Forestry, airports among topics at county meeting

On Friday, March 28, the Board of Josephine County Commissioners voted to dissolve the Grants Pass and Illinois Valley Airport Advisory Boards and form the new Josephine County Airports Advisory Board.
The meeting was held at the Anne G. Basker Auditorium in Grants Pass.
“There’s been some discussions for the last few months that the advisory boards that the county has, that we look to for guidance and recommendations, some of them have been somewhat dysfunctional and not working according to how the bylaws are intended,” Board Chair Andreas Blech said of the airport board merger. “What we’re doing is, we’re resetting these, just like when we have a computer that’s not working right, sometimes we need to push the reset button to get it to start working right.”
Blech also noted that starting the advisory board from scratch will reset terms so that they are staggered appropriately, and members will not have their terms expire all at once, but gradually so that at all times some members will be experienced as new members join.
Instead of five members like the Grants Pass and Illinois Valley Airport Advisory Boards were, the new advisory board will have seven members, according to Blech. Two will be commercial users / tenants of the Grants Pass Airport, two will be commercial users / tenants of the Illinois Valley Airport, one private user / tenant of the Grants Pass Airport, and the last two will be at-large positions.
Blech invited all current members of the G.P. and I.V. boards to reapply, but in merging two five-member boards into one seven-member board, at least three will be relieved of duty.
The board also proclaimed April 5-12 Rogue Valley Rough Stock Rodeo Days, in tribute to the McCaslin Rough Stock Rodeo that has operated in JoCo for the past 12 years.
“The contracts it takes to produce the rodeo in addition to the rental fee of the Josephine County Fairgrounds supports economic stability to our local infrastructure,” the proclamation read in part.
A Forest Reserve Fund was also established, which Blech explained had been in the works for over a month and “sets forth guidance on how funding will be kept and maintained in that reserve fund.”
“I think it needs to be noted that (Forestry) is the one department that actually generates revenue for the county and it’s a way of producing more of an income in these tight economic times,” Commissioner Ron Smith commented.
The board also made minor adjustments to their forest management policy which they said Forestry Director Dave Streeter signed off on.
The commissioners also extended their board order changing the day of the week for weekly business sessions from Wednesday to Friday. Weekly business sessions will take place on Fridays for the entire month of April, and possibly permanently as several board members noted they thought it was a good change.
Smith in particular said he thought Friday for the WBS was more efficient because it affords a longer gap between meetings earlier in the week, which is often where the board decides what matters to advance to the WBS for votes and discussion. When a WBS is on a Friday, staff is not up against such a narrow deadline to draft documents pertaining to matters that will be taken up.