The latest news stories and stories of interest in the Willamette Valley from the digital home of Southern Oregon, from Wynne Broadcasting’s WillametteValleyMagazine.com
Monday, March 13, 2023
Willamette Valley Weather
Lane County Readies Launching New Volunteer-Based Trauma Intervention Program T.I.P.
Local volunteers are ready to go out in the community and help people at risk for trauma after emergencies after weeks of training. The “Trauma Intervention Program” or “T.I.P” is an initiative that sends out volunteers to emergency scenes to provide help to those who could be deeply impacted by the trauma of a crime, fire, or other emergency events.
In an afternoon ceremony at Eugene Police Department Headquarters on March 11, volunteers for the Trauma Intervention Program (T.I.P.) in Lane County were recognized for completing their trauma intervention training.
The T.I.P. initiative is led by a nonprofit organization. Organizers say their main mission is to provide support to people in the crucial first hours immediately following a tragedy. “Providing Support after Tragedy Strikes“
“I kind of think of it like a kind of an emotional CPR where you have to get trained to help someone in their darkest moment,” Bridget Byfield, director of Lane County T.I.P., said.
TIP of Lane County is a chapter of the Trauma Intervention Programs, Inc. (TIP), a national non-profit organization founded in 1985. TIP has 15 affiliates serving over 250 cities across the nation. TIP of Lane County, Oregon provides services to police, fire and hospital staff serving all of Lane County.
Although T.I.P. has been around since the 1980s, this is the first year they’ll be in Lane County, Byfield said. She got involved in the program years ago in Portland. She said she saw people go through great crises, but also saw them overcoming them — and that is what inspired her to keep doing her work. “People caring about each other and being able to be apart of that was very fulfilling to me,” Byfield said.
As a non-profit, the T.I.P. initiative relies heavily on it’s volunteer corps. Volunteering for the program is not as simple as just showing up somewhere or signing a piece of paper, organizers said. People have to go through intensive training on the principles of the program, such as emotional first aid and trauma intervention.
The main goal is to prevent further harm against survivors of trauma. Organizers note that volunteers are in no way professionals or mental health experts, but rather ordinary people who have been trained in certain sensitive areas.
They also said there are four key elements to the program: assisting police and emergency services; helping the survivor; helping the program expand; and growing through the program.
The initiative is directly connected to Lane County’s police and emergency services organizations. Organizers said volunteers don’t go out to scenes on their own — instead, they are requested to go to locations where first responders were already dispatched.
Volunteers said they believe in the program and they feel it’s their way to give back to the community. The second training academy for volunteers will happen in Autumn, organizers said, as they are always looking for more people to help out. Organizers said the inaugural class of volunteers could hit the streets as soon as the upcoming week. FOR MORE INFO: https://www.tiplanecounty.org/
The University of Oregon Selects New President
The University of Oregon’s Board of Trustees has selected the school’s next president: John Karl Scholz.
Scholz is currently the provost at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. He’ll start at the UO on July 1.
Scholz will become the 19th president of the university. He replaces Michael Schill, who stepped down last summer when he accepted the job as president of Northwestern University in Illinois.
According to the University of Wisconsin website, Scholz received his PhD from Stanford University and has worked in a variety of roles at the UW-Madison since 1988.
The UO said Scholz’s selection came after a six-month search process by a 22-member search committee.
According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Scholz had previously announced his plans to step down as UW’s provost, following a failed attempt on his part to be named university chancellor. Scholz said at the time that he intended to return to teaching in the UW’s economics department. He had served as provost since August of 2019.
The UO said interim president Patrick Phillips will remain at the university and will resume his role as a faculty member in the school’s biology department.
House Fire in Sweet Home Kills One and Injures Another
A 911 call was placed just after 10 pm Thursday, reporting a house on fire in the area of 47th avenue and Main street in Sweet Home. The Incident Commander arrived on scene five minutes after that call was placed, to find heavy fire from the front of the house with smoke from every side of the structure.
