By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com
The Yachats Rural Fire Protection District, which has had trouble finding people to run for its five-member board, is suddenly awash in candidates.
Six people, including two incumbents, are running for three positions in the May 21 election.
The board has had a vacancy for more than a year and has not been able to recruit anyone to fill it. Two people, Donald Tucker and Ernie Smith, are running to fill the remaining two years of board Position 3.
Katherine Guenther, who is the current board chair, is running unopposed for Position 2’s four-year term.
Three people are seeking Position 1’s four-year term, including incumbent Cy Kauffman. The other two are Drew Tracy and A’lyce Ruberg.
Because of illness, Kauffman missed many of the board’s meetings in 2018, which coupled with the vacancy often left the board with three members to conduct business. The district also struggled with site issues – now resolved — at its new fire station under construction on the north edge of Yachats, a diminishing number of volunteers and communication with the public. It’s career firefighters also voted to unionize last year and the district has started negotiating its initial contract with the Newport chapter of the International Association of Fire Fighters.
YachatsNews.com twice sent a questionnaire to the six candidates via mail and email. Two responded. Here are their responses.
Yachats Fire Board, Position 1
Drew Tracy, a retired Maryland police chief, and A’lyce Ruberg are challenging incumbent Cy Kauffman for Position 1, a four-year term.
Kauffman was elected to the board in 2003 and re-elected three times since. Health problems forced him to miss a majority of meetings in 2018 and the first three months of 2019. He did not respond to the question-and-answer request from YachatsNews.com.
Ruberg, in the Lincoln County voter’s pamphlet, said she is a nurse and a former emergency medical/fire services coordinator for CalFire, the statewide fire agency in California, and with the San Francisco Fire Department. She did not respond to the question-and-answer request from YachatsNews.com.
Drew Tracy
Q. Please give a brief history of your work and/or professional career.
A. I have over 32 years of public safety experience. I retired after 30 years from the Montgomery County Police Department in Maryland as the assistant chief and then went on to be a police chief and adjunct professor before moving to Yachats. Presently, I assist the U.S. State Department part-time as a lead instructor and subject matter expert in its anti-terrorist assistance program.
Q. Please give a brief description of any involvement in community service, volunteer and/or civic organizations.
A. This community has talent and abilities and since moving here I am impressed with the involvement of community members. In the past several years I have had two main sources where I have stayed involved. I spent 16 years as coordinator for the Special Olympics Torch Run and five years as a volunteer at the Children’s Inn at National Institute of Health, which accommodates families and children who are receiving medical treatment for life threatening illnesses. Presently I am a volunteer cold case investigator for the Eugene Police Department investigating older unsolved homicides.
Q. If applicable, please describe any service or involvement with a government board.
A. I’ve been appointed to several boards as I have gained in experience over the years. I was a member of then-Vice President Joseph Biden’s committee that worked on reconstructing the sexual assault statutes, I was appointed to the Domestic Violence steering Committee in Maryland, selected as a peer review subject matter expert for the Department of Justice to review and critique several critical incidents throughout this country, and selected by Federal Emergency Management Agency to review its incident command system protocols.
Q. What is the role of the Yachats Rural Fire Protection District board and how would you contribute to or enhance that?
A. The board’s role is first to provide leadership, fiscal responsibility, direction and set the accountability measures to run a successful fire and rescue organization. To do this it must represent the community members’ interests and listen to the current fire administration, it’s full-time paramedics and firefighters as well as the volunteer members.
I will contribute by first, listening and learning. I have worked with partnerships in public safety my entire career and I would coordinate with other departments in Oregon to assist in mutual aid. Partnerships work in daily operations as well as in needed major operations. Training. I am a stickler for training, with a purpose. I would also assist in gaining new volunteer members and provide them the training and equipment so they can assist the present staff.
Q. Why should someone vote for you?
A. Leadership. I have been the incident commander in several joint incident command system endeavors in both natural and man-made disasters. I have taught or lectured over 1,000 public safety agencies throughout the world in how to handle a critical incident. Here on the coast we need to be ready and work with emergency management personnel to fully prepare for a natural disaster and locally we have an aging population (me included) so we need to have proper paramedic coverage.
Q. If there is anything you would like to add or emphasize, please feel free to do it here.
A. I’m here to help the Yachat’s Rural Fire Protection District be the best.
Yachats Fire Board, Position 2
Katherine Guenther is running unopposed for Position 2’s four-year term. She was first elected to the fire board in 2011 and is its current chair. She did not respond to the question-and-answer request from YachatsNews.com.
