Educational Crisis Builds Funding Pressure
By Midge Pierce The expectation that dozens of teaching positions will be eliminated next year despite the Portland Public School (PPS) Superintende…
Local Headlines
City Club Initiates Public Meetings for De-Commissioning Discussion
By David Krogh The City Club held a public meeting Wednesday, April 10, in the community room at McMennamin’s Kennedy School to initiate public disc…
Fritz to Retire in 2020
By David Krogh City Commissioner Amanda Fritz announced on April 5 that she would retire after her current term is up in 2020 and not run for re-el…
Laurelhurst Neighborhood Receives National Historic Recognition
It’s official! After years of work by hundreds of community volunteers, the Laurelhurst Neighborhood has been added to the National Register of Histori…
Local Effects of 2018 Tax Act
Jim Houser, owner of Hawthorne Auto Clinic, hosted a Town Hall with Congressman Earl Blumenauer and Senator Ron Wyden last month to speak with local b…
Clarifying PERS Benefits
By Don MacGillivray The Public Employee Retirement System(PERS) began in 1946 and includes many types of public service employees. The employee brea…
SE Updates
Yes, It Could Happen Here The geyser that erupted last month on NE Skidmore was caused by a break in a hundred-years plus, thirty-inch diameter wate…
State Bills Affecting Housing and Planning
By David Krogh Several bills in both the State House and Senate are being considered which will provide major changes to how future planning occurs …
New and Revised Taxation Plans
By Don MacGillivray With the Oregon legislature in search of more funding for public schools, various new or revised tax plans are being advanced. D…
Don’t Blink – More Change Coming
By Midge Pierce Pro-growthers score a big one RIP, the Residential Infill Project’s elimination of Portland’s single family neighborhoods, moved …
RNA Carries On
By Midge Pierce Perplexed Richmond residents filled tables, pushed together in a symbolic gesture of welcome, as the Neighborhood Association held i…
Music Millennium Hits 50
By J. Michael Kearsey Back in 1969, a person known as a Millennial was just a twinkle in every young granny-glassed eye: an adjective that pertained…
What is HB2003
By David Krogh HB2003 is yet another affordable housing bill sponsored by State House Speaker Tina Kotek, but, the bill attempts to strike into the …
SE Updates
By Midge Pierce Watchers Eye OCCL Warily Infighting within neighborhood associations like Richmond comes at a contentious time when city playboo…
Crime Keeps Coming Whether We Listen or Not
By Midge Pierce Portland’s police force has hit a decidedly rough patch. The bureau has a hundred vacancies to fill, internal morale is low and publ…
Imbroglios Threaten Future RNA
By Midge Pierce Turmoil that has roiled the Richmond neighborhood years ago has resurfaced to plague a community frequently hailed as among the nati…
Preservation Wrap up: Grassroots Makes a Comeback
By Midge Pierce In growth-centric Portland, preservation is taxing and grassroots clout is growing to protect architectural and cultural treasures a…
Rethinking Commission Form of Governance
By David Krogh The City Club has thrown a curveball at the Portland City Council. This pitch takes the form of a study and accompanying report wh…
Eastbank Esplanade Improvements: Temporary Closure Ahead
Portland Parks & Recreation (PP&R), in partnership with the Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT), Bureau of Environmental Services (BES), a…
New Alignments Push Back Against URM Policies
By Midge Pierce A potentially powerful alignment of diverse interests has coalesced to oppose City requirements that unreinforced masonry (URM) buil…
Major League Baseball in PDX
By Don MacGillivray Is the dream of major league baseball in Portland possible? A growing number of Portland’s notables think so. Craig Cheek, Ni…
SE Updates
By Midge Pierce Record Funding Found to Tackle Homelessness Low income housing relief is coming to SE. The Mayor bills the just-announced Permane…
High Tech to Grass Roots
In response to the Portland housing crisis, JT, a software developer, has tapped the housing design experts at Communitecture and the edible garden and…
Empty Apartments Pale in Comparison to China
By Don MacGillivray Much criticism has been leveled at the City about housing development of recent years. It seems that the city is over building a…
State Housing Bills Reflect City Proposals
By Midge Pierce As goes the City, so goes Salem with bills on the legislative docket for rent control and densification. Mayor Ted Wheeler indicates…
Business Owner Fights TriMet’s Overcrossing Project
By Jonathan Maus, editor and publisher of BikePortland This article originally appeared on BikePortland.org bikeportland.org/2018/12/20/business-o…
