Community Change Action Plan

As an exercise in citizenship, TS Crew has been asked to sit down and draw upon the tools given to us through our Place Lesson pamphlet and resulting discussions, to devise a Community Change Action Plan. A step by step guide to making a difference in your community is strikingly bureaucratic to me, and perhaps a somewhat boring and ineffectual way to motivate the more complacent person, but as an education piece it merits attention, especially in light of the upcoming presidential election. Change is a resoundingly popular word this year, being given, as we have, the opportunity to change the executive power that guides this country.

So what will you do with the power to change?
Brett and I were assigned to address the issue of Wildland Urban Interface. The expansion of the WUI in recent years has challenged wildfire management and has created an environment in which fire moves readily between structures and vegetation, threatening people who live in its path. The USFS operating budget has become strained by the costs of protecting the growing demographic in the wildland.

As an individual I am paying taxes to my local fire department to protect me, and I'm paying taxes to the federal government to protect my forests but not the structures that don't necessarily belong there. So what can be done to address this issue? Brett and I proposed an additional tax to those living in the wildland area. Homes in the WUI must pay an additional tax on their property. Additional Brett and Zoe proposals are to introduce a bill which requires WUI properties to maintain "defensible space" and to protect WUI firefighters from being sued over property damage incurred while in the act of protecting a structure. All of our proposals (we came to discover) have already been introduced and have made their way all the way to teh US senate via two California Senators. Montana, meanwhile, has its own state legislation requiring an additional annual tax of $50/home and $30/ 20 acres have made their way to the US senate.

WUI is not (to be honest) of large personal concern to me. It is something that I believe matters and needs to be addressed, but if I have learned anything through this lesson, it is that the issue that drives you to make a change must be something that you care deeply about and that you have researched heavily, from as many quality sources as you can access. This will allow you to make a quality assessment of the issues of your community, and from there will give you the tools to make a difference.

Ah, it's good to be a citizen.