Madrone Wall Update- March 2009

[elaine]

Here's where we are at now. Some good things have been happening despite the fact that the County likes to throw up these hurdles/ barriers at us. Maybe they're thinking that they are some sort of obstacle that Keith an I cannot overcome.

 

1) Clackamas County Parks Dept and Planner ( Katie Dunham- kdunham@co.clackamas.or.us) had asked Keith and I to see if we could find a civil engineer that would be willing to do the engineering plans for this site pro bono ( AKA "for free"). We were a little taken aback by this since the cost estimates that the County came up with ($880K) and ours with ODOT and a CEM professional ($400K max) BOTH included engineer plans. Again these cost estimates have been previously posted on this forum, so it's not anything new.

I had asked Katie on Tuesday at the PAB meeting if it was the norm for a non proft group to find a civil engineer to work for free on such a project. She said "of course not," but referenced the potential costs for the total project. Even the Director of Transportation and Planning ( Cam Gilmore) with the County was a little pissed that Katie asked us to do this.

 

Needless to say, Keith and I brainstormed and connected with the Civil Engineering program at Oregon State. Keith tried PSU, but never got a response. The OSU folks sound interested, but there is a little more that needs to be done before this is firm.

 

2) Keith Daellenbach had set up a meeting with Clackamas County and the Oregon National Guard out of Salem Thursday afternoon. Three top guys came up and met with Dan Zinzer, Katie and Keith. The Guard got both perspectives. They toured the property for about 2 hours and the Guard seems pretty excited to do this project. The timing of when they could do it is critical. That group is on call during fire season and would need to drop everything once that happens. Dan Zinzer said that he wants to work with the Guard when it works for them. This is good with Clackamas wanting to be flexible.

 

3) So possibly having the OSU students and the Guard doing the work would save the County a great deal of money since the labor is free. It's a win for us and for the County!

 

4) On a less than postive note in regards to logging the site...For those of you that attended the Fall meetings, or wrote in letters/comments of support. The County still plans to log the upper portions of the cliffs even though it was unanimously voted on by the public to NOT log the site at all.

 

5) The Conditional Use Application should have been filed by the County already. I'm not sure if it has yet. The "conditional use" would allow recreation on a zoned timber site. A public hearing will be taking place in the next 6 weeks or so. Date and time TBD when we hear from the County. ODOT will have some input because of the appreoach from HWY 224.

 

Again, we are still on our timeline ( posted in this forum) for construction to begin in the Spring/Summer 2010.

 

More details to come in the coming weeks!

 

Kellie