or about 11 percent, according to the Washington Post.

The outline includes a plan to end support for the National Flood Insurance Program’s flood mapping products, which provides publicly accessible Flood Rate Insurance Maps (FIRMs) and risk assessments used to help communities determine flood risk and make development and infrastructure decisions.

For more information, click here.

4. Job Growth in Oregon's Thriving Software Industry Outpaced by...Booze?

Small software companies seem like they are everywhere in Portland, filling up office space and the seats in the city's coffee shops.

Here's how the state's economic development agency, Business Oregon, describes the industry's progress.

"Software and IT is one of the fastest growing industry groups in Oregon, with more than 50% employment growth over the past 10 years," the agency's website says. "Nearly 3,700 Software and IT establishments call Oregon home."

But one industry is growing even faster than software—booze.

To access the full story, click here.

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5. Climate Deregulation Tracker This handy Web site from the Columbia Law School lists daily updates on congressional or presidential actions that will impact climate mitigation and adaptation. The site contains an easy overview of the latest actions, action types, and agencies affected, as well as expanded information on each entry. A database of current and proposed regulations that address climate change is a useful reference of what’s at risk.

To access the Climate Deregulation Tracker, click here.

6. Climate Security 101 Climate change, in both scale and potential impact, is a security risk that will affect our most basic resources, from food to water to energy. Preparing for climate risks requires a much better understanding of the nature of the threat. The Climate Security 101 project aims to answer the most frequently asked questions regarding the nature of climate risks to security, as well as act as a clearinghouse for the latest climate security research and policy documents.     

See the most Frequently Asked Questions See the Climate Security Resource Hub for a list of significant government and nongovernmental resources/documents See the Climate Security Chronology for a list of significant reports and events by year Download a PDF compilation of Climate Security 101 Submit a question

To access the Climate Security 101 Site, click here.

7. Learn What Location Analysis Can Bring to Your Business Esri's free course, The Location Advantage, explores market planning, site selection, market analysis, and supply chain management.

The massive open online course (MOOC) enables you or your entire company to learn how geospatial analysis improves business decisions.

In a recent article published in Forbes magazine, Josh Bersin reports, "More than 70% [of Forbes research members] told us they are interested in exploring the use of MOOCs for corporate training."

Course Highlights • • • •

Case studies from leading companies and firms using location analytics Hands-on exercises, quizzes, and discussions Certificate of completion to document your learning Set your study times – no required attendance hours

The Location Advantage will run from April 12 to May 23, 2017 and only requires one to two hours of study per week. Register today and learn what geospatial analysis can do for you and your organization.

To register for this free course, click here.

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8. Eugene Council Bans Dogs From Downtown But Snuffs Out Anti-Smoking Measure Starting early next month, you won’t be able to hang out with your dog in the central part of downtown Eugene unless you live or work there.

The Eugene City Council approved the trial dog ban during a meeting Wednesday, but it will expire Nov. 1 unless the council votes to extend it.

City councilors, however, snuffed out another proposed ban: on smoking on sidewalks and plazas and in alleys in the downtown core.

Councilors approved the dog ban by a 6-2 vote. Councilors Emily Semple and Betty Taylor, both from south Eugene, voted no.

The council extinguished the proposed smoking ban on a 5-3 vote. Councilors Greg Evans, Claire Syrett and Alan Zelenka voted yes.

For more information, click here.

9. Free Webinar - Creative Placemaking: Economic Development for the Next Generation.

Attracting and retaining younger adults is a challenge that many small cities and towns face. Zachary Mannheimer bucked the trend and, after a 22-city road trip, decided to settle in Des Moines, Iowa.

Now he’s focused on getting others like him to see the upside of living in smaller communities.

Zach’s work takes a fresh approach to economic development in small towns with young people and creative professionals in mind. For example, a vacant hotel in Fort Dodge is being converted into market rate apartments with an in-house cultural center. In Earlham, residents are converting a downtown building into a restaurant and culinary school.

In this 60-minute webinar, you’ll hear how creative placemaking creates vibrant, attractive communities with viable business models, enthusiastic investors, and dynamic programs and an eye towards attracting and retaining the younger generation.

This free webinar is co-hosted with the Citizens' Institute on Rural Design™.

Speaker: Zachary Mannheimer, Principal Community Planner, McClure Engineering Zachary founded the Des Moines Social Club, an arts and education nonprofit. With the retention and recruitment of young people as a goal, DMSC uses the arts as a catalyst to create unprecedented community engagement. Zach’s experience points to the value in moving outside geographic and ideological comfort zones.

Update: We have reached capacity for the live event. Please register using the "recording only" ticket type to ensure you receive the webinar recording when it is available. Thank you for your interest.

To register for this webinar, click here.

10. Get to Know Your Community: 7 Incredibly Useful Market Research Tools for Local Governments Understanding your community is one of the keys to successful local government decision-making.

Makes a ton of sense. As a planner, the more you know your community the more you’ll be able to deliver the kind of successful community plans they're looking for.

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The more you know your community, the better you'll be able to evaluate perceptions of local areas and of council services, gauging perceptions towards green spaces, parks, open spaces, street lighting, parking, and the list goes on.

So what is the most effective way to understand your online community and quickly gauge perception towards a plan, a service or a program? I’ve gathered a list of 7 tools that caught my eye while during some research for a client who wanted to dig deep and get to know her online community better.

To access the full story, click here.

11. Timelapse It doesn’t pay to take your eyes off the Earth for a second. Look away even briefly and who knows what it will get up to?

That’s not how things usually seem to human beings living on the surface of the planet. The mountain that’s here today ought to be here tomorrow. The river that meanders along the boundary of your state or your nation will be meandering into the future. If you were in orbit, however, things would look very different—especially if you were in orbit for a few decades at a time. Since 1972, the Landsat satellites—a rotating fleet of four different spacecraft—have kept exactly that kind of longterm vigil, circling the Earth and scanning the surface for the incremental ways the human population is changing the only home it’s got. They’ve been aided since 2015 by the European Space Agency’s Copernicus Program and itsSentinel-2A satellite.

In the years all of the satellites have been flying they’ve taken millions upon millions of highdefinition images, which NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) have collated and assembled into something of a flip book that reveals the slow but steady alteration of our world. What the two science agencies started, the folks at Google have finished, turning the usually choppy, sometimeshazy images into smoothly streaming videos, revealing decades of topographic changes in 10-second sweeps. (Click for source material).

Those brief glimpses belie the extraordinary amount of computer-engineering muscle that went into making the mini-movies possible. The Google Earth Engine team worked with more than 5.4 million discrete images taken since 1984, and gave each one individual attention. In some, cloud cover had to be scrubbed away; in others missing pixels had to be filled in. In all of the images, there were plenty of those pixels to attend to. The average high-definition TV image is made of about 300,000 individual points of light. The Google time-lapse images pack 3.95 trillion pixels into a single frame.

To access the full story, click here.

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