URM Year End Update
URM Year End Update by Gabriel Frayne Jr. The battle between URM building owners and the Portland City Council over seismic upgrades ended the ye…
Metro Urban Growth Boundary
By Don Mac Gillivray Predicting how much our region will grow is the job of the Portland Metropolitan Service District (Metro) and it isn’t easy. …
Homelessness in Portland Part II
By David Krogh There is no simple solution to eliminating homelessness, much less addressing it in a meaningful way. November’s edition introduced t…
RIP Positions Intensify
By Midge Pierce Sweeping land use reform that would eliminate single family housing is all the rage in entering 2019 as Oregon House Speaker Tina Ko…
Good Attitudes Make Good Neighbors
By Midge Pierce Good Neighbor Agreements are touted by staffers from SE Uplift and Portland’s newly rebranded Office of Office of Community and Civi…
RIP Year End Update
By David Krogh Speaker Tina Kotek has announced (per Willamette Week and The Oregonian) she is working on legislation that could mandate densificati…
Seasonal Giving Opportunities in SE Portland
By Jack Rubinger There’s no shortage of interesting, fun and easy seasonal giving and volunteer opportunities in our community this season. Here …
PDX in Motion
By Don MacGillivray Our city’s growth is a continuing issue for the many citizens that rely on local public services and infrastructure for daily li…
SE Updates
E-scooters update Hear ye, hear ye, e-scooter haters and lovers. The experiment is over. With some 676,000 trips logged covering 775,000 miles, the …
Centennial of the Armistice that Ended The Great War
By Right Rev. Roland Lakey November 11 of this year marks the 100th anniversary of the end of the Great War. At five am on that damp Monday morni…
Phantom Laundromat on Belmont
By Gabriel Frayne Jr. It’s not often in our fair city that one finds a long-abandoned building that has been tagged over by graffiti artists hired b…
What’s in the Exhaust of 60,000 Trucks?
By Midge Pierce Portland is awash in a toxic stew that is impacting the elderly, vulnerable and particularly children with particulate exposure that…
SE Updates
Historic preservation Historic preservation is an uphill battle in Portland. Opponents claim preservation obstructs growth. Proponents claim it can …
Progress On 82nd Ave. of Roses
By Don MacGillivray 82nd Avenue, the Avenue of Roses, has many changes ahead to realize the vision of local business people and neighbors. Commun…
Rating Commercial Building’s Energy Use
By Don MacGillivray In the 2017 energy audit of three quarters of Portland’s large buildings scored above the national average as compared with othe…
Film Explores Future of the City
By Midge Pierce Portland’s future may spin on whose interpretation of urban activist/journalist Jane Jacobs prevails. In a recent showing of Citizen…
Mt. Tabor Visitors Center Marks Fifty Thousand
By Nancy Tannler The Friends of Mt. Tabor Park (FMTP) held a celebration marking the fifty thousandth visitor to the visitor center since it opened …
In-depth Look at the Metro Housing Bonds
By Don MacGillivray The Metro bond measure on the November ballot will authorize $653 million in general obligation bonds to fund affordable housing…
Signs of the Times at PPS
By Midge Pierce The needle drop-box positioned on the fence in front of the Sunnyside K-8 school is a sign of the times, and while the park the scho…
SE Updates
By David Krogh Mayor’s Bureau Assignments Mayor Wheeler has been shuffling bureau assignments for City Commissioners as he becomes aware of burea…
Is PSC Turning Deaf Ear in the Name of Profit?
By Midge Pierce Tens of thousands of residents could be displaced by a rezoning proposed by the Portland Planning and Sustainability Commission (PSC…
ONI Changes Clarified
Office of Community and Civic Life (formerly Office of Neighborhood Involvement) Director Suk Rhee responded to last month’s Southeast Examiner article…
Belmont’s Christmas House Lives for Another Holiday
By Midge Pierce A once grand, century-old house at 5631 SE Belmont is being meticulously restored by a tour de force with the skill and determinatio…
Artist Live/Work Facility Under New Ownership
By David Krogh, The artist communal living center, Milepost 5, in the Montavilla neighborhood at 850 NE 81st St., has been sold to CDP – Community D…
Procedures Matter in Times of Change
By Midge Pierce A grievance filed within a SE neighborhood association may shed needed daylight on changing roles, responsibilities and rules of NAs…
Booming Belmont
By Gabriel Frayne Jr. SE Portland has a new street of dreams. The entire Belmont St. corridor from Grand Ave. to the foot of Mt. Tabor is presently …
What’s in a Name – ONI?/OCCL?
