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Ambitious Portland Plan begins

LEE PERLMAN
THE MID-COUNTY MEMO

Bureau of Environmental Services Program Coordinator Marie Johnson, left, listens to Hazelwood Neighborhood Association land use chair and citizen activist Linda Robinson at the Portland Plan Workshop held last month at Floyd Light Middle School in Mid-county.
City planner Alexandra Howard, standing, listens to questions from a member of her work group during the Portland Plan Workshop, part of the Portland Plan summit held last month at Floyd Light Middle School in Mid-county. Seated next to Howard are Metro Councilor Robert Liberty and Piedmont neighborhood resident Daniel Lyons.
MEMO PHOTOS: TIM CURRAN
The official kickoff, or “summit,” of the Portland Plan, which will update the 1980 Portland Comprehensive Plan and set regulations and policies for public and private actions, was held Friday, June 6 at the Oregon Convention Center. And despite being held during the day on a weekday, a Friday no less, it drew at least 150 people. If Mid-county residents were not there in large numbers, others spoke for them.

One of the principal speakers was Jean DeMaster, executive director of east Portland’s affordable housing nonprofit Human Solutions, and part of an eight-person panel at the summit. “I see the level of poverty rising as we go east,” she said. “There’s no point in having a MAX (light rail) line if people are afraid to use it (east of) 102nd (Avenue). David Douglas and Parkrose schools have a high concentration of English as Second Language students. I’m afraid gentrification is being seen in inner Northeast, just as we look at outer east. We need additional housing and jobs, and new revenue sources to bring poor people into the system. And we need mixed-income neighborhoods; if we allow neighborhoods to be all low income or all upper income, we will do a disservice to both.”

In an obvious reference to the summit, she said, “We need to ensure that low-income people are included in the process. Outreach needs to be held at times and in places where it’s possible for them to attend. We need to include them, not plan for them.”

A consistent theme of the summit was sustainability and preparing for climate change. The keynote speaker at the summit, Sven Auken of Denmark, concentrated on this. His country sends only 3 percent of its waste to landfills (“We don’t have an eastern Oregon,” he said.), recycles 70 percent, and burns much of it for heat generation. Once dependent on foreign oil, it now exports alternative energy and energy technology through such companies as Vestus Wind Generation. Only 30 percent of trips are made by automobile, while 40 percent are done by bicycle. Once heavily polluted, (“No fish could live there.”), Copenhagen Harbor is now safe for humans to swim in.

Auken also spoke of Denmark’s social welfare system, where all schooling and health care is publicly paid for. It is financed by an income tax of about 50 percent. “The trick is to give something back,” he said; the population accepts that the money will benefit them.

Portland Bureau of Planning Executive Director Gil Kelley outlined some of the issues the Portland Plan should deal with. The need for affordable housing, both for the existing population and the one million additional residents expected to move here in the next 20 years, should be accommodated in “well-designed and distinctive units,” he said. The city should strive for “20-minute neighborhoods,” in which “with a 20-minute walk you can get to any service you need or to mass transit.” There should be “town squares, gathering places not primarily for cars, one in every neighborhood.” The city needs “more and more aggressive transit options.” And it needs to cut greenhouse gas generation to not more than 80 percent of current levels.

Panel member Dennis Wilde, now with developer Gerding-Edlen and once a senior city planner, said the human race has just seven years to radically alter its practices before damage to the environment becomes irreversible. Further, he said, “The auto as we know it will soon disappear. By 2015 we’ll be paying $15 a gallon for gas.” Turning to DeMaster he said, “Jean, what happens to a low-income family trying to feed their old beater of a car at that price?”

“They can’t pay their rent,” DeMaster replied without hesitation.

To allow for more compatible design, the Planning Bureau is considering tailoring some code provisions to different parts of the city, with one standard for the West Hills, another for the streetcar-era neighborhoods of the inner east side with its housing stock from the 19th and early 20th century, and one for Mid-county.

On June 14, largely in response to complaints about the timing of the summit, the Planning Bureau held two three-hour workshops, one in the morning at Floyd Light School, the second in the afternoon at Portland State University. Only about 25 citizens, outnumbered by city staff, attended the morning session. The afternoon session was better attended, with about 60 people, but still not spectacular.

“We pulled out all the stops to get people here,” Senior Planner Arun Jain told the east Portland gathering. “Frankly, we were hoping for more people.”

At both sessions there was much talk of the problems of east Portland, even by people who didn’t live there. Daniel Lyons now lives in inner Northeast’s Piedmont neighborhood, but grew up in and used to bicycle through mid-Multnomah County. He said that the area had few buildings that could be called landmarks, even from a neighborhood point of view. “There’s not much that holds it together except schools and churches,” he said. “It’s all ranch houses.”

Mark White of Powellhurst-Gilbert said, “We have the feeling that we out here have no voice. They throw infill development out here and ignore us. There are people out here who would pay any amount of money to annex out of the city; they really hate the city.” White is part of a working group planning for possible streetcar development in east Portland, and he puts his faith in this. “The streetcar could help this area,” he said. “The concentration of development (near the line) would allow us to maintain our neighborhoods.”

At the afternoon session, Susan Lindsay of the Buckman neighborhood said, “We haven’t done well-designed places in east Portland, and it has to happen. They have a disproportionate amount of poverty.”

Eden Dabbs, spokesperson for the Portland Plan process, told the Memo that the Bureau would “take the summer off” to “absorb the information we’ve already received” before resuming public meetings in the fall, although it will continue to do public outreach.
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