Portland Plan Advisory Group

December 11, 2009

NOTES FROM FIRST MEETING: DECEMBER 11, 2009

3:30 – 5:00PM, 1900 SW 4^TH AVE., ROOM 2500A

The first exercise was small group discussion about where there is possible overlap of three of our nine issue areas. Each group chose (at random) three different action areas and reported their discussion back to the larger group. FYI: No one chose Human Health.

Prosperity/Design/Neighborhoods

•  Equity is the thread that runs through all of the areas. We have to make decisions that touch all of the areas and affect all of our citizens.

o  Racial and economic equity in terms of access to education.

•  The Plan process should study business kills needed in the community.

•  Small businesses provide well-paying jobs – strong preference for small business job growth.

•  We’ll need to think about how we are gonig to accommodate new residents who will be more diverse.

•  What is a neighborhood – a 20 minute neighborhood? A school based neighborhood? What is the definition?

Arts/Education/Planning

•  Education needs to be more accessible and integrated into the community.

o  Facilities can be the center of the neighborhood and available beyond the classroom

▪  Look at the role of PCC Cascadia – it has evolved over time from a community college outpost to a center of the neighborhood. Creates a center for the community.

▪  The public school facilities throughout the city aren’t programmed beyond just the school day. How can they be programmed to offer more than just the classroom experience?

Design/Neighborhoods/Quality of Life

•  Also concur with the underutilization of school facilities (the actual facilities).

•  Affordability touches and should be a function of all of the areas and is incredibly important going forward. We should be creating opportunity for all of the residents.

•  Those who are civically involved and engaged may not represent the demographics of the community. These will be the same people that you see at every public engagement experience in Portland. We tend to get a fairly small group of people engaged and we need to reach out to get other people engaged so we’re representing a more diverse view point.

Transportation/Neighborhoods/Arts

•  Inequitable access to parks and natural spaces, trails.

•  Median house price and median income gaps.

o  Equity plays a central theme.

•  Arts: we have more arts groups than other communities but don’t pay as much for access to arts.

INTRODUCTIONS

Jesse Beason

Proud Ground

Assists low-income families with buying their first home in Portland. A significant number of his clients are members of minority communities. WWII until 1995, the average home price in Portland was stable while average income has gone down.

John Gibbon

Land use chair of SW neighborhood

Land use attorney for the last 30 years and a founder of Common Interest Owners Legal Assistance, which serves people who live in condos and home-owners associations. That practice has gotten very busy.

Linda Nettekoven

SE Uplift and SE Neighborhoods

The way we design, plan, and handle infrastructure can make a difference in putting the puzzle together. Equity in our history should be looked at.

Marianne Fitzgerald

SW Portland Activist

Lived in SW Portland for 30 years. Retired from Oregon DEQ (her perspective includes the lenses of land use, transportation, and air quality).

Bonny McKnight

City wide land use group

The city’s neighborhood associations are growing in prominence and capacity. We have lots of ways to communicate better. Pleased to hear that schools can be a common ground for everyone. We want to maintain our quality life. She is from East Portland.

Kayse Jama

Center for Intercultural Organizing.

Cares about Portland and wants it to be successful. Represents the interest of a diverse community. We have to look through the racial and economic lenses. A concern for racial and economic equity should be in place at the beginning of these conversations.

Will Layng

SEIU Local 49(Representing Felisa Hagins)

Representing Hospital/Janitorial workers, he is worried about increased gaps in income between upper class.

Elisa Dozono

Bob Packett

Concerned with wages, hours, and working conditions for workers. Labor-friendly legislation.

John Bradley

W/NW neighbors

Cost of housing in our inner neighborhoods continues to rise. Whenever we see something called workforce housing, it’s not designed well.

Kristin Walkins

PCC

Education and training are essential to having a quality of life and business prosperity in Portland. We do have a pretty highly educated population in Portland but it is largely because of inward migration. Equity is still an issue – our residents of color are not moving forward with higher education at the same rates that our white students are. We have challenges with kids who are in our primary and secondary school systems and with getting Portlanders interested higher education.

As we grow in our urban neighborhoods, we should do so in a way that reflects the community and culture and that integrates the community into our campus.

Mike Houck

Audubon Society

Interested in livable cities. Land use issues started in 1980 and we’ve come a long way. Green infrastructure is a concept whose time has come. Equitable access to parks trails and natural areas is incredibly important.

Shelli Romero

ODOT Region 1

ODOT is a transportation agency looking at automotive transportation but ALSO bikes, pedestrians, and mass transit. How will we grow and what will we look like? Very concerned about equitable access to safe, efficient, affordable transportation options.

