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MICHAEL DUNNE: I'm Michael Dunne. As you probably have heard numerous times, Lane County is the size of Connecticut, and that's great in terms of wide-open spaces, wonderful forests, mountains and coastline. But with a county this massive, fighting fires in the rural areas has always been a big challenge, now made exponentially worse with climate change and one organization, the Lane Fire Authority, is often all there is between a raging wildfire and catastrophe. Today, on the show, you'll hear from Lane fire authority's chief, and hear what he has to say about the need for a new voter approved levy in order to hire more staff and upgrade infrastructure to better serve the lands and people of the county. And then we'll finish out the show talking with our own reporter about protests against Lane Community College over alleged secret deals and actions by the administration. Dale Borland fire chief with Lane Fire Authority, thanks so much for coming on and talking to us.
DALE BORLAND: You bet. Happy to be here and appreciate you and KLCC taking the time to let us have a few minutes.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Let's start with some of the basics, because perhaps some listeners don't know, tell us a little bit about the lane Fire Authority. What's your jurisdiction? Kind of tell us about the organization.
DALE BORLAND: Lane Fire Authority, well over the years, Lane Fire Authority is I'll use the term conglomerate of multiple agencies. Okay, I actually started with Lane Rural Fire Rescue, which was kind of to the north of Fern Ridge, from the Irving area clear out to the Alderwood area in low pass consisted of four stations in I think it was about 2009 2010, we started to work just more cooperatively with Lane County Fire District number one, which was on the south side, the Venita area, Elmira no tie Walt and all that started to work a lot more cooperatively, just kind of blending services from maintenance, fire inspections, you name it, until we actually pinned what we call a 190 agreement, which special districts in the state of Oregon are allowed to sign into 190, intergovernmental agreements. And we signed a pretty comprehensive intergovernmental agreement, and formed the Fire Authority, and pretty much conjoined the two districts together and started to work as one. And then I think we officially went to our voters in 2014 and boy, I hope I got those dates right. It's recalling that off the top of my head, and sometimes a penguin can jump off that iceberg, and I forget. But anyway, formally went to our voters and merged the two districts together with the resulting name of lane Fire Authority. So, the two districts are even made up of other small districts. Lane back in the day was Irving, Rural Fire Protection District Alvadore Fire, which included Franklin, and then in the late, early, late 70s, early 80s, actually the Alderwood area, Low Pass area was annexed in to what was then lane, Lane Rural Fire Protection District number one, Lane County Fire District One used to be there was Venita Fire Department, there was Elmira no tie Fire Department, there was Walton Fire Department, Crow Valley Fire Department, and all those over the years formed into one agency, which became Lane County Fire District number one. So just consolidations over time, you know. And I think there are varying reasons for those consolidations, combined services, you know, trying to gain efficiencies. You know, when you've got an area where 280 80 square miles of fire district, well over 400 with our ambulance service area, and when you think about things like that, and all these, all these small organizations, and they've all got, you know, probably a fire chief, whether they're full-time volunteer or maybe a combination thereof, with maybe some staff. And you start thinking about bringing all those organizations together and having one fire chief. And then spread your staff out across those districts. It's really just about trying to garner efficiency. And it is, by no stretch. And I, I always tell my staff, I tell folks, whenever we do things like that, I'm really, I don't like to use the word save, because we are really not saving taxpayers any revenue or money when we do things like this. We are trying to do a better job of using those revenues more efficiently. Is what we're doing. Okay. Everyone knows that if anybody watches or listens to the heartbeat. It is getting tougher and tougher for special districts like us to continue to provide the service. We're not the only ones that struggle along. I mean, it's a statewide issue.
MICHAEL DUNNE: I would imagine, as you've described, and I think many, many of our listeners know Lane County is huge, and so I imagine one of the biggest challenges, but I want to hear from you is just that that size to be able to do what you do in such a large county may be one of the biggest sorts of underlying challenges. Do I have that right?
DALE BORLAND: Yes, yes, for us, our jurisdiction, and we're one of the largest, I would say, special districts. We are, I would say the largest special district in Lane County, and we're probably second to third across the state of Oregon in geographical size. So, it definitely creates some complexities for us. You know, dealing with the revenue that we do get through our taxes, and the geographical size and our call volume just continues to increase. It is, literally, you pick the right corner to corner. It's a 45-minute drive across our district and then trying to cover all that territory with the staff we have. It's, it is, we love doing it, but it is a, it's, it's an undertaking, and historically, out in this area, because my office is out at the Venita headquarter station. We get a lot of back what we call back-to-back calls here. We pretty much count on if the tone goes off for a medical call, hang on, because the tones are probably going to go off in the next one to two to five minutes, and we're going to have another call also, and we oftentimes run three to four to five calls simultaneously across the district.
MICHAEL DUNNE: We are all very cognizant of the fact that, you know, especially wildfires and wildland fires have just increased in veracity, and so on and so forth. And I would imagine, do you and your department also tend to be called in to help with a whole bunch of different problems and challenges with regard to fire and medical emergencies. Is that correct?