By Don MacGillivray Names are always important and a name will make a difference when the City of Portland’s Office of Community Involvement becomes…
SE Updates
Innovative Pre-school Art, the outdoors and early childhood education intersect at Fiddleheads, a new program this fall that will immerse young chil…
Laurelhurst Home Tour
The Laurelhurst Neighborhood Association holds its first home tour Sunday, September 9 from 11 am to 4 pm. Six homes of varying architectural styles…
RIP Changes Demographics
By Midge Pierce Shocked by a planning commission recommendation to add more multi-units to internal lots in the proposed Residential Infill …
Historic Designation Not Dead Yet
By Midge Pierce The Feds return of the state’s paperwork on the Eastmoreland National Historic District containing 5000 potentially unverifiable tru…
Turning Toxic Around, One Neighborhood at a Time
By Midge Pierce For several years, an undercurrent of tension has rippled through Richmond Neighborhood Association meetings as distrust, disrespect…
Pushback Over Parking Permit
By Midge Pierce Citing the potentially devastating effect on its commercial strip, the Hawthorne Boulevard Business Association unanimously voted to…
Montavilla Explores Remedies for Houselessness
By Midge Pierce With the Mayor, Police Union Chief and other Portland residents trading barbs that the city has become everything from ungovernable …
Increase in Water Bill
By Nancy Tannler At a recent Lents Neighborhood Livability Association meeting, knowledgeable officials fielded questions about why your water bill …
Proposed Permit Parking
By Nancy Tannler In August 2018, Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) will be sending mailers to residents in the Richmond and Sunnyside neighbo…
Hawthorne Vacancies – New Normal or Not
By Gabriel Frayne Jr. The bustling allure of Hawthorne Boulevard is any realtor’s dream. A local commercial realtor describes it in a brochure this …
Mainstreet Style Design is Good for City
By Midge Pierce “Density with Sensitivity” is the motto of urban planner and architectural firebrand Heather Flint Chatto, who with longtime landuse…
SE Updates
Shelter Approved Despite Objections Multnomah County is moving forward on a controversial 120-bed shelter at SE 61st and Foster. Ignoring pleas o…
The Urbanization of the Central Eastside
By Don MacGillivray There is no end in sight to the urbanization of the Central Eastside Industrial District (CEID). What once was an industrial dis…
Tax Proposal on Unhealthy Food
By Don MacGillivray Tax Reform Initiative Petition 37 will be on the November ballot. It is a referendum to eliminate any and all future taxatio…
Petition Urges Portlanders to Take Back the City
By Midge Pierce A pair of petitions demanding the City take forceful action against criminal elements on our streets has struck a nerve. The peti…
18th Village Building Convergence
The City Repair Project, the Portland-based non-profit that hosts the annual Village Building Convergence (VBC), invites you to join in the many events…
Holgate Manor is Microcosm of Crisis
By Midge Pierce The human toll of the housing crisis is measured in the wizened face of 92-year-old Anna Lendya, an immigrant who has called Holgate…
RIP Backlash Emerges from Former Supporters
By Midge Pierce Grassroots support for the City’s Residential Infill Project (RIP) slipped during last month’s testimony before the Planning and Sus…
Blue is for Better Housing Design
By Midge Pierce Which mailer did you get–blue, yellow or none at all? Did you respond? Distinctively colored notices sent by city planners over t…
URM Update: Over-reach or Critical Need
By Midge Pierce Portlanders concerned about the changing cityscape are bracing for the outcome of a June 13 City Council hearing on new seismic retr…
Cyclists Input Needed in CEID Transportation Network
By Don MacGillivray Cyclists are a huge part of the Central Eastside Industrial District (CEID) and their numbers are increasing. The building boom …
Balancing Recreation with Nature
By Don MacGillivray For years off road cycling has been tossed around like a political football with major advocates and critics who argue about any…
The Case for Participatory Budgeting
Correction: A slight but important correction needs to be made in this article: https://www.southeastexaminer.com/2018/06/the-case-for-participat…
Police Explain Homeless Crisis Limits
By Midge Pierce Finding balance between compassion for the homeless and diffusing neighborhood tensions is a dilemma for police caught between charg…
What’s in a Name?
