Activity Report for the Period 1/30/2017 – 2/10/2017

East Multnomah Soil and Water Conservation District
Sections:
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
ACTIVITIES
Jay Udelhoven
Completed:
  • Boards/Committees: Prepared for and hosted February '17 board meeting; attended Land Legacy Committee meeting.
  • External Engagement: Attended annual conference of the National Association of Conservation Districts in Denver, Colorado; attended site visit at Headwaters Farm with the Oregon Soil and Water Conservation Commission; attended State of the University Luncheon for the Oregon State University.
  • Policies/Planning/Budgeting: Developed draft list of policy issues for the board to take positions on.
  • Supervision/Leadership: Participated in recruitment for the Land Legacy Program Manager; met with staff and management team during 1x1s, team meeting, and all staff meeting.
Planned:
  • Boards/Committees: Reach out to contacts east of Portland regarding associate board director positions; meet with associate board director applicants.
  • External Engagement: Attend Multnomah County Farm Bureau Meeting.
  • Policies/Planning/Budgeting: Draft position statements on policy issues for board consideration; continue revision of personnel policies; attend meeting with the Tax Supervising and Conservation Commission regarding FY17-18 budgeting.
  • Program Implementation: Assist with native plant sale; meet with other soil and water conservation districts in Willamette Valley to discuss rural water quality issues.
  • Supervision/Leadership: Meet with staff and management team during 1x1s, team meeting, and all staff meeting.
FINANCE & OPERATIONS
ACTIVITIES
Program Supervision / Finance & Budget Lissa Adams
Completed:
  • Prepared December financial reports; January budget vs. actual reports; finalized budget calendar; selected auditor for FY16-17 audit; populated FY17-18 budget worksheet with historical actual figures and began inputting salary projections.
  • Coordinated installation of replacement signage at Williams Ave; met with Equity Team and the Center for Equity and Inclusion(CEI) to discuss possible equity training options - CEI will submit a proposal next week.
  • Installed Adobe software on Jay's computer; assisted staff with various minor IT issues.
Planned:
  • Work with program supervisors to estimate program budgets.
  • Research various budget related issues including information technology, building and maintenance needs.
Office Management Jed Arnold
Completed:
  • Attended the NACD conference in Denver, Colorado.
  • Began review of options for upgrading or replacing the office phone system. I will be looking at both traditional and Cloud based solutions and evaluating for usability, scalability and cost effectiveness.
  • Cleared up some billing/enrollment issues with the employee healthcare insurance vendors.
Planned:
  • I will be assisting the Urban Lands team with plant sale related tasks.
  • I will be continuing to work on getting EMSWCD access to pricing available to the State or Oregon on Microsoft and Adobe software.
  • I will be pushing out reminders and promotions to generate more interest in the Urban Conservationist recruitment.
Facilities Management Scot Wood
Completed:
  • The hunt continues for contractors to submit bids for a whole building sprinkle system.
  • Met with the final two tree services and Andrew picked one of the three to remove the damaged trees out at Oxbow.
  • The demolition of the two buildings located in the Diana Pope Natural Area is completed. It looks amazing!
Planned:
  • I will be looking for concrete contractors to do repair/ replacement work on several areas around the office.
  • The damaged trees will be removed/trimmed up Feb. 9th and 10th.
  • I will be looking for and meeting with two more electrical contractors to gather bids for the electrical work on the new prop house and curing shed.
Marketing & Media Alex Woolery
Completed:
  • Handled plant sale final orders and store management, promoted last chance sales, closed store, and updated website and announcements.
  • Exported orders and stock data, created several order- and stock-checking sheets, and handled refunds and customer questions. Processed order changes and one plant we were shorted on, created pick list, printed 774 pick list sheets.
  • Finalized first draft Branding/Identity document with logo/logotype treatments, preferred font and color treatments, etc. Added a lot of new content to latest draft.
  • Several website updates and new posts related to the plant sale, spring workshops, board updates, job and associate board director opportunities.
Planned:
  • Plant sale: final plant sale logistics, refunds, customer questions. Take photos of volunteers during volunteer week. On pickup day, manage order questions, music, program materials booth and photos/video.
  • Continue investigating hosting issues that occured on the first day of the plant sale
  • Continue working on first draft District materials such as event display panel and brochure.
