“The only CUTS that should have been made were in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest” OUCH! Today was the most painful I’ve had since moving to Skamania County. More than all the self-inflicted ouches suffered through 18 months of building our house, crushed fingers, toes, and numerous cuts and bruises. Today, I suffered through a 3 hour budget meeting with the County Commissioners, and the other elected officials, many county employees and interested citizens. The Commissioners’ Chambers were standing room only. It wasn’t pretty watching the Commissioners make hard decisions as the other elected officials pled their cases for funds and employees. Today, the job was to determine the fate of our county services for 2015 and beyond. It was particularly painful and infuriating as I saw the CUTS being made to the people and programs that have made our county an exceptional place to live for so long. I do not envy what any of these men and women have gone through since the hard cold light of losing the SRS funds dawned upon us. Today, the heart of our people shown as several have stepped forward to give up their jobs and take early retirement so that others may keep theirs. We are losing an incredible amount of experience and knowledge that will take others years to attain. Others will suffer the pain of the budget CUT blade, with the unions determining who goes and who stays. Today, saw the beginning of fewer services that support those least able to fend for themselves. Today, the reality of the depth of the crisis must have set in upon the newly elected officials: the Treasurer, the Auditor and District 3 Commissioner. Suddenly they find themselves not only in a new and challenging public office, but they have fewer people to provide the services we need and expect of them. I wish them well. Today, our county schools must be suffering similar indignities as they has lost similar amounts of funding and will have to sort out what we can and cannot afford. This will not be pretty. Today, I’m mad as hell with the lack of public involvement in our government, for this is mainly OUR fault. If we had been more involved, more concerned, paid more attention, we might have made this a lot less painful. We might have prevented the incredible erosion of our reserve funds and not had an additional two million dollar loan hanging over our heads. We might have been more proactive in putting pressure on the Forest Service to achieve the measly harvest levels the Northwest Forest Plan allowed. We might have resisted the disproportionate pressure the eco-extremists and urban-elitists have on the Forest Service and our Federal Senators. By the way, our Congresswoman, Jaime Herrera Buetler has been very supportive of the county’s efforts with the Forest Service. The word CUT has purposively been capitalized above because the lack of CUTS by the Forest Service is one of the prime reasons we are where we are today. The only CUTS that should be made are in the forest, not to the schools and county budgets. About 80% of our county is host to the Forest Service and the Gifford Pinchot National Forest; we were originally promised that we would be compensated by getting 25% of the timber harvest revenue. During the second half of the last century we did very well with this arrangement: great schools, good roads and services. Then, the NWFP was imposed upon us; we dropped from an average of 326 million board feet per year of timber harvest to an average of 17 million BFY since 1996. Environment pressures and budget constraints have not allowed the GP to even meet the allowed harvest level of 65 MMBFY set in the original plan. So we were given the option of accepting the Secure Rural School funds and had to choose between them or the timber revenue. A no-brainer here, take a pittance from timber or the more generous SRS dollars. Today, the SRS funds are gone and so are timber harvest revenues, gone are many services and jobs, yet the Forest Service still has 80% of our land. So, as today ends, what about Tomorrow?....It’s only just a day away! Tomorrow, our group, Saving Skamania County will continue to work to educate the federal elected officials about our plight and work to get the Forest Service to meet the basic tenets of the NW Forest Plan, advocate for changes to the Forest Service system and improve the efficiency of an agency that we pay for not only in taxes, but the lack of taxes from their being here. We are working on presentations that we hope to get before a broader public audience to educate those in the cities of how things can work for the betterment of all. There are only seven of us; we have dedicated hundreds of hours and our own funds to sponsoring the ‘Public Roads Input Meeting’ with the FS last March and a series of 5 more public meetings at the Rock Creek Center, attended dozens of meeting with like minded folks and even endured a few GP Collaborative meetings. We need folks who can contribute an hour or two a month to help with a wide variety of tasks. Our next major effort is to get our message to the Congress as well as Washington State officials as to what they need to do to correct this travesty. The first task being to get Congress to reinstate the SRS program at 2010 levels for five years; during which time we need to get the timber harvest back to one hundred million BFY so we can end the SRS altogether. In February we will sponsor a meeting of all federal and state elected officials who have a direct hand in helping us improve timber management in the Gifford Pinchot. We are also available to come to you to share our presentations, some parts of which have been posted here on FB. So if you have a community gathering, Church or school group that would be interested, let me know. Getting these packages printed and delivered costs money, so we could use some donations. We will have a “gofundme” contribution link up tomorrow, listed as “Saving Skamania County” in the Community category. So if you can see you way to supporting our work, we would appreciate it and many will benefit. Without your involvement, there will be no tomorrow. I never want to see another day like today for any rural county, especially when there are resources that need to be managed responsibly for the benefit of ALL. Working for a better tomorrow, Saving Skamania County Tom Lannen Stevenson, WA 509-460-3917
Posted on: Thu, 08 Jan 2015 04:37:45 +0000
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