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(continued)
“We wouldn’t be able to help people fill out their insurance forms,” he said, “but we could help them form a neighborhood watch.”
In addition, a public issue like providing off-leash areas for dogs to run about is part of what EPNO staff can assist with.
The office has helped coordinate neighborhood clean ups and helped reach out to high school students to teach them about the reality of guns and gun violence through Project Safe Neighborhoods.
The budget for operating the office comes from ONI. The precise budget to cover office operations from July 2006 through June 2007 is $175,182. Of that figure, Bixby, working as a three-quarter-time employee, earns $75,000 a year. Hatfield, working as a four-fifths-time employee, earns $40,000 a year.
Add to the total budget money from a new city neighborhood grants program, money for communications and insurance, and funds from the city’s Office of Sustainable Development, and the fiscal year 2006-07 budget actually totals $243,526.
In the 2005-06 fiscal year, the budget for EPNO from ONI was approximately $170,000. Compare that to Southeast Uplift, which received nearly $300,000 for fiscal year 2005-06, and Central Northeast Neighbors, which received $164,644. In fiscal year 2005-06, the seven district coalition offices received a total of $1,317,464 from ONI.
The $243,000 allotted this fiscal year not only goes for the staff and other overhead expenses, but Bixby said that $18,000 goes directly to the neighborhood associations to use at their discretion for operations and communications. Another $7,000 goes toward the quarterly East Portland Neighborhood News.
Money to pay for EPNO’s two crime prevention specialists does not come from EPNO budget, although it does come from the city of Portland.
“We are basically asked to provide office space for them,” Bixby said of the crime prevention specialists.
Neighborhood associations are given money in two ways: one as an equal sum, the other through the number of addresses in each neighborhood association.
“We do also provide organizational assistance” to the neighborhood associations, Bixby explained. “So if a neighborhood association is struggling with internal organizational issues, we’ll come and basically work through it with them.”
Bixby said that neighborhood associations consistently “walk in here and ask for help, and we give them help.”
Bixby’s years of intimacy with the Mid-Multnomah County area gives him a deep perspective on the past, present and future. At various times, he’s served as a coordinator, crime prevention specialist and office manager for the coalition since its inception in the early 1990s.
“The neighborhood associations and (EPNO) recognize that the area out here is changing demographically,” Bixby confessed, “becoming more diverse. And poverty is increasing. And so there’s the recognition of the need to maybe do things differently than they have been done in the past, and trying to connect with the population that’s out here. That’s also been recognized citywide.
“The Mayor’s Community Connect project,” Bixby continued, “is doing an assessment of ONI: What’s going on there now, what’s happening, looking at documents like the League of Women Voters’ analysis, and some other studies that have been going on. It’s also looking at how other cities do community participation and public involvement. And it will be coming up with some proposals for how ONI might change. They’re going to come out early (this) year (with recommendations).
“That could substantially change the way we operate, and that’s currently in process,” Bixby said.
“One of the things that happened (in 2006) was that we got additional money to do some projects that we’ve been asking for a long time and some pilot projects,” he said. “The Neighborhood Grants project, that the neighborhood folks have been lobbying for probably a decade at least, was finally funded.”
The Neighborhood Grants project funds totaled approximately $37,000, with $7,000 going to the yearly neighborhood clean-up programs, the rest to Project Safe Neighborhoods.
“That’s exciting,” Bixby said, “because it allows us to give small amounts of money to people out in the community to help them do the good work. That is a new program. We’re hoping that will be incorporated into any changes that are made. They also threw some additional money into insurance for the neighborhood associations and communications.”
The Memo asked Bixby what he saw in the future for EPNO and its neighborhood associations.
“The organization is dependent on the city’s support, obviously,” Bixby said. “And so how the city decides to fund it will make a significant impact on the kind of things we do.
“I would like to see more growth in the neighborhood associations out here,” Bixby continued. “They have gone through, and are going through, some major transitions. It was a major transition with the whole annexation issue, dealing with a whole other bureaucracy that they never had to deal with before.”
Bixby said that Mid-Multnomah County is witnessing urbanization.
“The inner neighborhoods have gone through this cycle of disinvestments,” he said, “and now they’re coming out of it and gentrifying. But there has been some stability in the (inner city) business districts.”
Bixby contends that both the city of Portland and Mid-county citizenry support more diversity in providing assistance to neighbors.
“Neighborhood associations work well for a certain group of people,” he admitted, “and there needs to be some other forms, organizations that work well for other sorts of people, and I think we’re going to end up supporting some of those organizations — what they look like, how they’re organized and how they mesh in with the neighborhood associations. I don’t know that, but my guess is that’s where we’re going to head.”
The Memo asked Bixby if he liked his new office.
“When the ceiling stops dripping,” he answered, wryly.
Bixby said that one of the advantages to the new office was a large meeting room for gatherings. He’s jazzed about the new digs.
“It’s a real different feel,” he said. “In the back of the police precinct, you feel like you’re in ‘officialdom,’ in a way, sort of formal and official. Here, we’re in a residential neighborhood, and it feels more neighborly and friendly.”
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