September 10, 2007

Public safety grants given again
Maybe for the last time without added federal payments to timber counties

By ED COX
of The Chronicle

     The county sheriff’s department will mount a new radio repeater, its Search and Rescue program will put new all-season tracks on two all-terrain vehicles and a sled, and the Youth Services department’s Community Work Service Project will carry on thanks to federal Title III grant monies the Wasco County Court distributed Wednesday, perhaps for the last time.
     Every year for the past seven, the court has received national forest-related safety net payments and, by statute, reserved either 15 or 20 percent of those for Title II and Title III projects.
     This year it set aside 15 percent of the payments, which Congress extended for one year (at 80 percent of past levels) after refusing to renew the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-determination Act that created them in 2000.
In June, the court determined that three fourths of that 15 percent would be handed over to Resource Advisory Council for allocation to Title II projects.
     The remaining one fourth, or about $112,000 is what was available to the court to apportion Wednesday, based on its own internal application process, to qualifying Title III projects from the following categories: search, rescue or emergency; community service work camps; forest-related educational opportunities; fire prevention and county planning; and community forestry.
Mindful that these are the last new payments unless the act is reauthorized, commissioners talked long and hard about which requests to grant and how much to spend down the fund. Unapportioned monies can be “banked” for subsequent years so long as they have been committed.
     In the end, they decided to grant all three requests from county departments at the full amount and even found some left over for the Barlow Ranger District’s Youth Conservation Corps, which they have funded in the past.
     The sheriff’s department received $20,808 for the repeater to be installed at Clear Lake Lookout south of Mount Hood. It will cover what chief deputy Steve Conover called a “black hole” in communications coverage in the southwest portion of the county.
     Conover said the repeater will benefit not only county law enforcement but also Oregon State Police, the U.S. Forest Service, ambulance services and maybe even fire districts.
     It will also enhance officer safety and lead to better response times, thus improving public safety, he said.
     “It’s a necessary expense,” said Conover, who explained that dispatch currently cannot get ahold of officers in the area to ask them to respond to incidents. “That’s a disservice to the public.”
     Search and Rescue received $13,044 for all-season tracks for both its all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) and its rescue sled.
     The need for the tracks, volunteer Roger Howe explained, arises from weather conditions found primarily in federal forest lands in late fall and early spring that result in intermittent patches of pavement and snow-covered ground.
     It’s bad for snowmobiles to run them over the pavement for more than a short stretch, Howe said, though teams will do so if necessary. On the other hand, the all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) are usable until they encounter deep snow and get bogged down or stuck.
     The all-season tracks will solve that problem, House said, allowing the ATVs and the rescue sled to run over snow or pavement. That way, rescuers know they will get in and probably get the victim out.
     The Youth Services Department received $44,000 to fund its Community Work Service Project for the next biennium. Established in 2003 and now entering its fifth year, the project is a cooperative effort with the U.S. Forest Service and allows youth facing court-mandated community work service to perform it on national forest lands in addition to others in Wasco County.
     “In my mind, this is one of the better things we fund with these dollars,” said Judge Dan Ericksen of the program, adding that it helps the county budget, serves youth, and gets things done at the forest level.
     With commissioners quickly identifying the request for that program and the one for the repeater as “absolutes,” the discussion became how much of Search and Rescue’s equipment request to fund, what if anything to give to the Youth Conservation Corps (YCC) and how much to save for an uncertain future.
     The court briefly considered paying for just two sets of tracks amid questions over how much the equipment would be used.
     Ericksen indicated that was impossible to know. “We don’t really need these until we can’t get to somebody that’s in dire straits because of the issues...If it saves somebody’s life, it’s a pretty cheap investment.”
     Commissioners called their final decision to fund all three tracks a “vote of confidence” for a group of volunteers that is “doing an outstanding job.” In also granting the full funding request of $28,323 for the YCC, they banked just $6,000 of this year’s money.
     With just over $40,000 left in the fund from previous years, Ericksen said there’s enough to maintain one of the on-going programs — the Community Works Servie Project — through 2011, even if the payments dry up next year.
He indicated that if that happens, the court will likely not fund the YCC again.