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RICH RIEGEL
THE MID-COUNTY MEMO
(Editor’s note: The Memo presents an in-depth look at the East Portland Neighborhood Office, the umbrella organization funded by the city of Portland to aid 13 neighborhood associations in Mid-Multnomah County. We’ll examine in detail the history of EPNO, offer an interview with EPNO Director Richard Bixby, and provide a reference guide and map – found here – on how you can get involved with your neighborhood association.)
In Mid-Multnomah County, the East Portland Neighborhood Office represents 13 neighborhood associations. They are Argay Neighborhood Association, Centennial Community Association, Glenfair Neighborhood Association, Hazelwood Neighborhood Association, Lents Neighborhood Association, Mill Park Neighborhood Association, Parkrose Heights Association of Neighbors, Parkrose Neighborhood Association, Pleasant Valley Neighborhood Association, Powellhurst/Gilbert Neighborhood Association, Russell Neighborhood Association, Wilkes Community Group and Woodland Park Neighborhood Association. These associations represent approximately 122,000 residents.
The history of EPNO begins in the late 1980s, as an outreach program of the Office of Neighborhood Associations, now the Office of Neighborhood Involvement.
In the beginning, those conducting outreach to the neighborhood associations in Mid-Multnomah County worked out of the Central Northeast Neighbors office, a city-funded neighborhood association umbrella organization, then located at a former (now re-activated) fire station at Northeast 55th Avenue and Sandy Boulevard. Two of the first people hired by the city to help conduct outreach to unincorporated areas of Mid-Multnomah County were Charlsie Sprague and Carolyn Bax. In the late ‘80s and early ‘90s Mid-Multnomah County, stretching from 82nd to 162nd avenues, would be annexed to the city of Portland.
Another person hired in October 1989 to help with outreach was Richard Bixby; Bixby later would work in crime prevention for the East Portland District Coalition, then as director of the transformed EPNO in 2000.
Bixby said that at the time of his hiring in 1989, approximately 50 percent of the formerly unincorporated area had been annexed to the city of Portland; in addition, he said, there were only six to eight neighborhood associations represented.
The fledgling outreach effort would have its first office located at a former business incubator at Northeast 107th Avenue and Sandy Boulevard.
In July 1990, the EPDC was formed, with an office at the former Russellville Elementary School at 220 S.E. 122nd Ave., where Russellville Park — apartments meant for those age 55 and over — is located now. Sprague was hired as the coalition’s first director.
Bixby would begin working as one of two crime prevention specialists.
Sprague left in June 1992, with Bixby serving as interim director. Catherine Smith was hired as the new director of the EPDC in August 1992, resigning the position in April 1993. Replacing Smith as director that month was Tom Waltz. That summer the office moved to a home renovated into an office, at 1917 S.E. 122nd Ave.
Tom Waltz would serve as director until October 1996, ironically the same month the EPDC was in the midst of moving to their new offices, located in the building that houses the Portland Police Bureau’s East Precinct at 735 S.E. 106th Ave.
Bixby said that conflict between Director Waltz and the board of directors of the various neighborhood associations, along with strife between the associations themselves, began to come to a head during the spring and summer of 1996. In the October meeting of the EPDC, eight of the 10 neighborhood associations voted to resign from that coalition. The contract to run the coalition was withdrawn.
“I guess we were all out of jobs,” Bixby related, “but we had to move our office.” Bixby said that due to a technicality, the coalition continued to exist, at least temporarily. Waltz returned briefly, then left again. Bixby was hired as an office manager. A mediator came to help straighten things out.
The EPDC would lay fallow and then morph into what is today the East Portland Neighbors, a group that helps provide grants and other fiscal support that only a nonprofit organization can do.
Bixby said that during the next few years, there was a period of adjustment. He said that three-quarters of the neighborhood associations had to come to one of two agreements: reform the nonprofit coalition and contract with the city through that entity, or concur that they wanted the city to provide services directly.
“There were 10 neighborhood associations,” Bixby said, “and they were split 6-4, with irreconcilable differences.”
The city’s mediator, Barbara Hart, worked with the neighborhood associations over the next year, and she “came to the conclusion they were not ready for any reconciliation,” Bixby said. He was placed in the position of being a manager, he said, creating what he called “limbo-land.”
“It was all interim,” Bixby said, “because there was no agreement with the neighborhood associations about how we should serve them.”
The organization serving the neighborhood associations operated day-by-day and month-by-month.
Bixby said that by 1999 there was “some change in leadership” and a moderation of opinions within the neighborhood associations, and he worked with the associations individually to get them to agree to a new umbrella organization. The new organization would be a city-run office called the East Portland Neighborhood Office.
“Eight out of the 10 signed off on that,” Bixby said. Bixby would be hired as the new director in April 2000.
In September the EPNO moved to its new digs at 1017 N.E. 117th Ave., near the intersection of Northeast 117th Avenue and Holladay Street. The location is a former Hazelwood Water District office, and its landmark is the unused water tower located to the north of the building.
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