Endorsement from PFPD Commissioner
To: Mendocino County Fire Safe Council
Re: Application for mini-grant from Piercy PSRMA
I moved into Piercy in 1989. I was appointed to the Piercy Fire Protection District’s Board of Commissioners in 1992. I still serve on that Board. From 2019 through 2024 with Mendocino Co. RCD, BLM, and Redwood Forest Foundation Inc, we planned and executed a $4.9 million dollar shaded fuel break project in our area of influence.
When I arrived in Piercy, the Pepperwood Springs Road Maintenance Association kept the best maintained shared private road in the district, and continues to do so now. No mean feat.
The rest of us on shared private roads have yet to be able to form a dues paying association.
I’ve read the details of the plan they are submitting to you. It is in compliance with both Mendocino Co.’s revised 2015 CWPP, and its current draft of a to be proposed 2020 CWPP. It will also be in compliance with the PFPD CWPP being composed.
The scope of work, the hourly and weekly time budgeting, the financial terms, and the traffic control proposed with Woods Tree Company are commendable. I have walked some of Vernon Wilson’s work on Hwy 1 between Hale’s Grove and Leggett, and observed some in the Ten Mile Creek watershed. He will leave the Association with shaded fuel breaks they can maintain with hand tools, or extend with small hand held power tools. He is also a patient and excellent teacher. Those who wish will learn from him.
I urge you to fund this project as generously as possible.The members of the PSRMA are a true neighborhood. They have worked together long enough to respect and accommodate their eccentricities. And there are many deep friendships among them. Increasing emergency ingress and egress is a wise way to start their community wildfire protection cooperation. It is a well budgeted, short time frame project, beneficial to all, capable of inspiring both continued collaboration and individual effort to expand the road work to increase fire resilience on their homesites. These people get things done. Their success will inspire and benefit our region.
We need to care for a vast forest. We need to have many people loving and enjoying this process of care. This is exactly the type of organising I am now trying to promote: neighborly, short time frame projects that increase biospheric engagement. Let’s get this project going and these people encouraging others to create fire resilience associations.
Sincerely,
Jeffrey Hedin
707 247 3030, 707 943 3816, PO Box 140, Piercy, CA 95587.