The IC immediately requested a second alarm assignment, then updated the crews that there was potentially a victim still inside the home. An adult male and an adult female had escaped the fire, but reported to the IC that another adult male was still inside. The female had attempted to re-enter the home to assist that victim but was unable to reach him, she was transported to the hospital by ambulance with non-life-threatening injuries. Unfortunately, the adult male victim did not survive.
The fire was brought under control by 11:15 pm. Crews remained on scene throughout the night until an investigation team arrived this morning to begin searching for the cause of the fire. Twenty firefighters responded to the scene from Sweet Home Fire with the ladder truck, 2 ambulances, 3 engines, and 2 Chief Officer vehicles.
Supporting the incident on the second alarm assignment were a truck company and an engine company from Lebanon Fire, and an engine company from Brownsville Fire. The Office of the Oregon State Fire Marshall is leading the investigation which is still underway. At this time it has been determined that the fire is not suspicious, the official cause is still pending until the completion of the investigation. Sweet Home Fire would like to extend our sympathy to the family and ask that the community please allow them some privacy in this devastating situation.
OHCS launches new updates to data dashboards on affordable rental housing and homeownership
Oregon Housing and Community Services has worked over the past several years to build up data systems to improve transparency around affordable housing development and services provided to households with low to moderate incomes. The two newly updated data dashboards, Affordable Rental Housing and Homeownership, reflect this work and commitment.
“We are excited to announce updates and improvements have been made to the data dashboards that represent the collective work of and outcomes for the people of Oregon,” OHCS Director Andrea Bell said. “Let the data be yet another proof point that positive housing outcomes can prevail when we tackle the urgency of the affordable housing crisis with data-driven solutions that center our collective humanity.”
The Affordable Rental Housing Dashboard provides data for OHCS-administered funding programs such as Low-Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC) and Local Innovation and Fast Track (LIFT). This dashboard provides details on the number of homes (units) the state has funded, if the properties are new construction or were preserved, if they are rural or urban, and other information about the affordable housing portfolio. Data shown is from January 2016 to September 2022.
The Homeownership Dashboard shows data on who received counseling and education at a homeownership center, down payment assistance, Oregon Bond Residential Loans, and other program services that create pathways to homeownership. Data shown is from January 2017 to December 2022.
These data dashboards are updated quarterly and will continue to evolve and change along with our programs as we work to improve service to Oregonians. Our vision is that all Oregonians will have access to safe, stable and affordable housing.
About Oregon Housing and Community Services – Oregon Housing and Community Services provides resources for Oregonians to reduce poverty and increase access to stable housing. Our intentional focus on housing and community services allows the agency to serve Oregonians across the housing continuum, including preventing homelessness, providing housing stability supports, financing the building and preservation of affordable housing, and encouraging homeownership.
$4.6 million in funding available for community-based organizations to support immigrants and refugees from Ukraine
The deadline to apply is March 27, 2023.
(Salem) – The Oregon Department of Human Services (ODHS) Refugee Program is inviting community partners to apply for a portion of $4.6 million in funding that is available to provide services and support to certain individuals from Ukraine or those who entered through the Uniting for Ukraine program.
The deadline to apply is March 27, 2023, and the application can be found online.
The U.S. Resettlement Program is operated by the U.S. Department of State through contracts with national non-profit organizations called resettlement agencies. These organizations have local affiliate offices throughout the nation.
The ODHS Refugee Program is responsible for some of the services that are outside of the initial resettlement provided by the resettlement agencies. The Refugee Program provides cash, medical, employment and acculturation services to refugees (and those eligible for refugee services) who are within 60 months of gaining their eligible immigration status.
Since February 2022, over 3,100 individuals from Ukraine have resettled in Oregon.
The purpose of this request is to ask for applications from culturally and/or linguistically responsive organizations who provide services to immigrants or refugees (and those eligible for refugee services) to increase services and supports.