Chris Smith

Planning Commission

Creating and enhancing 20 minute neighborhoods is a main concern – they should be used a way to make the city more sustainable and more equitable.

Susan Anderson

BPS

Focus is to involve the broadest array of people, cultures, organizations, and communities in order to come up with integrated solutions to our current and future challenges. Web of interconnected relationships being built will be incredibly important.

Carol Mayer-Reed

Landscape Designer

30 years in NE Portland. Worked on Eastbank Esplanade. Interested in knowing more about opportunities for small public plazas within communities and the number of public spaces distributed in our neighborhoods. There are many new community-led ideas about how to foster new ways of seeing each other and learning about each other. Particularly interested in storm water issues – wildlife habitat, engineering, aesthetics, education in reference to water quality, etc.

Ethan Seltzer

PSE

Advocate for planning and the way that Portland can use planning to its advantage.

Nick Blosser

Interested in talking about entrepreneurship, business, and sustainability.

Lew Bowers

Central City Manager for PDC (on behalf of Bruce Warner)

PDC is an implementation agency and is looking forward to implement this new plan. How can PDC be helpful? The current debate we have between Portland’s commitment to livability and our new commitment to equity and prosperity can find common ground. They are not mutually exclusive. He is also interested in innovative built environment.

Brian Newman

OHU Planning and development director

OHSU has a very place-based mission. Medical education is one of the few mentorship-based education models that is still around today. They have 30 acres on the S Waterfront and they are expanding in the central city – OHSU takes that role very seriously. Access to health care, nurturing and supporting research and innovation, and making sure kids are excited about careers in life-science and math are all at the top of his agenda.

Sandy Johnson

Multnomah County Health Dept.

Director of Health and Social Justice. Concerned with health promotion and recognizes that an emphasis on equity is important.

Tom Putman

David, Evans, and Associate

Their firm works on energy, water, and transportation. He also works on environmental footprint technology and sits on city’s Watershed Advisory Committee. New dad – what’s this city going to look like for his son?

Charles Wilhoite

Portland Business Alliance

Focused on economic development. Wants to design areas of the city that benefit everyone in the city. His perspective is from the business community but it’s about the entire community. He would like to see this process focused on equity. We have to do things in a way that supports every citizen in the community. Racial, cultural, economic, and any other type of diversity should be considered.

Paul Loney

Land Use transportation chair at SE Uplift

The public does not see many different government agencies and they think they are separate. The average person just sees Government, not different governmental agencies.

Noelle Dobson

Oregon Public Health Institute

Health and health equity issues. A lot of their work is in East Portland or East County. Equity is at the forefront of their work. Integration among nine areas is important.

Aaron Ridings

County Commissioner Kafoury

Lolenzo Poe

Portland Public Schools

Portland needs to ensure quality education to achieve our highest academic potential. Interested in how schools play an integrated role in how we develop a plan and discovering partnerships that will be necessary. Equity is a lot easier to talk about than to do. He challenges this group to be mindful of how demographics are changing in Portland and this group is not necessarily representative of the community.

John Branam

Education is his central concern. 30 years from now he would love to see Portland as America’s most well-educated city. People should think about Portland as the City that Learns. In becoming that, we will have inherently built a city that has walkable communities, small businesses that thrive, and big businesses that want to move here. Very interested in approaching this process by thinking 30 years out thinking about what the world looks like and what the world is that we’re trying to create here in Portland. Think about all of the changes in the past 30 years and who would have expected those changes. Let’s work on behalf of the new born children.

Barbara Rommell

David Douglas School District

10,550 students in David Douglas and 76.3% qualify for reduced or free lunch assistance. Students across our metropolitan area should be able to share in our prosperity.

Tom Skaar

Home Builders Association (2009 President)

He builds market rate apartments. Wants a provision for equal choice in housing. Housing must be affordable and believes that the market is the best determiner of what housing should be. Very interested in diversity of housing in our community.

Justin Wood

Homebuilder

He builds starter homes on small lots on the west side of I-205 and in N Portland. He wants to keep housing affordable. How do we get more enrollment in the Portland schools and keep family housing in our inner neighborhoods and keep starter homes affordable? How do you pay to upgrade streets, water quality, etc?

Jillian Detweiler

Trimet

Katie Mangle

Planning Director for City of Milwaukee

Milwaukee is an entirely urban and has similar challenges to Portland. Milwaukee is physically connected to Portland via 45^th avenue, Milwaukee, and the Willamette River. She is a resident of Portland and a new mom.

Cam Turner

Financial service and products company

Interested in talking about conventional and alternative financing tools in Portland to help grow, retain, and recruit businesses or developments in the communities.