By Midge Pierce A name change for the Office of Neighborhood Involvement (ONI) to the Office of Community and Civic Life has surprised observers who…
Best Practices for Making Vision Zero Work
By Sean Miller Portland has rolled out its Vision Zero Action Plan in order to engineer reduced speeds into city roads. The plan hopes to accomplish…
Clarion Call Issued for Final RIP Planning Testimony
By Midge Pierce 135,000 Portland residents received notices from the City that their single family property would be rezoned under the Residential…
City Council Candidates
By Don MacGillivray It is rare to have the opportunity to choose a new member of Portland’s City Council. With Dan Saltzman retiring, the Council wi…
Frontline Communities on Climate and Environmental Justice
By Bryan Brumley The Rev. E.D. Mondaine became president of the NAACP Portland Branch in March. He remembers growing up in St. Louis, Mo., in the sh…
SOLVE Richmond’s Graffiti and Litter Clean Up Day
By Allen Field The Richmond Neighborhood Association holds its 1st Richmond Graffiti & Litter CleanUp Day, Saturday, June 16, from 9 am to 1 pm.…
Tabor Park House Sale Averted
By Midge Pierce Now that a proposal to rezone a chunk of Mt. Tabor Park has been rescinded by Commissioner Amanda Fritz, park supporters are breathi…
Community News May 2018
Run Mama Run PDX The Mother and Child Education Center invites the public to participate in the 10th Annual RunMamaRun, a 10k/5k stroller-friendly r…
Council Ponders URM Retrofits
By Gabriel Frayne Jr. The city-wide dilemma concerning how to mandate seismic retrofits for Portland’s nearly two thousand unreinforced masonry buil…
Vision Zero Has Miles to Go
By Don MacGillivray In 2016 Portland adopted the Vision Zero program. The accomplishments in its first year are impressive. Vision Zero’s intent …
PDX Transportation Goals
By Don MacGillivray Portland has serious transportation issues growing in ways that concern everyone, especially commuters. The cost of traffic cong…
Cyclists Rally For Safety
Dozens of street safety advocates rallied at Powell Park on Tuesday to oppose the removal of the bike lanes on SE 26th Ave. at Powell Blvd. one of Port…
Divisive Diverter Impacts Hawthorne and Division
By Midge Pierce Add “diverter” to a meeting agenda in SE Portland and tension and attendance rise especially if the diverter is at the junction of n…
Thorburn: Successfully Slowing Roadrunners
By Midge Pierce Love ‘em or hate ‘em, new speed bumps are doing their job along Thorburn St., the curvy route between SE 62nd and Gilham. Debra M…
Proposed Elimination of ONI’s Graffiti Abatement Program
By Adam Meltzer The Office of Neighborhood Involvement (ONI) has proposed cutting the Graffiti Abatement Program for the 2018-2019 City budget stati…
Diesel Exhaust Emissions Control Lagging in Oregon
By Don MacGillivray Diesel exhaust has been an issue in Portland for many years. Recently the central city has more than thirty large buildings unde…
Mural Mixes Art and Ethos to Benefit Art Community
By Midge Pierce 60 Minutes viewers may think Portland’s moment has passed, but a 100 foot long, 10 panel mural is helping keep Portland’s art scene …
WP Goes from College to University
President Andrea P. Cook, Ph.D. announced that Warner Pacific College will now have the designation as a University. This reflects a new era at Warner…
Discourse Drives Homeless Protest
By Midge Pierce Hate was a no-show at a recent rally expected to bring out angry protesters over a proposed Foster Rd. homeless shelter. On a Sat…
Future Trends in Portland’s Demographics
By Gabriel Frayne Jr. Roughly a decade ago Portland acquired a reputation as a city “where young people go to retire,” or at least wait tables and b…
101 year-old School to be Reborn
By David Mayne Kellogg Middle School at Powell and 69th Ave. will be rebuilt and ready for SE Portland middle schoolers in the fall of 2021. The wor…
RIP Update
By Midge Pierce As analysts sift through thousands of comments to the Recommended Draft of the City’s Residential Infill Project, a commonality emer…
Transit Recalibration Offers Opportunity
By Midge Pierce With delays likely in federal grant funding and a design estimated at some $14 million over budget, Trimet officials have trotted ou…