Funding is available to support:
- Housing and food assistance services: $2 million
- Statewide outreach, sponsor coordination and connection to existing case management services: $200,000
- Employment services assistance: $221,800
- Health and mental health services: $675,000
- Child care: $100,00
- Legal services: $800,000
- Youth mentoring: $100,000
- School assistance: $515,000
- Senior services: $50,000
Organizations may express interest in supporting more than one service area. Community organizations are eligible to submit proposals for the funding.
More information the ODHS Refugee Program can be found online.
About the Oregon Department of Human Services – The mission of the Oregon Department of Human Services is to help Oregonians in their own communities achieve wellbeing and independence through opportunities that protect, empower, respect choice and preserve dignity.
Deschutes County DA’s Office Releases Final Report On Melissa Trench’s Death
The death of Melissa Trench, the Bend woman whose body was located in Shevlin Park in January after she went missing in December, was deemed a suicide, according to reports from the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office.
Trench, 38, was last seen by her family on Dec. 26. The next day, she called an ex-boyfriend from years prior telling him she was injured in the forest. Soon after Trench called the ex-boyfriend, her family was alerted and a search involving law enforcement and members of the public began.
Following an extensive investigation by the sheriff’s office and the Bend Police Department, which found no evidence of foul play, Trench’s body was located by her brother at the south end of Shevlin Park near Forest Road 4606, the Bend Police Department said in January. After Trench was located, her body was examined by a medical examiner who concluded Trench’s death was a suicide, the report showed. (SOURCE)
Oregon State University Research on Wildfires
Oregon State University research into the ability of a wildfire to improve the health of a forest uncovered a Goldilocks effect – unless a blaze falls in a narrow severity range, neither too hot nor too cold, it isn’t very good at helping forest landscapes return to their historical, more fire-tolerant conditions.
The study led by Skye Greenler, a graduate research fellow in the OSU College of Forestry, and Chris Dunn, an assistant professor in the college, has important implications for land managers charged with restoring ecosystems and reducing fire hazard in dry forests such as those east of the Cascade Range.
The findings, published in PLOS One, shed light on the situations in which managed wildfires, as well as postfire efforts such as thinning and planting, are likely to be most effective at achieving restoration goals.
Wildfire has shaped ecosystems for millennia, the researchers note, but its impacts have become an increasing social, economic and ecological concern across the western United States. Aggressive fire exclusion policies, forest and resource management practices and climate change have altered forest structure and composition – increasing forests’ vulnerability to extreme wildfires and drought.
“As wildfire activity continues to intensify in the West, it’s becoming clear that a variety of management activities are necessary to make ecosystems healthier and to lower wildfire risk,” Greenler said. “Fuel reduction treatments like mechanical thinning and prescribed fire can reduce community and ecosystem risk, but in most places, the pace and scale of treatments are way below what’s needed to substantially alter fire effects and behavior.”
In an independent project, Greenler and Dunn in a collaboration with College of Forestry colleagues James Johnston, Andrew Merschel and John Bailey developed a new way to predict the fire severities that are most apt to help eastern Oregon forests return to their historical density, species composition and basal area, a measure of how much ground in a specific area is occupied by tree stems.
“We built probabilistic tree mortality models for 24 species based on their characteristics and remotely sensed fire severity data from a collection of burned areas,” Greenler said. “Then we looked at unburned stands in the Ochoco, Deschutes, Fremont-Winema and Malheur national forests to model postfire conditions and compared the results to historical conditions. That let us identify which fire severities had the highest restoration potential.”
The research team, which also included scientists from the University of Washington, the U.S. Forest Service and Applegate Forestry LLC of Corvallis, generally found that basal area and density targets could be met through fire within a fairly narrow range of moderate severity.
However, one blaze can’t restore species composition to its historical norm in a forest that evolved amid frequent, low-severity fires, the scientists found.
