Scott Swanson
Wanted: someone to engineer and coordinate big changes proposed for Sweet Home and the forests surrounding it to the east.
Nearly a year after the signing of a declaration of cooperation to establish a community forest corridor from Sweet Home to the Willamette National Forest boundary east of Cascadia, organizers of the project are ready to hire a coordinator.
The position is being offered by the South Santiam All Lands Collaborative, a cooperative effort between local government, private industry and public land agencies that began in 2012. SSALC’s iommediate goals are to establish a South Santiam Community Forest, create a South Santiam Trail and improve livability and quality of life in East Linn County, primarily through the federal Livability Initiative that is being conducted for Sweet Home.
SSALC has been designated the interim governing body for the South Santiam Community Forest effort.
The community forest proposal is the result of 16 months of meetings in 2013-14 between scores of representatives from government agencies of all levels, private industry, private citizens and local universities, organized by Gov. John Kitzhaber’s Oregon Solutions Team.
The Solutions Team culminated in a 50-page Declaration of Cooperation signed by representatives of some 30 agencies last March, pledging to work together to establish the forest. SSALC was designated the governing body for the effort, once the team was dissolved.
Sweet Home City Manager Craig Martin, who has been a primary participant in establishing the collaborative, the community forest and trail efforts, and bringing the Livability Initiative to Sweet Home, said the hiring of a coordinator represents the next step in the process.
He noted that since the signing of the declaration, the Community Forest project has receded somewhat from public view, though it represents a significant portion of the Livability Initiative’s recommendations.
Sweet Home District Ranger Cindy Glick called the hiring of a coordinator “the missing link.”
“It’s been kind of a transition and now we’re going to fill that coordinator role, which is what we really need,” she said. “We’re hoping getting this coordinator on board will help us tremendously to move the concept forward.”
The position is being funded initially by a $50,000 grant from the Roseburg-based Ford Family Foundation, which aims to support “successful citizens and vital rural communities” in Oregon and northern California.
An additional $10,000 is being provided by Linn County, with $5,000 more coming from the City of Sweet Home. The coordinator will actually be employed by the nonprofit South Santiam Watershed Council and will report to its coordinator, who will work with “SSALC core members,” according to a posting for the job.
The person hired will head strategic planning for the South Santiam Community Forest and the river trail, facilitate forest management planning and coordinate local conservation education, among other things.
He or she will work with Federal Highway Administration and Conservation Fund staff members on the Livability Initiative, which will next manifest itself to the public in a “Share Fair” on the evening of March 3 and a public listening session on March 4.
The Livability Assessment and Recommendations Report, released after Thanksgiving, is composed of more than 150 pages describing Sweet Home’s challenges and offering solutions the community might pursue.
The Livability report is available for public inspection at City Hall or online at http://www.sweet-home.or.us/DocumentCenter/View/2617.
Glick said the March 3 and 4 events will bring residents together with staff members who wrote the Livability assessment and people who gave input that led to its production: local experts in housing, transportation, education, public safety and other facets of community life with the purpose of coming up with a “game plan” for Sweet Home’s future.
“We’re inviting particular people who know a lot about the topics,” she said. “We need to figure out what’s important, what the community vision is, where it is poised and agreeing on where to go.”
The “Share Fair” will provide an opportunity for local organizations, agencies and resource groups to talk about their efforts in the Sweet Home area and will include an overview of the assessment by its creators.
The coordinator position is essentially staff support for SSALC, said Sweet Home Planning Director Laura LaRoque, who came to the community two years ago from Portland State University as a Resource Assistance for Rural Environments (RARE) intern responsible for some of the duties that will be taken up by the new coordinator.
A big reason for that, she said, is because a lot of the work has been done by volunteers – community residents or people whose other job responsibilities are their primary focus.
“All these different volunteers are great,” LaRoque said. “This person will be the binding force between them all and will carry most of the workload. The collaborative is a group balancing full-time jobs and this person will keep them accountable.”
She said that, although the position is fully funded for one year, “this particular grant has a chance of getting funded for a second year.”
Glick said the coordinator will need to produce results in figuring out a good location for the South Santiam trail, for community forest boundaries, for management of the community forest and, most immediately, in moving the Livability Initiative forward.
“We’ve spent quite a bit of time trying to fund-raise,” she said. “We’re just so grateful for the Ford Family Foundation believing in us.”
She said there’s a strong possibility of funding from the implementation of the Livability Initiative, so the new coordinator will need to help the community focus on ;oowhat steps it wants to take to follow through with the Livability report’s recommendations.
“We expect this person to jump in and get their feet wet and follow through with the things the public wants to do,” she said.
Glick emphasized that community residents will be encouraged to weigh in on the location of the trail and make-up of the community forest, and how things will work – for instance, where the forestlands will be located, who will own and govern them, and whether they will be for-profit or not.
“We have to figure out what the public wants,” she said.
Martin said he’s looking forward to getting a coordinator in position to make progress.
“We’re looking to help move these initiatives and projects forward faster than what we’ve been able to do in the past,” Martin said. “It’s like having a boat with 20 people rowing and then having a 400-horsepower outboard motor – with those 20 people still rowing.