THE GIFT OF GIVING
FEELING ROSY
Huge charitable donations were up in 2013, A3
THURSDAY, JANUARY 2, 2014
Serving Oregon’s South Coast Since 1878
Schools hurt by poverty funding
Coos Bay sets its sights on new projects ■
BY TIM NOVOTNY The World
A shift in Oregon’s poverty standard means some South Coast schools could lose thousands of dollars in state funding next year. Out of the state’s 197 school districts, 122 could lose funding next school year if a proposal to change the poverty standard used in calculating the State School Fund makes it through the state legislature. Coquille schools superintendent Tim Sweeney said the proposal is reinforcing frustrations rural Oregon schools have had for years: they feel left out of the highly-recognized schools on the Interstate 5 Corridor. “This is not a wealthy part of the state, but it’s not a large population center either,” he said. “It doesn’t change the fact that a kid in Portland has to be worth the same amount as a kid in Coquille, in Bend, in Reedsport. It doesn’t matter; they should be funded equally.” In the past, the student poverty level was only based on how many students received free or reduced lunch. “But part of the problem with using free-reduced numbers is high school students tend to underreport,” he said. “They don’t want to eat school lunches anymore, they want to go off campus, so they don’t sign up.” During last year’s legislative session, Gov. John Kitzhaber proposed combining the ways in which student poverty is measured, including free and reduced lunch numbers, U.S. Census data of adults living in poverty and tax return information. That data will be skewed in areas that draw retirees, Sweeney said. “If you have a retirement area where you have lots of retirees on fixed incomes they don’t often support school levies, et cetera,” he said. “You could see where it would raise the standard of living throughout the district but we still have high free-reduced count numbers for the student population.” Coquille’s retirement portion of the community is pushing 65 percent, he said. Nine out of the top 10 schools that would see the most in additional funding sit along the I-5 Corridor: ■ Salem-Keizer: $4.1 million ■ Reynolds: $2.7 million ■ David-Douglas: $1.5 million ■ Redmond: $1.5 million ■ Gresham-Barlow: $1.4 million ■ Tigard-Tualatin: $1.2 million ■ Centennial: $1.1 million ■ Hillsboro: $847,000 ■ Portland: $797,000 ■ Douglas County: $735,000 The same has happened when applying for competitive grants. Kitzhaber’s $29.3 million Strategic Initiatives for Student Success fund gives school districts the opportunity to fight for competitive grants. “You’ll find the vast majority of those grants are staying on the I-5 Corridor,” Sweeney said. “We tried to do a regional grant for an early childhood hub to be run out of Coos Bay and we didn’t make the cut on that.” Only $15,000 from Strategic Initiatives has gone to the South Coast, he said. SEE SCHOOLS | A8
city is hectic enough for city staff, but add in the unexpected projects that pop up and it can be hard to keep focused. Even if it is something positive, like the recent creation of a rain garden for a new downtown business, it can derail some of your goals. “There are a lot of things that are not on the goals that come up, that you don’t conceive that will happen and that (the rain garden) was one of them. Obviously another thing that took a considerable amount of staff time this year has been the issue with the (Mingus Park) memorial. That wasn’t on the horizon when the (2013) goals were crafted or adopted.” That doesn’t mean to imply that the city did not get to accomplish some big goals in 2013. They
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included being able to partner with Oregon Department of Transportation to bring connectivity with North Bend through the addition of a new sidewalk, build momentum on the Hollering Place project, establish a vendor cart ordinance, complete the Eastside boat launch upgrade project and maintain core public services. “I know that we created an urban renewal agency advisory committee and we’ve also created a streets task force committee,” Craddock added. “Both were extremely important. Not unlike every other city in the nation, our street infrastructure is fading away and deteriorating and we need to as a community start to think about SEE GOALS | A8
Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!
By Lou Sennick, The World
The brave and the faithful splash around in Sunset Bay to welcome in the New Year. For the 29th time, people gathered at the state park near Charleston to start the new year with a cool dip in the bay. Some have been taking the dip for years and some for the first time. Please see the video at theworldlink.com
Salvage logging in full swing in private forests Federal lands are another story after last summer’s fires ■
GLENDALE (AP) — Salvage logging on land burned by last summer’s Douglas Complex wildfire in southwestern Oregon is in full swing in privately owned forests, but not in federal ones. Roseburg Forest Products has cut 8 million board feet of timber from its lands outside Glendale and plans to cut 32 million board feet more, the News-Review reported. One million board feet is roughly enough to build 50 homes. Meanwhile, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management is still deep in the planning process and has no firm timber targets for the public land. The difference highlights the contrast between
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industrial logging under the Oregon Forest Practices Act and logging on public land that must conform to federal environmental laws. Phil Adams, timber manager for Roseburg Forest Products, said the company wants to harvest dead trees quickly before they lose value from rot. He is afraid that burned timber on BLM lands will turn into brush and stands of dead trees unless they are aggressively managed. The company plans to spend $6 million planting seedlings and doing other restoration on 8,000 acres. He said that investment would be at risk if fire breaks out in the dead trees on BLM land. The Douglas Complex fire burned 48,679 acres. Of that, 23,000 acres is private land held by 27 landowners. The rest is in the BLM’s Roseburg and Medford districts. Most of the 19,000 acres
Arthur Manoly, Bandon Patty Huntley, Coos Bay Michelle Landagin, Coos Bay Laura Slattery, North Bend John Clemans, Coos Bay
Obituaries | A5
Dry conditions It’s not just the rain totals that are way down. The first half of this winter has also been short on snowfall.
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in the Medford District is classified as matrix, where timber production is the primary goal. Most of the 6,000 acres in the Roseburg District is old growth forest reserve, where fish and wildlife habitat is the primary goal. BLM Roseburg District spokesman Cheyne Rossbach said any salvage logging was likely to come from matrix lands. It would be late summer or fall before an environmental assessment is completed on those lands. Meanwhile, the old growth reserves are undergoing an assessment aimed at restoring fish and wildlife habitat and healthy forests. The BLM has been working on removing logs cut in the course of fighting the fire, assessing and cutting trees along roads in danger of falling, and preventing erosion along fire lines and on steep slopes.
FORECAST
The World
Revitalization, Finance, and City Policies and Procedures. “I think those are good goals to have for any city,” Craddock said this week, “but it’s the activities that you undertake that year as you aim to achieve those goals, I think, which is where the council works on them.” The city started working on the 2014 goals during a publicized open meeting work session in early December. They will be up for adoption at the next council meeting, with the next step being the putting together of the work plan. Basically, the nuts and bolts, and details, of the activities they’ve decided on. Craddock says it is important, if you want to accomplish something, to have it set down in a goal. The simple day-to-day running of the
STATE
BY CHELSEA DAVIS
COOS BAY — As the calendar flips over to 2014, the city of Coos Bay gets ready to affirm its goals for the new year. City Manager Rodger Craddock says that while the goals remain unchanged from 2013, the way they will go after those goals is going to be different. The city starts with five basic goals each year that deal with all aspects of city government: Citizen Education and Involvement, Infrastructure and Services, Economic Development and City
DEATHS
Proposed formula could pull money away from schools on the South Coast
INSIDE
theworldlink.com
Same goals, different strategy
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Clubs, activities. . . A2 What’s Up. . . . . . . . A2 South Coast. . . . . . A2 Opinion. . . . . . . . . . A4
Michigan State outlasts Stanford, B1
Rain likely 55/42 Weather | A8