DALE BORLAND: Yes, summertime, obviously, as you said, wild land fire is a huge component for us. You know, with our large geographical area, we also overlay a lot with the Oregon Department of Forestry here in Venita. So basically, if you picture it on a map, anything west of territorial road out here, west of Fern Ridge, that is also Oregon Department of Forestry territory. So, we have two jurisdictions there. Their mission is wildland fire and forestry services. We are structural, but there's a lot of homes in the interface, and so we run cooperatively, lockstep with Oregon Department of Forestry out here every year, as do many other districts across the county here. And so, it is a huge component for us. And it does seem that over time, our indices of wildfire continue to increase. And you know, our objective is as the State Fire Marshal's office here in Oregon states, you know, let's keep them small. And so, I'm very thankful we have that joint partnership with the Oregon Department of Forestry out here. And I would say we work relatively seamless as one with them when it comes to getting out on the dirt and keeping these fires small and keeping that footprint as minimal as possible. Okay, so there's a levy that you want to talk about. Let's talk about that.
MICHAEL DUNNE: What would the levy do for your organization?
DALE BORLAND: Well, we actually. I'll give a, if I can, I'll give a little bit of history on that. if you look at the two districts that came together to make Lane Fire Authority, when we went to the voters in 2021 that is the first year we ever went to our voters and asked for a levy and I think we're proud of that fact that we were able to operate so many years on a current, you know, assessed value of our area. We just got to the point where, with call volumes, increasing the cost of, you know, goods, and for us to provide the service, we had to go to our taxpayers. And we went out, I think it was November of 20 and we hit the ballot and we failed. The first time we went out, we went out for 55 cents per 1000 and a local option Levy, and we failed. And so, we pulled back, we retooled, and went back to the voters in May of 21 and we were successful at a 35 cent Levy. So, we're reaching the end of that levy which expires in 26 and so we decided that we would try to get a little bit ahead on it again and go back to our voters this November. The board did pass the resolution. Will be on the November 4 ballot this year. Folks will see it when the ballots drop and come out. And we are asking to renew that levy with a 20-cent increase, which would put us back to those 55 cents we originally asked for. It's I believe that will keep us, that will keep us running for the next five years. I think, if we, I think the demand or the ask would be so high if we went out, this is for a perfect world. Here's what we need. There's no way, even myself, I live down the street here in Benito. I'm a taxpayer. There is no way that our voters are going to pass that it's, is it? It would just be insurmountable to ask for the amount of money to put the kind of staffing we would love to have, or like to have for our service. So, we're hitting it in November, doing some question-and-answer stuff here. We've got resources on our website, www.lanefire.org and look for the levy Information tab, lots of frequently asked questions and information there for voters to go to.
MICHAEL DUNNE: I'll put that link on our web post, but maybe if you could just sort of highlight sort of the numbers as best you can in terms of what you can pay for with this, we'll call it a C+, B- levy versus an A+ Levy?
DALE BORLAND: Yeah, the second half to your question, until I start running down a rabbit hole. Yeah. So, with this 20 cent increase, which will put our local option levy at 55 cents per 1000 assessed value, our plan is to hire two additional firefighters. With that, we're also looking at our South battalion area, which is Bailey Hill, Lorraine highway, Spencer Creek, you know, all the way down toward Lorraine, where Gillespie corners are, where Lorraine highway comes into Territorial. We call that our South battalion area, and we have a pretty centrally located Spencer Creek Station out there. Most of those stations, when they were built back in the day, did not have living quarters. Most didn't have restrooms, and so we've been working overtime at this centrally located Spencer Creek Station. Our call volume, if we look area specific, our call volume continues to increase every year in that area. Five years ago, we were running 140 to 150 calls a year out there. We're way over 200 calls a year now. And I don't have the exact number, I apologize, but we're well in excess of 200 calls a year in that specific area, and we don't have any good place to house, any volunteers, residents, and hopefully someday down the road, probably beyond my career, career folks out in that area, and we're really just trying to increase our resiliency for call response out there. We're handling calls in that area predominantly out of our Venita headquarter station, out of our Irving training station, and we just don't have the volunteer numbers we used to have back in the day, and so we're really looking toward getting a residential living quarter at that Spencer Creek Station, 109 which will give us the ability to start to house volunteers or residents there, hopefully on a 24/7 basis, and just enhance our response level. Across the district, that's kind of a twofold deal. We not only increase the service level out there as much as possible, but we also take load off of our headquarters house here in Venita. If we've got folks there to respond, we don't necessarily need to be running equipment out of this station to go cover that area. And so I think there's some great benefit of being able to have some staffing components out there, but we've got to get the infrastructure in place to do it. I think it'll be a great enhancement for that South battalion area. And we're very hopeful we can get that accomplished here in the next year or so. We have, over the last couple years, purchased a couple acres of property to give us the footprint to do it out there. We also managed to get a septic system that is ready to go. We've got a well on that property now with water. Actually, got water plumbed into the station, and so we've just kind of been piecemealing, working our way toward that goal. And this, this Levy, if passed, is going to get us to the end of that goal of getting an actual living quarter out there so we can get that staffing component in place.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Got it. Got it. Well, thanks so much for coming on and talking about this. Obviously, you know, enhanced fire services, especially in the way things are going, is very important. Dale Borland, who is the fire chief for Lane Fire Authority, thanks so much for coming on and talking to us.