“Landscapes have likely passed thresholds that preclude the effectiveness of managed wildfire alone as a restoration tool,” Greenler said. “In a large number of fire-prone western landscapes, forest structure and composition are no longer resistant or resilient to natural disturbance processes like fire, drought, and endemic insects and pathogens, and interactions among all of those.”
Although more and more wildfires are burning large areas and at high severity, the majority of fires in the West still burn at low or moderate severity, the authors note. They cite a recent analysis that found about half of the burned area in Oregon and Washington from 1985 through 2010 did so in low-severity fires – in systems characterized historically by low- and mixed-severity fire regimes.
“Low severity may be ‘too cold’ to meet restoration objectives in areas where significant tree density reduction or big shifts in tree species composition are needed,” Greenler said. “For a better understanding of the fire severities that are the most restorative, we need empirical modeling that can be applied beyond individual fire events and across a broad range of conditions. Our study lets managers and researchers link forest restoration goals with maps of predicted post-fire conditions.”
About the OSU College of Forestry: For a century, the College of Forestry has been a world class center of teaching, learning and research. It offers graduate and undergraduate degree programs in sustaining ecosystems, managing forests and manufacturing wood products; conducts basic and applied research on the nature and use of forests; and operates more than 15,000 acres of college forests. (SOURCE)
Wondering about your refund? Use the Oregon Dept. of Revenue’s Where’s My Refund Tool
Salem, OR— The Oregon Department of Revenue has begun issuing refunds due to taxpayers who have filed their 2022 tax returns. Through March 3, the department had received and processed 681,099 returns and had issued 495,606 refunds.
The agency began processing returns January 23 in the order they were received. However, each year, the department waits until after February 15 to issue personal income tax refunds as part of its tax fraud prevention efforts. The delay allows for confirmation that the amounts claimed on tax returns match what employers report on Forms W-2 and 1099.
Now that the agency has begun issuing refunds, taxpayers can check Where’s My Refund on Revenue Online to see the status of their refund. To check the status of their refund, taxpayers will need their:
- Social Security Number (SSN) or Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN);
- Filing status; and
- The exact refund amount shown on:
- Line 46 of their Form OR-40, or
- Line 71 of their Form OR-40-N, or
- Line 70 of their Form OR-40-P
The Department of Revenue recommends that taxpayers wait one week after they have electronically filed their return to use the Where’s My Refund tool.
Where’s My Refund will tell taxpayers whether their refund has been issued electronically, a check has been mailed, their refund has been adjusted, there are questions about their return, or their return is being manually processed.
E-filing and requesting direct deposit is the fastest way for a taxpayer to get their refund. On average, taxpayers who e-file their returns and request their refund via direct deposit receive their refund 34 days sooner than taxpayers who mail their paper returns and request paper refund checks.
All Oregon resident taxpayers preparing their own returns in 2023 can file electronically at no cost using one of Oregon’s free file options.
Taxpayers can check the status of their federal tax refunds on the IRS website.
Six common reasons refunds take longer and what to do about it
- Filing a paper return. Paper returns take longer to process and, as a result, it takes longer to issue related refunds. File electronically instead.
- Filing electronically and requesting to receive a refund via a check takes longer. Request direct deposit instead.
- Filing more than once. Sending a paper return through the mail after e-filing will a delay a refund. Taxpayers should file just once.
- Filing during peak filing periods. Refunds are also issued slower during peak filing periods, like the last few weeks before the April 18 deadline. Filing well ahead of the deadline will help taxpayers get their refunds sooner.
- Refunds can also be delayed when errors are identified on returns. Taxpayers who receive a letter requesting additional information are urged to respond promptly through Revenue Online to speed the processing of their return.
- Taxpayers who check Where’s My Refund one week after they file and receive a message saying their return is being manually processed should watch their mailbox for correspondence from the department. If it has been 12 weeks or more since they filed their return and they haven’t received a letter from the department, taxpayers should call 503-378-4988 or 800-356-4222 to speak with a customer service representative.