Information Technology Lissa Adams,
Jed Arnold,
Alex Woolery
Completed:
  • Alex investigated and resolved some local/website host issues related to emails sent from the website on the new hosting plan, and worked to recover volunteer emails from server logs.
Planned:
  • Jed and Lissa will respond to staff IT issues and questions as needed.
RURAL LANDS
ACTIVITIES
Program Management Julie DiLeone
Completed:
  • First meetings held for the Ag water quality plan biennial reviews for both the Lower Willamette and Sandy. ODA will send the group another draft and then decide on whether or not another meeting is needed.
  • Drafting Rural Lands budget for next fiscal year.
Planned:
  • Assessment of past CLIP projects.
  • Finish draft Rural Lands budget.
Rural Water Quality Aaron
Completed:
  • Worked with construction contractor of the stream crossings at Headwaters Farm to complete punch list of final items, including clean up.
  • Attended the Oct IJC meeting.
  • Chelsea and I led a tour of the stream crossings at Headwaters Farm to neighbors on the North Fork of Johnson Creek.
  • Completed a draft of my Annual Performance Review form.
Planned:
  • Schedule my Annual Performance Review.
  • Complete draft of Workplan.
StreamCare Lucas Nipp
Completed:
  • I attended the NACD Annual Meeting in Denver last week. I attended some informative sessions and presented at a breakout session on partnerships. I focused on the Beaver Creek Partnership and the Mount Hood Community College Clean Water Retrofit Project. They also received over 1,000 potted plants.
  • Jon, Chelsea, and I have been receiving plants this week at Headwaters. We received 51,025 bare root plants and delivered 8,350 to the plant sale.
  • I continued to work on the hiring process for the Land Legacy Program Manager position. We did a second round of interviews.
Planned:
  • I will begin planting StreamCare sites next week with a contract crew.
  • I will be working with a contract crew to interplant parts of the forested area at Oxbow Farm and also install a hedgerow at Oxbow Farm along the road.
  • I will be doing a site visit with an ODFW employee to a property that graduated from StreamCare and is interested in getting into ODFW's Riparian Lands Tax Incentive Program. The program lowers a landowners taxes if they agree to manage the riparian area properly.
Technical Assistance Jeremy Baker
Completed:
  • Out of the office for a couple days at the end of last week and beginning of this week.
  • Took slope shots out at Headwaters for inventory of a drainage area near the west road. Flow from corner of Block 3 will be directed into Dianna Pope Natural Area, and we need to determine if we'll need to create another drainage way to avoid erosion.
  • CLIP Team meeting to discuss program management and review a CLIP application.
Planned:
  • Mapping slope shot points and area inventoried. This is trickier than it seems.
  • Assisting with the drafting of a CLIP program overview and possible program change proposal.
Weed Management Chris Aldassy
Completed:
  • I completed the 2016 Invasive Weeds Report which details all of our weed control work throughout the year.
  • Fixed two of our leaky kayaks in preparation for the 2017 field season.
  • Continuing work on the Weed Free Implementation Plan.
Planned:
  • Weed project site monitoring and control if the weather ever decides to improve and the ice melts out of the gorge.
  • Finish second draft of Weed Free Implementation Plan.
  • Assist with the plant sale!
Weed Management Jon Wagner
Completed:
  • Wisdom Workforce manually controlled 20 square meters of ivy over 4 acres.
  • Chris and I repaired the knotweed control kayaks. I tallied projected expenses for wildlife surveys and other big expense items.
  • I edited the weeds implementation plan and created an invasive weeds power point presentation for April.
  • I isolated useful spot illustrations from the comic notes into a spot illustration folder on the shared company drive.
Planned:
  • I will have crews manually controlling ivy and spurge laurel.
  • I will conduct the monthly water quality sampling and wildlife survey.
  • Plant sale preperation and plant sale.
Outreach & Education Chelsea White-Brainard
Completed:
  • Meetings: Attended Beaver Creek Partnership Meeting, Equity Team meeting with Center for Equity and Inclusion, 4-County CWMA (Cooperative Weed Management Area) Pull Together planning meeting.
  • Facilitated messaging session with Rural Lands Team for our Agricultural Water Quality Program.
  • With Lucas and Jon, received plant orders for Plant Sale and StreamCare. Began sorting plants by StreamCare site.
  • Finished first drafts of updated invasive weed fact sheets for the 4-County CWMA.
Planned:
  • Begin planning and promoting rural spring workshops on pollinators and weeds.