DALE BORLAND: Excellent. Thank you so much.
MICHAEL DUNNE: It's been quite a summer for Lane Community College, and not always in a good way. Our newest reporter picks up the story on protests against the administration. Julia Boboc, a reporter for us at KLCC. Thanks for coming in.
JULIA BOBOC: Thanks for having me. Michael.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Yeah, actually, congratulations. You were our summer intern, and we decided to keep you on a little longer as the KLCC public radio foundation fellow, congratulations.
JULIA BOBOC: Thank you so much. I'm so glad to be still here.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Yeah, well, and we sent you out to cover a protest. So, you went out and you covered what protesters were asking for. Lane Community College, tell us the scene and tell us what the protesters are asking for?
JULIA BOBOC: Absolutely. So, Saturday afternoon, LCC employees and students and allies met up in downtown Eugene. They started at the graduate hotel and walked for about 10 minutes to LCCs downtown campus building, chanting and talking about demands for a fairer contract. And once they reached the LCC campus, there were a multitude of speakers calling out the college's administration for some of the actions that they've taken recently that have been deemed sort of or have been called undemocratic by people at the college.
MICHAEL DUNNE: And so basically, as I understand it, the protesters were saying something like it really felt like the administration did this very opaquely, not very transparently, is that kind of what was happening, right?
JULIA BOBOC: So, the main concern at least that I was hearing from the people that I spoke to and the people I heard at the protest was the fact that the Lane Community College Administration was making very significant decisions without including publicly elected board members that are supposed to represent the people that are at the college, including students, including full time faculty and part time faculty. And so, a few decisions were made, including the decision to cut $3 million from LCCs budget annually for the next three years, for a grand total of $9 million cut from the budget, and that was done allegedly the board has board members have said that they did not vote or approve that action happening. And so there have also been program cuts and a few decisions here and there that have kind of brought up concerns about the administration not letting the board members that are supposed to represent the community at Lane Community College make decisions without them.
MICHAEL DUNNE: And you talked to a professor at LCC, Adrienne Mitchell. What did she tell you?
JULIA BOBOC: Yeah, so Adrienne Mitchell was a great person to talk to, because she had been at Lane Community College for a quarter of a century, 25 years teaching in the English department, and she had a great perspective as someone who has been a part of the college for a long time. And something that she told me, I essentially had asked her, with her 25 years of experience, if she's ever seen something like this before, and she said, Absolutely not, that this was a very new thing that may have may have come with changes within the administration, but that the Lane Community College members, people that were there, had really not seen actions like this from the administration, purposefully excluding board members and really taking the priority away from students with cutting a program like the nursing program that they had that's super beneficial for students and kind of spending their spending habits showed that there seemed to be a little bit less of a priority on Student Services and student access to services.
MICHAEL DUNNE: As I understand it, that licensed nursing program was cut, or, I guess, put on hiatus in May, and then you went to LCC to get some comments. What did they tell you?
JULIA BOBOC: Something that Mitchell told me and a few other people at the pro test had mentioned that Lane Community College had not officially released a reason for cutting that program, and they had, I think, sent a comment to KLCC in a previous story back in June. But Mitchell told me that that kind of media, the LCC responding to the media and telling them the reasons. That's how LCC employees and students and faculty are actually getting the information.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Julia, my last question for you in talking to the protesters. I mean, this was a big moment. They were out there protesting, but does it sound like this is, has this Mo, this movement has some longevity? Are they going to continue to protest?
JULIA BOBOC: I think absolutely, I think there was a very clear call for the LCC administration to, as they put it themselves, reverse course. And I think that they were very clear about having the resources available to strike and continue rallying this like this, and gathering and gathering other community colleges in the area who may also be threatened by behaviors like this and continuing to send the message that this the practices that are anti-democratic, anti-part time faculty, anti-student resources. If they continue, then there's no reason for the protesters and the people at LCC to stop fighting.
MICHAEL DUNNE: All right. Well, we know you will continue to follow this. Julia Boboc reporter here for us at KLCC. Thanks so much for coming in.
JULIA BOBOC: Thanks, Michael.
MICHAEL DUNNE: That's the show for today. All episodes of Oregon On The Record are available as a podcast at KLCC.org. Tomorrow on the show, we'll talk to Senator Jeff Merkley about the government shutdown, and we'll also look ahead to fall activities around the community. I'm Michael Dunne, host of Oregon On The Record, thanks for listening.
