Jodie Fleck 44000 SE Shotgun Road Post, Oregon 97752 Wednesday, February 04, 2009 US Department of
Agriculture Forest Service Ochoco National Forest Dear Ladies & Gentlemen
of the Forest Services, As President of Rager Emergency Services I would like to address the reorganization from the volunteer ambulance service’s point of view. RES was started in 1986 by a group of Forest Service employees that wanted to provide a service for their fellow employees, the neighboring community and visitors to the area. By 1996 to had grown to 14 members all but one a forest service employee or family member of an employee. In 2006 RES had 11 members of which 7 members were forest service employees. Today RES has 9 members 4 are forest service employees. EMS is not for everyone. For a variety of reasons community members will choose a different line of volunteer service, and that is okay, but in order to have a viable ambulance service our population has to be great enough so that when 3 to 5% of the population want to help out, you have a crew large enough to make it happen. The characteristics of Forest Service employees have tended to give our community a greater percentage of EMS volunteers. Over the 23 years that RES has been in service somewhere around 10 to 15% of Rager’s population in any given year has volunteered with RES. That is a huge contribution to this community. Besides employee involvement the Forest Service has a mutual aid agreement with RES. One of the benefits of the agreement is the fact that we our allowed to house our ambulance at Rager. Some of the equipment on board requires electricity at all times, which has generously been provided for by the Forest Service. Also the ambulance is housed in such a way that it is available for service at a minutes notice. My concern is that if we do not have a full time population at Rager then the ambulance will have to be moved to a different location. This will cost RES in the way of volunteers, housing expenses and response time to the forest. Last year RES provided EMS services to 14 people through 11 calls. 5 of the calls provided service to 9 people originating from the forest. 5 of the 9 people were transported to a hospital from the forest. We are concerned about incidents that might happen that will require more of the Sheriff’s services such as drug use, vandalism, poaching or wildlife and poaching of timber. SAR will have more rescues and lost people will be without assistance for longer times. RES with a smaller crew, as I would lose 4 Forest Service members would have to do more training to be able to provide a service that is now for the most part provided by Rager employees. As long as the forest is going to allow visitors to it, they will need emergency services. If Rager is not manned with full-time employees then RES will loose valuable volunteers, ambulance housing and response time to incidents originating from inside the forest. From an emergency services point of view, we ask that you continue to keep Rager running at optimum levels. Now as a community member I would like to voice my personal opinion. First looking at it on its face driving back and forth to the forest from Prineville can not be cost effective or efficient. From a mathematically perspective adding 3 hours of drive time on top of every day does not seem reasonable to me. On the forth day of the week you are into over time. Cost wise, it doesn’t pencil out. I question the effectiveness of driving out each day. If a project requires continuous oversight for short periods of time, is the person responsible for the management going to drive out to Rager once a week for the 3 weeks as needed, or whatever the project requires? Or are they not going to break away from their other responsibilities to follow through on the Rager project? I would guess that projects will become less efficient solely due to lack of monitoring. Furthermore, how will they know if the weather is affecting a project? Cloud openers, spring run off, thunderstorms can all play havoc on new projects. How will they know if they are in town? All to often the weather is entirely different in Prineville then is at Paulina and again different even at Rager. I wondered about the capital assets already at Rager. The homes and buildings, what will happen to them? If they are rented out to the general population, there will still be continued maintenance on the buildings. Possibly even more then what is needed now. If they are left vacant then they will mostly likely be vandalized. If they are torn down or moved, then the value of the asset is gone. For the amount of money that has been invested in the community of Rager including the new sewer system and the currently purposed water system I would think it would be in the best interest of the venture to continue to rent them to Forest Service personnel. People that enjoy their jobs enough to live at it, provide a different service then those that don’t. Living in the middle of the forest makes the entire woods your home. Those people that live there tend to claim ownership of their work area. It becomes their “baby” so to speak, their home, there stomping grounds. People that have a true love for their home will take better care of it then someone you pay to travel 3 hours round trip to “do a job”. Speaking of the round trip drive. Not only is it going to increase project costs but it will put the Forest Service employees at a greater risk. First by increasing the amount of miles they drive a week, a month and a year it will proportionately increase their chance of being involved in an automobile accident, either single car or multiple car. Then factor in deer, elk and cattle and you have again increased their chances of an accident. Now factor in fatigue from working all day