Some Comments on USFS "manners"

[Grumpy]

One of my fellow trouble makers down in Oregon went to meeting in Cali on the Plumas National Forest, and was really impressed with how things were handled. Here's John's reaction:

Good Morning Mr. Ford,

I recently attended a meeting at the Feather River Ranger District Office in Oroville Ca, on Tuesday Aug. 13th and wanted to write you to formalize my comments as I do not feel they were adequately noted during the discussions, nor did I care for the tenure of your staff during the meeting.

To start off, I drove from Eastern Oregon to attend the meeting at great personal expense to myself in both gas and time away from my job. The meeting started out with your District Ranger very firmly telling the group the things she would not accept in the meeting and that if people just wanted to repeat what they had said in the last meetings they could but would be just wasting everyone's time. As it was my first opportunity to attend a meeting on your forest I was very shocked to see a federal employee telling people what she deemed acceptable and what they would accept for comments and if people crossed that line they would simply close down the meeting, you could see it put everyone on edge and came across to me as a complete outsider as not only very condescending set of remarks, but a way of telling people that no matter what they said things were going to be pushing forward, and in all honesty, at that very moment I felt like getting up and leaving, but realized what I had done to get there and didn't want my time nor money wasted.

I found it shocking that a great deal of the questions asked by the public were met with a response of "I don't have an answer for that" or "that's Earls office issue to deal with." And I also find it very strange that this was suppose to be a meeting for taking public comment, however when people spoke not one of the 8 employees at the meeting once asked for people to give their names so they could note the individual comment, nor were most comments recorded. I did bring this up to your District Ranger during the meeting, and she stated one lady was taking "notes" however I watched throughout the meeting and she nor any of the staff took very few if any notes during the meeting. I don't really understand how you, nor any USFS staff are suppose to utilize public comment if your staff are not taking full comments from the public and fully integrating them into your planning work. I will however note, one member of your staff did take detailed notes of "an official comment" spoken by a gentleman from a white water rafting interest group, but once he was done speaking your staffer never took another "comment for the record" for the rest of the meeting while I was there that I saw.

I personally asked your district ranger, and all the staff, how subsistence use of the forest was analyzed for determining what roads where "needed" on the forest and the answer was "it was not analyzed." They did state that they did know that all of the Environmental, wildlife, and legal issues were analyzed on how they would meet the "regulatory" needs of the forest, however your staff made it very clear to me that how the general public uses the forest was not ever considered. I know that this meeting was suppose to help address this issue, but honestly, with opening remarks like where stated, along with what I perceived to be the closing (I'll get to those in a minute) it's hard to believe anyone thought true public comment would be taken at this meeting, as every time a person would state their need for open access to the forest, one of your staff would come back with the needs of a frog, a budgetary limitation, or a staffing issue, none of which have anything really to do with the public's open access to their lands, but has everything to do with you and your staff finding reason to eliminate certain kinds of access to the mountains of Plumas County and the entire National forest that you administer to.

I would like to ask, what has been the budgetary request from the Plumas National Forest Supervisors office, and from the Region 5 office to maintain roads over the last 10 years on the Plumas National Forest?

I am very disappointed in the quality of work that was reflected in the maps that were presented to the public for comment and how your staff went about presenting them. I received a very mixed message about what the maps represented, and when people asked what the "red lines meant" your staff said they meant a lot of different things, and they were unaware as to what they all meant. There was also 4 times your staff told the group there were known mistakes on the maps and there would continue to be mistakes on the map. This was all extremely disappointing to me as I had traveled so far to attend this meeting, to become informed for both myself, as well as the people I know in two groups I'm a member of, I could not report anything other than; They didn't know what the red lines mean, and they know there are still mistakes on the map. How am I, or any member of the public suppose to give informed input if your own staff doesn't know what the map means, and openly knows they are not correct? The feeling I got from the meeting was that your office, the supervisors office, has already made up it's mind as to what you want to do, and it really doesn't matter if things are understandable, or correct, we are just going to march down the path you tell us and that will be the end of it.

I would like to make an official comment for the record that I am not in support of this set of road closures. The Plumas National Forest has already closed 800 plus miles of needed roads to the public along with implementing a "closed forest system" that are needed for day to day subsistence living and any further road closures coupled with the closed forest system, only cause greater harm to the human environment that NEPA is suppose to protect against. I am requesting that no more roads be closed, nor identified to be closed on the Plumas National Forest.

In closing, I would like to make a request to you, as I felt very bad about a comment that was made by your District Ranger and it caused me to stop asking questions and head home. Could you please find a way to make sure she is compensated for the work she is doing. I understand from a statement she made to the entire group at a quarter to 7 that she was not being paid for her time that she was there and that we could go on all night but that she didn't not want to waste tax payer funds by paying unnecessary wages to the staff that was there and getting paid (Overtime I'd assume) and that she personally was not being compensated at all after 6 pm. I find it very unfair for her that she be asked to attend a meeting that gives the public an opportunity to give input, but that she be forced to bear the burden of attending uncompensated. I feel that at a minimum she could have at least received some sort of Compensatory Time off for her efforts, but to just wholeheartedly ask her to work for free seems completely unfair to her. Once she clarified that point, I immediately felt awful for taking her time from her family and decided I should cut my questions off so that she could go home for the evening. I'm not sure if the meeting continued on or not as I left, I'm sure did for a bit, and I hope she is given the opportunity to be compensated for the work she did.

I look forward to your response and working with you on on these issues.

John D. George
Bates, Oregon