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Passage of SB 247B
On August 28, 2005 Governor Kulongoski signed into law SB 247B,
removing the January 1, 2006 sunset that had been placed on both the
Oregon Consensus Program at the Hatfield School of Government and the
University of Oregon School of Law's administration of grant funds to
counties for Community Dispute Resolution Centers throughout the state.
The Governor also signed the Oregon University
System Operating Budget, which contains the funding for the two
programs.
With the enactment of SB 247B, the Oregon Consensus Program becomes an
"established" program at the Hatfield School of Government with a
relatively stable funding base for at least the next four years.
DLCD Grant
On June 30, 2005, the OCP completed its work under a $58,000 grant from
the Land Conservation and Development Department awarded in October
2004. Under the grant, the OCP accepted all referrals from the Land Use
Board of Appeals (LUBA) inquiring about mediation services and provided
technical assistance, assessment, convening, mediator selection and
mediation services to a wide range of land use cases. Two cases
involving parks and recreation were able to resolve the issues through
mediation. One of those is developing a collaborative stewardship
process as a follow up to deal with ongoing management issues. One
urban growth boundary case was not able to reach resolution in
mediation, and one ski area development case resolved some issues and
began work toward collaboration on more long term issues. We helped
resolve some issues around a Wal-Mart siting, and have proposed some
longer term collaborative approaches to contentious land use issues
developing in other areas.
The OCP expects to continue its work with Land Use issues, and will
be applying for additional funding in the 2005-2007 biennium. We are
building an experienced cadre of mediators who are able to work in this
area.
Partnership with Community Dispute Resolution Centers
In September 2004, the OCP launched a partnership with CDRC's around the
state that would team OCP experienced public policy mediators with
volunteer community mediators and staff to identify contentious local
public issues and assess the feasibility of convening a collaborative
process to resolve them. The OCP conducted a one day workshop for about
22 community mediators from ten programs in the Fall of 2004. Since
then, we have initiated three different, complex case assessments.
OCP expects to do another workshop in the Fall in either Southern or
Eastern Oregon in cooperation with the CDRCs and the Universities in
those areas. An joint debriefing of the projects will be held after a
number of them have been completed. We hope to learn how best to
leverage the mediation resources we have in the State for addressing
public issues.
Global Warming Task Force
The OCP worked with the Governor's office and the Staff of the Oregon
Department of Energy to secure a grant from the Energy Foundation, which
enabled us to provide facilitation services to the Governor's Global
Warming Task Force. The Task Force reached consensus on a recommended
strategy for Oregon. The full report is available here.
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