The Mid-county Memo is your newspaper. We want to hear from you. Discuss an important issue, respond to a request for comment or address a concern you want to call to the attention of the community. Letters to the editor will always be edited for space, style, grammar and issues of clarity. Please include your full name and identify the neighborhood in which you reside. We prefer e-mailed letters to the editor sent to Darlene Vinson at editor@midcountymemo.com. Please put “Letter to the editor” in the subject line. You may also mail your letter to 3510 N.E. 134th Ave., Portland, OR 97230 or fax it to 503-249-7672. Deadline for the April issue is Tuesday, March 15.

Can Man lauded as community spark plug
To the Editor:

Thank you … for the fine article you wrote about Dave Luce in your February edition (Hats off to Parkrose’s Can Man, MCM February 2016).

Dave Luce has been a “spark plug” for the Parkrose Community for over 20 years! His zeal to collect deposit bottles to benefit Parkrose High School students has been infectious and got many of us involved. Dave and Barbara Luce have generously given their family’s time, talents and resources to help our young people. They have blessed our east Portland neighborhood, and we love them both.

Sincerely,
Clare and Sharon Mershon
Argay Terrace residents

 

Councilors dismayed over Powell-Division coverage
To the Editor:

From its inception, the Powell-Division Transit and Development Project has been driven by the community. The project would help get residents of Southeast Portland, east Portland and Gresham where they need to go more quickly and reliably on a new kind of bus rapid transit.

Twenty-two people sit on the project’s steering committee, more than half of them members of the community. The project team from Metro, TriMet, Portland, Gresham, Multnomah County and ODOT has conducted extensive public outreach to answer the steering committee’s questions about the public’s desires for the project. We have held hundreds of hours of community meetings and received thousands of comments, both at these meetings and via numerous survey opportunities and small focus groups.

So we were dismayed to read your article published Feb. 6, “Powell-Division Bus Rapid Transit crossover decision coming soon.” The article concerns one of the big questions remaining as to the project’s route: whether the project should directly serve 82nd Avenue in the Jade District.

The truth is that the steering committee will be making the call, at some point in the future, about the preferred project routing. It was disappointing to see something else reported in the Memo. To get more information about what the public wants, Metro, TriMet, the Jade District and other partners have been continuing extensive outreach in multiple languages in the area at events like the open house the Memo covered, as well as business drop-in sessions, more than 100 letters to area business and property owners and door-to-door canvassing in the district.

When the project moves forward, some properties may be needed to make the new line fast and reliable for riders. If that happens, TriMet would work with local businesses to keep their doors open and with property owners in the area to ensure that businesses could be relocated in an area that makes sense for them. The owner of any property that’s needed for the project—and we still don’t know if any properties will be needed—would be compensated fairly.

The community is our first priority with the Powell-Division project. We hope your readers will continue to engage with us to help make sure this project meets their needs. Find out more at oregonmetro.gov/powelldivision.

Sincerely,
Shirley Craddick
Metro Councilor, District 1

Bob Stacey
Metro Councilor, District 6