This day (and next week) in county politics II: Animals and air

Just because EW had early Tofurky Day deadlines does not mean you don’t need to hear more about the Lane County Board of County Commissioners meeting today. They didn’t just talk turkey and pilgrims, they talked animals and air.

Animals

Animal advocates having been coming to commission meetings and speaking up. As a result, the commission voted to retain the animal advisory committee, look into changes in its contract with Greenhill and to fill open positions on the committee. Looks like from this web update that the R-G will have a full story Nov. 21, so I will move on to air.

Air

Commish Jay Bozievich helpfully fowarded an email about a 1:30 pm Nov. 27 work session at Harris Hall on the Lane Regional Air Protection Agency (LRAPA).

Two of the topics which will be discussed at this work session are:

What would the community lose without LRAPA?

What costs would local governments incur without LRAPA?

Merlyn Hough, LRAPA executive director, wrote up a briefing report on the agency (see below). Some praise LRAPA for its air quality monitoring and programs for improving air quality, like the one that replaces wood stoves with cleaner-burning stoves. Other say LRAPA rubber-stamps industry permits, like the Seneca biomass-burning plant. Either way, if you care about LRAPA you should show up for the work session. Worked for the animal folks.