Eric Flowers

While most of us were busy making plans for New Year's Eve, Bill Anthony was packing boxes and making plans for the rest of his life. Or, if he followed his wife's advice, Anthony was resisting the temptation to make plans.
Anthony officially retired from the U.S. Forest Service at the end of the year, ending a three-decade career that culminated with a 14-year stint as the district ranger for the Sisters area. His departure marks the end of one of the more notable, and in some ways unlikely, forestry careers that saw Anthony transform the way people think about forestry with pioneering consensus-based projects that turned critics into collaborators and allies.
“He took the changing mission of the Forest Service to heart and is probably one of the most innovative and creative district rangers that I've ever met,” said Tim Lillebo, field organizer for Oregon Wild and a longtime forest activist in Central Oregon.

The Sandra Meyer Murder
The Sandra Meyer tragedy is one that we add reluctantly to this list out of respect to Meyer's family members who endured much during the nearly month-long search for the missing Bend woman. Meyer's mysterious disappearance became a matter of public discussion after family members and police called on the public to help locate her. Family members erected a billboard on the Parkway emblazoned with Meyer's image and police searched the river around the Old Mill where Meyer's car was found. Suspicion quickly turned to her husband John Meyer who later shot himself in the couple's home. Still, Meyer's family was left in limbo after police found evidence that she had been murdered, but failed to turn up her body. The case came to a shocking and sad conclusion when Meyer's family members discovered her body on the couple's property almost a month after the crime. It was an area that police had supposedly scoured thoroughly. Friends have memorialized Meyer by dedicating a room in her honor at the Bend women's shelter, Saving Grace.

Its no secret that irrigation withdrawals have a major impact on stream flows in the Deschutes Basin. From Wickiup Reservoir in the pine forested Cascade foothills south of Bend to the Juniper dotted canyons outside Terrebonne, the rise and fall of the river is dictated less by snow and rain than the opening and closing of steel gates that meter out water to the legions of farmers on the High Desert.
Over the past decade, irrigators, conservation groups, cities and other stakeholders have made major strides in restoring some of the diminished flows. This past summer, flows in the middle Deschutes were as much as four times the summer average recorded for much of the 20th century when water-thirsty crops and inefficient irrigation methods left little for the river. Much of that restored flow has come as the result of piping projects that allow irrigators to leave some of their conserved water in the river without curtailing their own usage.

Almost two dozen rural post offices slated for closure by the United States Postal Service will remain open, including postal facilities in Brothers, Post, Paulina and Fort Rock.
Sen. Jeff Merkley announced late last week that the Postal Service has agreed that closing the facilities would place undue hardship on rural residents who rely on the post offices for personal and professional purposes.
The Source wrote this past year about how the proposed closing would impact people living around Brothers for whom the facility serves both as a means of communication and community. At the time, the postal service was mulling the closure of more than 3,600 post offices around the country, primarily in rural areas. More than 40 of those were located in Oregon.

Around conference tables and in city council chambers around the state, elected officials and finance officers are asking themselves how cash-strapped public employers will fund health care premiums that have been promised to future retirees.
In Oregon, it's a $3 billion question as health care costs continue to rise and an aging and benefit-rich public workforce edges closer to retirement.
For years, school boards, county commissioners and budget officers opted to forestall dealing with the looming issue of so-called other post-employment benefits. But that's changing as organizations wrestle with the reality of shrinking revenues and growing expenses related to retiree health care.
Unlike the public employee pension system, or PERS, there is no centralized system for funding these benefits, which were traditionally offered as part of the overall compensation package. In most cases, cities, counties and schools agreed to fund health care premiums for retirees from the time they stop working until they reach age 65 when they become eligible for Medicare benefits. That can vary greatly from employee to employee and organization to organization, but the cost is significant.

Less than a week after Postal Service officials notified the city of Bend that the local sorting facility was on the chopping block as part of a massive wave of consolidations and closures, Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley announced that they had won a temporary reprieve.
On Tuesday, the Oregon delegates announced that the Postal Service had agreed to a five-month moratorium on postal facility closures, including the Bend mail sorting facility and 41 rural post offices spread across the state.
“Post offices are essential hubs of life in rural communities. They keep community members connected and provide business opportunities that would not otherwise exist. They are critical for seniors and other rural residents to access their prescriptions. Closing post offices in rural areas would carve the communications heart out of these towns. I will do all I can to fight that outcome,” said Jeff Merkly, D-Ore., in a press release issued Tuesday.

It's been years in the making, but on Tuesday a group of local volunteers announced that they were ready to release a comprehensive 10-year plan to eliminate homelessness in Central Oregon.
The issue of homelessness is one that has gained increased attention over the past several years as unemployment has forced more working families out of their homes and into the streets.
According to the most recent homeless statistics, which were compiled during a January 2011 count, there are roughly 2,300 homeless individuals living in a mix of shelters, transitional housing and makeshift accommodations across Deschutes, Jefferson and Crook counties. More than a third of that population consists of children under the age of 17. By way of contrast, there are only 84 beds in the region's largest homeless shelter, Bend's Bethlehem Inn.