MEMO BLOG Memo Calendar Memo Pad Business Memos Loaves & Fishes Letters Home
FEATURE ARTICLES
Open mind opened doors
Adams’ street improvement tax gets east Portland reaction
Court allows city to prefer art to advertising
7,000 babies, 41 years later ‘Dr. Ben’s’ practice ends
Neighborhood activist Don Bartley dies
Airport committee says no to high-speed rail alternative
Our Savior Lutheran Church evolves into Faithful Savior Ministries
EPAP committee brainstorms issues

About the MEMO
MEMO Archives
MEMO Advertising
MEMO Country (Map)
MEMO Web Neighbors
MEMO Staff
MEMO BLOG

© 2008 Mid-county MEMO
Terms & Conditions
Airport committee says no to high-speed rail alternative

LEE PERLMAN
THE MID-COUNTY MEMO

Publisher’s note: Welcome to Perlman’s Potpourri for February — a roundup of news items from the Gateway and Parkrose neighborhoods of mid-Multnomah County from veteran Beat Reporter Lee Perlman.

Coming up, the Portland International Airport Planning Advisory Group, or PAG, wrestles with “sideboard” issues as it works on the airport’s future look.

Russell Academy of Academic Achievement staff, parent (and grandparent) volunteers and the city look for ways to get more kids walking to school via the Safe Routes to School Program. “There are a ton of kids who would walk if they felt it was safe,” according to Russell Academy Principal Debbie Ebert.

Parks & Recreation officials unveil plans to reduce the recently proposed System Development Charges (SDC) increase for developers.

Also, the coalition formed to defeat plans to build a Wal-Mart across from Madison High School on Northeast 82nd Avenue formally requests that developers reshape their plans to be consistent with neighborhood “core values.”

Is it possible there are coyotes hanging around the Wilkes neighborhood in Mid-county? Find out at the next Wilkes Community Group meeting.

But first, off to the airport we go...

Airport committee sorts issues; rejects rail alternative
The Portland International Airport Planning Advisory Group, charged by the Port of Portland and City Council with assisting in the creation of a new airport master plan, spent most of its January session considering “sideboard” issues submitted by its 30 members, in addition to the Port staff’s agenda. Most of these were sorted into appropriate phases for future study, but one hot topic was pushed into the indefinite future, and another was pushed off the plate entirely.

Most of the sideboards were submitted by a trio of the Port’s sharpest and most knowledgeable critics: Erwin Bergman of the Cully Association of Neighbors, Fred Stovel of the Rose City Park neighborhood and John Weigant, all affiliated with the citizen Airport Issues Roundtable. Their topics were air quality, emissions from jet aircraft, noise impacts, water quality, de-icing (chemicals used to remove ice from runways and aircraft can have environmental effects in large quantities, and the Port admits that its untreated runoff of these chemicals sometimes exceeds DEQ standards), economic development on areas adjacent to PDX, terminal alternatives other than centralized and decentralized (future plans spelled out in the 2000 Master Plan), neighborhood improvements related to airport impacts, building replacement or supplemental airports, shifting traffic to other airports, and City Council consideration of a third parallel runway in its Land Use Plan.

A majority of the 30-member PAG followed staff recommendations on the sideboards to the letter. Most issues were assigned to phases of the planning process. Staff’s comments with regard to new alternatives for terminal expansion were that the current planning effort should take up where the 2000 Master Plan left off.

With regard to a proposed third runway, which AIR representatives charge could have major noise impacts on communities not currently affected (especially in mid-Multnomah County), staff said that the potential consequences would be considered in the creation of a new City Airport Land Use Plan. As to the Master Plan, staff wrote, “A third runway is likely at or beyond the current planning period, and ... will be a subject for evaluation in future master plans, which traditionally happen every seven to 10 years. The fact that the third parallel runway may be shown on the airport layout plans does not mean the Port intends to construct it any time soon, if ever. It simply means they have reserved an appropriate amount of land in case the need materializes.”

In attempting to reassure PAG members, meeting facilitator Sam Imperati quipped, “The chances that the PAG won’t discuss a third runway are about as great as that Catherine Zeta-Jones will leave Michael Douglas to come live with me.”

Bergman failed to get a majority of the committee to endorse a study of high-speed rail between I-5 corridor cities as an alternative to air travel despite his impassioned plea that cities must prepare for the day when we run out of airplane fuel. Critics of the proposal said it was outside the scope of the planning project.

