Letters to the Editor 11/21/2018

To the Editor:

On Sunday afternoon, November 4, there was extensive loud automatic rifle fire all day at Edgar Lake on Stevens Canyon (near Indian Ford Road) followed by loud explosions that actually rattled windows of homes over one mile away.

This area does not have high berms for shooting and has become an area of extreme noise pollution for homeowners and an unsafe area for hikers, equestrians and cyclists.

I filed an incident report with the Forest Service. The Forest Service has it designated as a winter game passage area. I think all the game is hightailing away.

Sad that this is allowed to go on so close to many Sisters homeowners and lovers of the great outdoors.

The Forest Service personnel were very courteous at the Sisters Ranger station, and a helpful enforcement officer followed up with me and indicated he would follow up and patrol the area the following weekend.

Gary Wehrle

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To the Editor:

Last week there was the suggestion that the Zimmerman Cinder Pit might be more effectively "managed" by the Forest Service. If the Forest Service were good neighbors they would stop the noise: as in stop the shooting. This would protect sensibilities and protect P.T.S.D. people from physical harm?

With the added specter of wildfire to lend emotional leverage to the "management" agenda: one might wonder how wildfire could emanate from a bare red cinder pit completely devoid of any trees or brush.

In the coming year we shall see the government party and its supporters attempting to "manage," not only where we shoot but what we shoot with. It seems that flyover country deplorables must be brought to heel by their political masters if America is to be "Fundamentally Remade."

Larry Benson

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To the Editor:

Reference your article (page 19) on the supermajority. Main menu for the upcoming session is which tax to pass: carbon tax, value-added tax or gross receipts tax (back-door sales tax). Or maybe all three!

Such hard decisions.

John Morter

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To the Editor:

I'd like to start by thanking those of you who shared your appreciation of last month's letter and in honor of the Thanksgiving holiday, I would like to share a few things that I am thankful for this November.

Even though enrollment is down two students this month, it is still above our projected enrollment for the start of the year. The past two years, we have started below our projection, so starting above is evidence of the growth that is happening in Sisters Country. I am thankful to see the growth in our schools.

I am thankful to a great staff. The Sisters School District At-A-Glance Profiles were released by the state and English, math, and science scores are up throughout the district. Our third-grade language arts scores are 17% above the state average. At Sisters Middle School our language arts scores are 12% above the state average and science is 26 percent above the state average. At the High School, our freshman "on track" rate improved to nearly 90 percent, and our graduation rate is up.

I am thankful for a supportive community. We have many great partners as well as a community that has supported us with both a facilities and a local option bond. The community not only values a strong school system, they get involved as partners and volunteers that support the many experiential learning opportunities for our students.

Please note the next board meeting is December 12 at 5 p.m. in the District office. These are public meetings and offer a great way to see how our students, staff, administrators, volunteers and community members all come together to make our District one of the best in Oregon!

Curt Scholl, SSD Superintendent

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To the Editor:

The Central Oregon Rancher Magazine is hosting an event November 20 in Prineville titled "Log It, Graze It or Watch It Burn. The Solution." Their intention is to get together and solve the problem of catastrophic fires in our forests. All solutions and input from the public will be hand-delivered to elected officials in Washington, DC. (Isn't it kind of cute how some people still have faith that the Trump administration could actually fix something?) Not surprisingly, their announcement makes no mention of climate change, the most significant factor behind these monster fires.

Thinking that solving the forest-fire problem by simply logging it or thinning excessive fuel load ignores the fact that the slash left over can create its own problems. In Paradise, some researchers found that logging in a burned area after a fire in 2008, intending to clear out fuels and make that area safer, may have had the opposite effect because of fast-burning weeds and young trees that allowed the fire to spread even more rapidly.

One partial solution would be to stop subsidizing the oil, gas and coal industries (and grazing). The fossil fuel companies get corporate welfare to the tune of $14.7 billion from the federal government and $5.8 billion in state-level incentives for a total of $20.5 billion annually. This is a conservative estimate based solely on production subsidies - taxpayer money that goes directly to producing more fossil fuels.

We should be subsidizing sustainable resource companies like wind and solar and small-diameter wood utilization for use as biofuels instead of fossil fuels as energy sources. Marketable biofuels would not only help to reduce fuel loads and create jobs but would help to slow down our use of fossil fuels, a necessity in the ongoing effort to combat climate change.

Terry Weygandt