The May 2012 Mid-county Memo is posted online. A recap of its contents:

Last month, the top three mayoral candidates debated at David Douglas High School’s Howard Horner Performing Arts Center; the new Neighborhood Prosperity Initiative areas are approved; Parkrose School District averts a teacher’s strike; David Douglas special education teacher Annie Harrell is named Outstanding Teacher of the Year; Lee Perlman interviews City Commissioner Amanda Fritz and opponent, state Rep. Mary Nolan; the Planning and Sustainability Commission endorsed the Outer Powell Conceptual Design Plan; since 2006, east Portland neighborhood associations have been operating illegally; the Portland Housing Bureau is changing tax abatement area boundaries in east Portland … again; and, longtime Gateway hairstylist June Bauer’s obituary.

Woohoo!

The Parkrose Farmer’s Market opened today, Saturday, May 5, and runs every Saturday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.

The Parkrose Farmers’ Market opens May 5 for its fifth season.

You will find fresh, local produce; bedding plants; vegetable starts; hanging baskets; custom crafted jewelry; handmade yard and garden furniture; fresh pastries and caramel corn and lots more.

The market is open Saturdays through October from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the Parkrose High School Community Center’s east parking lot, 12003 N.E. Shaver St. Be there.

For fifty years the most popular restaurant in the Hollywood neighborhood, Yaw’s Top Notch, is reopening in Gateway.

Despite being out of the restaurant business for more than thirty years, Steve Yaw, whose grandparents opened the first Yaw’s Top Notch in 1926, thinks he can capture lightning in a bottle again, this time in east Portland.

Set to open in Mid-July, Yaw's Top Notch Restaurant, depicted here by artist Mike Hill, is coming to Gateway.

Today’s Oregonian Business section has an announcement that Yaw’s Top Notch Restaurant Inc. leased the space currently occupied by Gossip Restaurant & Lounge at 11340 N.E. Halsey St.

Gossip Restaurant & Lounge owner Tony Truong, center.

Before closing in the early 80s, Yaw’s was a popular restaurant in the Hollywood neighborhood for decades.

After Carrows, followed by its sister company, Coco’s Bakery Restaurant, closed in the late 80s, the 6,700 sq.ft. space on Halsey Street has had a checkered history of nightclub occupants.

The April 2012 Mid-county Memo is posted online. A recap of its contents follows:

Bre’Shay Barnes was named Rose Festival Princess from Parkrose; the new Neighborhood Prosperity Initiative areas struggle to meet financial goals; Parkrose School District declares impasse with teachers; PSD Superintendent Karen Fischer Gray is one of four finalists for Reynolds job; the first meeting between Metro and Glendoveer golf course lovers since a contentious open house in August; the Argay Neighborhood Association hires a lawyer to help fight infill development across the street from Argay Park and an east Portland high school winter sports roundup.

You’re climbing a mountain, going up a steep slope. You’re exhausted, but the summit is within sight, within reach. Somehow, you summon up reserves of strength, haul yourself up, and throw yourself triumphantly upon the sum…No, that was just a shoulder. The real summit looms ahead, and there’s a lot of it.

Amelai Salvador, from left, Joe Rossi and Luke Shepard at a Parkrose NPI meeting.

This might sound familiar to the steering committees of the six new Neighborhood Prosperity Initiative districts, of which four are in mid-county. There are rewards to be had, to be sure, including more than a million dollars in public funding for business development and local projects, but the hurdles these good people must overcome are steep and getting steeper.

In the midst of an institutional crisis, new Parkrose Business Association president David Ableidinger presided over his first general membership meeting last week.

Luke Shepard, foreground, speaks at the recent PBA meeting.

Roiling the group was a post, “Rossi report stuns PBA” on this blog, in which longtime member Joe Rossi called the group to account for, among other things, not supporting his Centennial celebration and not giving his partner and friend Amy Salvador the group’s top honor last year, the Karl F. Lind Award.

ХудожникIn the wake of Judy Kennedy’s resignation as president of the Parkrose Business Association, the board voted to remove four members whose terms had expired at its meeting Wednesday.

A motion was made and passed to remove the board members whose terms had expired. Off the board are treasurer Marsha Lee, secretary Mary Brown, Mike Taylor and Gail Bash. The four held PBA board positions for at least ten years, some since the early 90s.

New PBA president David Ableidinger said there will be elections in May for the vacant posts. He also said that according to the bylaws, those stepping down cannot run again for at least one year.

After a career working outside the neighborhood he grew up in, Mike Pifher is coming home to work. He already lives in the neighborhood he dearly loves: about ten years ago, he bought the house next door to his parents’ on Southeast 113th Avenue near Market Street.

Now, he is bringing his decade of restaurant and nightclub experience home as general manager of the Dog House Saloon, on Southeast 122nd Avenue near Stark Street in the old Wai Kong Asian Bistro & Bar space. “A contemporary, urban sports bar,” as Pifher described it recently.

Posted online, here’s a recap of the February 2012 edition of the Mid-county Memo ….

Tom West, girls varsity basketball coach at Portland Christian for 30 years, was named Oregon’s 2010-2011 National Federation of State High School Associations Coach of the Year.

Former Portland Christian girls varsity coach Tom West, center, holding plaque, was named 2011 National Federation of State High School Associations Coach of the Year. West quit coaching after 30 years at the school. He won three state titles, including a 29-0, undefeated record in 2007.