Yachats Fire Board, Position 3
Donald Tucker, a retired Tektronix executive and chair of the Southwest Lincoln County Water District board, and Ernie Smith are seeking to fill the unexpired, two-year term of Position 3 on the Yachats fire district board. Smith, a bartender at the Drift Inn, did not respond to the question-and-answer request from YachatsNews.com.
Donald Tucker
Q. Please give a brief history of your work and/or professional career.
A. I joined Tektronix in 1958 while in college, beginning in the manufacturing area. I moved into management, working in a variety of manufacturing, engineering, sales and marketing areas such as technical support, commercial and federal contracts, federal security, eCommerce, customer training, export control and services, pricing administration and business practices. My last two positions were operations manager for worldwide government sales and marketing and finally director of global marketing’s customer and sales support group. I spent 42 years with Tektronix, retiring in February 2001.
Q. Please give a brief description of any involvement in community service, volunteer and/or civic organizations.
A. I was a commissioner with the Cedar Hills Homes Association (1962-63), I also served as a loaned executive to the United Way of Portland in the 1960s.
I spent nine years in the Oregon National Guard’s 162nd Engineering Bn, 41st Inf Division (1954-1962), leaving only because of need to finish educational requirements and deal with increasing business responsibilities. I am a 40-year retired member of the Portland/Vancouver Chapter of the National Contract Management Association, a certified federal contracts manager and as a result of my accomplishments an elected NCMA Fellow.
I became a commissioner with the Southwest Lincoln County Water District in 2004 and have served as board chair since 2007. Recently, water district voters elected to change from a special district to a water public utility district and I am the current chair of the PUD board. The water district/PUD serves more than 1,250 customers between Waldport and Yachats. Of the 113 fire hydrants within the district, 107 are inside the Yachats Rural Fire Protection District’s boundaries.
Q. If applicable, please describe any service or involvement with a government board.
A. I was asked by the Oregon National Guard in 1974 to assist the Department of Defense and the Oregon Committee of the Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve to advocate for Oregon employed citizen-soldiers called to or about to be called to active duty. I retired from the organization in 2010.
In 1978, I was appointed by the Secretary of Commerce with 600 other senior executives across the nation to serve as a volunteer senior adviser with the National Defense Executive Reserve. This agency was transferred in 1996 to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. During this period I received extensive training in strategic resource allocations management and disaster management ranging from nuclear to natural disasters.
Q. What is the role of the Yachats Rural Fire Protection District board and how would you contribute to or enhance it.
A. The primary responsibility of any board is to formulate policy, rules and regulations and make business decisions not expressly assigned by the board, in writing, to others. The fire district board must assure the district is in compliance with applicable federal, state and local laws and ordinances, conduct fire district business only as a board and ensure that all records, minutes and notices created are maintained and available to the public as required by state and federal law. I support public access to an active fire district website and encourage public attendance at board meetings.
The board is also responsible to ensure the fire district receives, records and spends funds in accordance with accepted accounting, purchasing and record-keeping standards, that the revenue it receives covers costs of approved operations plus any debt service and needed reserves. The board must exercise diligence and care, remembering it is exercising rights and powers for and on behalf of all taxed property owners within the fire district.
The board is a business function and must responsibly maintain oversight of the fire district’s general operations, approve fair remuneration for all staff positions, establish clear and concise job descriptions and expectations for the chief (as the operations manager) and employees, conduct an annual performance/compensation review for the chief and ensure the chief provides the same reviews for employees, all based on sound, clear job expectations.
Using my general management, work and board experience and skills, I would work to ensure the fire district is operated properly, efficiently and at the lowest cost coincident with its responsibilities to the state and those in the community it serves.
Q. Why should someone vote for you?
A. I would be a valuable asset to the fire district board and the community it serves because I bring an extensive work experience, a broad management background, and experience as a leader. I am a respected experienced local board member now and in the past with other boards and committees. A board position demands integrity and ethics and I have both. I also would serve as a voice for those in the large area north of the city of Yachats which has not been previously represented to my knowledge. I have attended a number of educational sessions focused on the role of a board member and the operation of boards.
Q. If there is anything you would like to add or emphasize, please feel free to do it here.
A. We moved to our home two miles north of Yachats in 2001. We had camped and trailered this part of the coast for many years with our children and were familiar with the area. My intention after moving here was to offer my background and skills to the community and I have not waivered in that commitment. I have been a licensed amateur radio operator since 1954. I enjoy with my wife, Judi, working with our acre of flower beds and extensive lawn.