Russell parents consider transportation strategies
At last month’s Safe Routes to School meeting held at Russell Academy of Academic Achievement, Coordinator LeeAnne Fergason, second from left, goes over alternatives for students to get safely to and from school. Talking with her are, from left, Russell teacher Alexis McKee, Russell Academy Principal Debbie Ebert, grandparent volunteer Vern Sundin and parent Janelle Singleton.
MEMO PHOTO: TIM CURRAN
In contrast to the East Portland Action Plan Committee meeting (see article page 16), in another brainstorming session last month, this one attended by fewer people and with a much more local agenda than previous meetings, Russell Academy parents and staff worked with Safe Routes to School Program Coordinator LeeAnne Fergason on ways to promote going and coming to school other than by private car.

Part of the program includes physical improvements, including strategically placed pedestrian crossings and traffic islands, to make it safer for children to walk to the school. Traffic Engineer Scott Batson will present a specific program later in the year on these ideas.

“There are a ton of kids who would walk if they felt it was safe,” Russell Principal Debbie Ebert said.

In the meantime, possible strategies include honoring those students who now walk or bike to school with posters and at school assemblies. Fergason suggested that, at least on special days, other students could be driven by carpool to safe areas and walk in from there.

Although the program is officially charged with promoting walking and biking to school, Fergason and Ebert agreed that it would be worthwhile to look at other alternatives. “Riding the bus (instead of driving) is a huge thing,” Fergason said. “Carpooling also saves gas.”

“There are a ton who do it,” Ebert said.

Parents Janelle Singleton, Erica Martin, Amber Bulk and Doreen Temple, and Russell grandparent Vern Sundin, attended the session. “It’s a big step to get a group of people to come to a meeting,” Fergason said. The next meeting will be at 3:30 p.m. on Feb. 25 at the school, 2700 N.E. 127th Ave.

Parks may trim development fee request
According to Hazelwood neighborhood activist Linda Robinson, who sits on a Parks & Recreation committee studying proposed parks System Development Charges, the bureau is considering ways to reduce the amount of increase it is asking for.

SDCs are charges leveled against developers to pay for the expanded urban infrastructure that increased development, and population, make necessary. The Parks bureau is proposing to increase its fees from a current average of $3,117 per dwelling unit to $7,879 and to add a fee for commercial development. This, bureau representatives said, would pay for about 75 percent of the cost of maintaining the level of parks services the city now enjoys, as opposed to 26 percent of the cost under the current fee structure.

Critics at a public hearing in December charged that the fee increase was excessive, especially in combination with other development fees, and could hinder development. Commissioner Randy Leonard seemed to give a sympathetic ear to these complaints.

According to Robinson, the Parks bureau now proposes to subtract golf courses from the inventory of facilities they want to maintain at current levels. “Realistically, Parks isn’t going to build any more public golf courses,” Robinson said, and this would allow the bureau to maintain its agreed target of a 75 percent recovery rate with far less money. As a token gesture to Leonard, they may add in the 11 acres of hydro-parks, Water Bureau properties redeveloped for public recreation at his initiative, as well as some trail networks on private lands.

Neighbors keep developers at arm’s length
Negotiators for the Madison South and Roseway neighborhoods have pulled back from direct negotiations with representatives of the SmartCentres Corporation of Canada, would-be builders of a big box project on a 26-acre former landfill on Northeast 82nd Avenue at Siskiyou Street, across from Madison High School. The company originally proposed to build a 190,000-square-foot retail building on the site, but later withdrew its application and expressed a willingness to work with neighbors.

According to Madison South’s Dawn Tryon, neighbors have simply given SmartCentres a statement of their core values and asked the company to submit an alternative development plan that is consistent with the values. “These are experienced professional people,” Tryon said at a neighborhood meeting last month. “We don’t see the need to do their work for them.”

Wilkes schedules coyote discussion
The Wilkes Community Group will have Karen Mundry, a wildlife specialist with the Portland Audubon Society, as a guest speaker as well as a film about urban coyotes at its February meeting. Several residents say the predators are present, and becoming a problem, in the Wilkes neighborhood. The Wilkes neighborhood is roughly between Northeast 148th and 162nd avenues and from the Columbia River to I-84. The meeting will be Tuesday, February 12 at 7 p.m. in Joe Edgar Hall of the Teamsters Complex, 1850 N.E. 162nd Ave.

Memo Calendar | Memo Pad | Business Memos | Loaves & Fishes | Letters | About the MEMO
MEMO Advertising | MEMO Archives | MEMO Web Neighbors | MEMO Staff | Home