Forestry Local Meeting, We Made Some Changes

At our statewide meeting at the end of January we made some changes to our Local’s Constitution and By-laws. The Area Representative position was removed from our governing documents and elections will not be held to fill these positions. One of the Area Representative’s main job was to recruit Stewards in there Area and this duty was transferred to all of the Statewide Officers.

Elections are now open for the Statewide Positions of President, Vice President, Secretary and Treasurer. Information about these positions and election information is available from Troy at barnardt@seiu503.org.

Doug Firoved reported that the Tent and Field Gear committee has been busy preparing tent, sleeping bag, pad and field pack recommendations for the Executive Committee’s review. Generally, here are the their thoughts to date: Tents would have a minimum of 42 square feet of floor space with a 3½ foot height, sleeping bags would be rated to 20, pads would be gray closed cell foam, and field packs would be large enough to hold 4 canteens and the next generation fire shelter.

Doug Decker, our State Forester, spoke to the group about lean budgets and listening to our customers. Training, always important to us, is one of the casualties of our current budget situation. When money for training becomes available it will be provided using a list of priorities currently being developed by Clark Seely. Decker is concentrating on listening to the different “communities of interest” that have influence on Oregon’s forests. When meeting with these groups he is thinking of it as an opportunity to “stand a little closer together” and find the common ground that already exists and making an extra effort to listen when that common ground is not immediately apparent.

Our next meeting will be a joint meeting with ODOT on May 5, 2012 in either Lincoln City or Newport.