or week or month on a project and again you have increased their chances of an accident. Then consider yet another factor. When driving to Rager from Prineville in the mornings you are driving into the sun, when driving back at night you are again driving into the sun, thereby again increasing the chance of an accident. What is a persons life worth? Or ten peoples or over a year’s time a 100 peoples lives? Is the Forest Service willing to risk the lives of their employees by reorganizing and eliminating full time employees from Rager? In the Forest Service’s mission statement they state in part that their mission includes “helping communities to wisely use the forests to promote rural economic development and a quality rural environment”. Well for 100 years that is what the Paulina community has been doing. We have been using the forest wisely. The people at Rager have helped the economics of Paulina by buying things at the store and by using the Post Office. They have helped keep the enrollment of the school up to a level that helps to keep it open. They have brought to our community people that volunteer for EMS, those that volunteers to provide Hunters Safety Classes. Those that have provided a childcare program that reached out from Rager into the surrounding area and provided a needed service to the community. Rager has also provided a quality rural environment. People that care about each other. Many women from Rager have been and currently are member of the local ladies club. The club provides community services such as meals for funerals and a hall and meals for wedding receptions and community events. Recently several Rager people worked with a grant that provided books to the school children. Now it would have been easy to just by 40 Golden books and call it good. But the team that put the book deal together, asked the teachers for the children’s reading levels, interests and genders to ensure that the books would match the child and then they read each and every book to make sure there wasn’t an inappropriate book in the bunch. These books were quality books, chose by quality people that have enriched our community. And the Forest Service wants to take that away? Also stated in their mission statement is that they “provide work, training, and education to the unemployed, underemployed, elderly, youth and disadvantaged in pursuit of their mission”. And again they have done this well. Under RES’s mutual aid agreement they have paid for the education costs of each Forest Service employee that chose to take the state EMT class and become an EMT with RES. This has been a grand investment in our community. Furthermore they have provided jobs to community members in the maintenance and upkeep of the Ranger Station. Several members of our community over the years have taken advantage of living in a remote area and benefited from the employment opportunities at Rager. Rager has also utilized the YCC Program. Each year Rager has offered to the youth of this community the opportunity to work near home and outside. The YCC program teaches kids hard work and commitment as well as striking their interest in future forest jobs. Reorganizing and doing away with full time employees at Rager will also do away with the YCC program. In the Forest Service mission they states eight visions and one vision says “we are an efficient and productive organization that excels in achieving its mission”. And I would like to say from what I have seen up at Rager has been true. But if the Forest Service moves our people to town and does not have full time employees at Rager, I can not see either mathematically nor philosophically how they can be efficient or productive driving out from Prineville each day. Also in the mission statement the Forest Service states guiding principals to realize their mission and vision. One of their guiding principles states that “We strive for quality and excellence in everything we do and are sensitive to the effects of our decisions on people and resources. I hope that you have listened to the effects that this would have on your people at Rager, and your resources Rager and I also hope you have listened to the effects it would have on the people of this community and the resources of this community. Reorganizing and not having full time employees at Rager would have an adverse effect to all involved. One more guiding principal states “We are responsible and accountable for what we do”. Our tax dollars fund the Forest Services. You are stewards of our land and in that sense stewards of our money. Not one rancher out here that I know of lives in town and drives out here each day to tend to his ranch. Why? For one, he can’t afford the cost driving back and forth, the fuel, tires, insurance, and wear and tear on the rig. Heck who can afford a rig? Then the rancher can’t afford the cost of the loss. The coyote that gets the calf, the lightening strikes that get the hay, the cloud burst that floods the meadow. We have to be on our ranches to tend to them. We have to be here on the land to be good stewards and so does the Forest Service. In order to act wisely, for rural economics, for a quality rural environment, for work, for training, for education, for the unemployed, for the youth and the disadvantaged the Forest Service needs to be at Rager full time. In order to be efficient, productive, to excel and to achieve its mission the Forest Services needs to be at Rager full time. To strive for quality, to strive for excellence, and to be sensitive the Forest Service need to be at Rager full time. And to be responsible and to be accountable with your employees, our land and our money the Forest Service needs to be at Rager full time. Respectfully, Jodie Fleck
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