  • Continue research and design of Dianna Pope Natural Area signage.
  • Continue sorting plants for StreamCare sites.
  • Compile training options for equity work.
URBAN LANDS
ACTIVITIES
Program Management Kathy Shearin
Completed:
  • Attended Columbia Slough Watershed Coucil Board Meeting.
  • Attended Grant Butte stakeholders meeting.
  • Attended EMSWCD board meeting.
  • Jury Duty.
  • Meet with management team to discuss Watershed Council Partnerships.
  • Phone consultation with Clackamas SWCD about urban programming. Sent them a number of documents.
  • Gave tour of the EMSWCD Conservation Corner to a visiting PCC class.
Planned:
  • Print plant labels for plant sale.
  • Attend OSU IPM web project meeting.
  • Provide draft to Jay & Lissa.
  • Participate in Columbia Slough Watershed Council 2nd interviews for Restoration Specialist.
  • Mt Hood Community College retrofit primary stakeholders meeting.
  • PLANT SALE!!!!
Outreach & Education Angela Previdelli
Completed:
  • Receive and organize plants in cold truck for Plant Sale.
  • Final volunteer coordination and reminders to 84 volunteers registered for Plant Sale.
  • Final setup of order sorting area for Plant Sale.
Planned:
  • Lead 10 volunteer shifts with staff.
  • Plant Sale pickup day on Feb 18th, YAY!
  • Post Plant Sale cleanup.
Outreach & Education Katie Meckes
Completed:
  • Attended Science Talk NW Conference on January 26th and 27th.
  • Scheduled final workshops for a total of 25 for the spring season. Sent email announcement to approximately 6,000 contacts and conducted outreach specifically to Gresham and Troutdale residents.
  • Plant Sale logistics, preparations, supply organization and aquisition.
  • Submitted internship proposal and supporting documents for review.
Planned:
  • Final Plant Sale preparations, order sorting and day of event execution.
  • Deliver educational presentations at the Children's Clean Water Festival on March 14th.
  • Continue workshop administration tasks including outreach, registration management, database and attendance tasks.
  • Meet with Backyard Habitat Certification Program and City of Gresham to talk about targeted outreach in East County.
CONSERVATION LEGACY
ACTIVITIES
Program Management Andrew Brown
Completed:
  • Conducting interviews for the Land Legacy Program Manager recruitment. Pursued ag property acquisition, including meetings with landowner.
  • Assisted Suzanne with setting up the 2017 PIC review materials and online review portal.
  • Worked on developing 2017-18 program budgets.
  • Facilitated internal discussions of EMSWCD GIS data structure and organization, and completed quarterly GIS data update.
Planned:
  • Finalizing Land Legacy Program Manager position selection and appointment.
  • Pursue potential ag property acquisition projects.
  • Review 2017 PIC grant applications.
  • Finalize initial 2017-18 program budgets.
Grants Suzanne Easton
Completed:
  • Met with program staff from Gray Family Foundation about evaluation of environmental education projects and progams.
  • Mailed out PIC review packet and ZoomGrants instructions to PIC Review Committee.
  • Continuing due diligence and review of PIC applications.
  • Participated in second round of interviews for Land Legacy Program Manager Processed approved SPACE grants.
  • Attended meeting with Equity Team and CEI to discuss training possibilities.
Planned:
  • Continue review of PIC applications. Start to prepare for review meeting.
  • Participate in final considerations for selection of Land Legacy Program Manager.
  • Attend Equity Team meeting. Continue to work on recommendation for training team.
Headwaters Farm Rowan Steele
Completed:
  • Hosted the Soil and Water Conservation Commission at Headwaters Farm for a tour and overview of the Headwaters Incubator Program.
  • Set up the annual fertilizer and amendment bulk purchase for the incubator farmers.
  • Farm Projects: finished the expansion of the germination chamber, set up pallet racking in the barn, connected and leveled the tables in the new prophouse, worked with Scot to coordinate the demolition of two dilapidated structures in the Dianna Pope Natural Area, and hosted a farmer work party to clean shared facilities.
Planned:
  • Helping coordinate volunteers for Plant Sale order filling.
  • Attending and presenting at OSU Extension's Food Safety Workshop.
  • Attending the Small Farms Conference.
  • Setting up water and irrigation in the new propagation house and prepping for electrical work in the barn, prophouses, and curing shed.