22 September 2015
Plan would reduce long-term costs
Lane County could begin offering buyouts to hundreds of employees in exchange for cost-saving measures to future employee health insurance benefit plans. Reductions in vacation and sick-time accruals will be included in the proposal being decided today by the Lane County Board of Commissioners.
The deal, negotiated with two of the county’s employee unions, is designed to reduce staff costs and help the county avoid the 40-percent “Cadillac” tax on high-cost health insurance plans that will take effect in 2018.
If the board agrees, the buyouts would be offered to 71 county technicians, engineers, and accounting supervisors in one union; 115 road maintenance workers in another; plus 227 non-union employees.
The buyouts must also be approved by the two unions and would be offered to the County’s other, larger labor unions.
Best seller to head Festival of Books conversation
She’s been a rancher, a writer and a rattlesnake fighter. Best-selling author Jane Kirkpatrick will kick off the Florence Festival of Books with a special talk Friday night at the Florence Events Center. Kirkpatrick’s latest book; “Memory Weaver” is being released this month. The memoir tells of Kirkpatrick’s life as a rancher’s wife in Central Oregon.
She has produced 27 books; 22 of them novels and the other five non-fiction titles; all create stories from the lives of actual historical women or events.
Tickets for Kirkpatrick’s talk are just $8 in advance. It will precede the actual festival set for Saturday at the FEC.
Dozens of authors, including Bob Welch, Ned Hickson and Ellen Traylor, will be at the festival from ten to four. Several publishers will also be there.
Tsalila offers environmental education
Elementary school students from up and down the central coast will spend some time over the next three days learning about birds, fish and water.
The three-day Tsalila… watershed environmental education festival for 3rd, 4th and 5th graders gets underway today in Reedsport.
Hosted by the Siuslaw National Forest, the event will put students through a series of “hands-on” activities. In one, they’ll simulate the building of roads, bridges and even houses; then see how a flood can impact them. In others, they’ll find out about “nature’s grocery store”; walk through a giant maze representing the life of a salmon; take flight as game pieces in a giant board game about waterfowl; and even trace the journey of a molecule of water through the water cycle.
Elevated toxin levels leave Razors dangerous
Razor clamming on Oregon beaches will remain closed for the foreseeable future because of high levels of a toxin that can affect the brain and cause seizures or death in humans.
Wildlife and agriculture officials have barred the digging of Razor Clams since mid May this year. The season had been set to reopen October 1st on the north coast.
But, says shellfish biologist Matt Hunter, levels of Domoic Acid are still too high.
Hunter says the toxic acid accumulates in the bivalves and is very slow to be eliminated. Tests released last week showed levels were still too high to be safely eaten.
Harvesting of bay clams and mussels is allowed, and taking of Dungeness crab in bays is ok.
Beach Cleanup gathers mounds of waste
More than five-thousand volunteers were out in force Saturday as part of the semi-annual Beach and Riverside Cleanup.
An estimated 55-thousand pounds of trash and marine debris was collected from the 110-locations.
The Wallace Marine Park project on the Willamette River in Salem was the largest inland event with 115 volunteers picking up trash and clearing more than an acre of English Ivy.
Along the coast, the most common items found were tiny bits of plastic; cigarette butts; glass and plastic bottles; and fishing rope. According to SOLVE, the non-profit group that organized the event, more than 500 pounds of construction materials were picked up near Yachats and a remote controlled airplane was found near Port Orford.
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