Long
Tom Watershed Council
751 South Danebo Ave.,
Eugene, OR. 97402
Dana
Erickson,
Watershed Coordinator/
Executive Director,
Ph: 541-683-6578
Cindy
Thieman,
Restoration & Monitoring
Program Director,
Ph: 541-683-2983
Amanda
Wilson,
Fiscal Manager,
Ph: 541-683-6949
Christy
Yost,
Outreach & Admin Specialist,
Ph: 541-683-6949
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| History
and Charter of the Long Tom Watershed Council Council History...... The Long Tom Watershed Council is a community organization which formed in response to a statewide call for collaborative watershed restoration at the local level, the Oregon Plan. The Upper Long Tom / Coyote Creek Working Group....... The prelude to formation of the council that now encompassed the entire watershed was a small group of citizens that met in 1996 to discuss watershed issues. In late 1997, two members utilized this momentum to write a grant proposal and hire a coordinator. That Coordinator assisted the group in reaching out to the whole watershed. Beginning in January of 1998 we gave presentations and called everyone who's name was referred to us. By March, our meeting attendance swelled to as high as 70 people from all backgrounds. It was at this time that we started to write our charter. Creating or structure and capturing our spirit.. Concisely? The Charter...... Download your copy of the Charter in the library We are especially proud of our charter because it communicates the spirit of our group. We wanted to create a structure for our council that would keep the positive spirit and enthusiasm free-flowing, and the group inclusive, spontaneous and warm. We recognized that we had no formal authority (we didn't even want to be advisory to the County) so a rigid structure was not the way to go. Hence, council membership is free and fully open to anyone who lives, works, plays or is interested on the Long Tom Watershed and we called our charter document a "Charter", not "By-laws". Using other councils' charters as examples, a group of nine volunteers gathered over a period of five months to hammer out our own details and move away from the operational, prescriptive way some of the documents had. The going got tough at times and immense thanks are due to this small group for pushing themselves and each other through the process and then sharing that process, and the results, with the general group. If the larger group had tried to write it themselves, they would have been undoubtedly bogged down. Along the way, members took turns presenting each piece of the forming document to the council for general approval, and it was distributed in the newsletter. At one point, we had come to a standstill in the small group - we couldn't decide between consensus vs. voting and between electing our steering committee vs. having them volunteer. At the next meeting we asked our facilitator to join us. He recommended breaking into small groups at the next council meeting, with Charter Team members as discussion leaders. From that very active meeting, the Charter Team got enough feedback to make the decision. We decided for consensus because it would force us to listen to everyone, to take the time to learn others' concerns. For tough sticking points we would call for a super-majority vote on whether or not to make the decision by a vote, and if we came to a "yes" on that, then a supermajority vote to make the actual decision. We decided to ask Steering Committee members to volunteer, vs. electing them, to maintain a positive spirit and to avoid people feeling they were formally "representing" particular interests from a political standpoint. So the Charter Team ended up doing the initial "heavy lifting" for the broader group. From all perspectives, we learned to think "outside our box", to listen to others and not only to tolerate but go a step further and understand. And of course we drove each other a little bit crazy too. Still the charter and the council remain non-threatening to newcomers and that is important.
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