Designing the Heart of Sabin
By David Sweet
There is a triangle of land on the corner of 15th and Prescott. A Century ago it was the terminus for the Irvington-Jefferson Streetcar Line that ran all the way from SW 18th and Jefferson. Now it’s a slab of concrete with no particular use. What could it become? Please join us as we dream together about the future of this public space.
The Sabin Community Association’s general meeting, Monday, May 9, at Sabin School, will be devoted to a discussion of design options for the “Sabin Triangle.” There will be a social hour and plant exchange at 6:00, and the meeting begins at 7:00. Architect, Mark Nye will bring drawings of some design options for this space. Please come and help us create a community place that could become the heart of Sabin.
The Oregonian posted the following article about our community design project:
Portland neighborhood's efforts to re-imagine Sabin Triangle show how city should work
http://mobile.oregonlive.com/advorg/pm_100844/contentdetail.htm;jsessionid=8C83D86F36CB64B96C447B66A43ED192?contentguid=3HCxs1xI
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Monday, April 4, 2011
Letter to the Editor: Stop the CRC!
The CRC or Columbia River Crossing project as it now stands is fiscally wasteful, environmentally degrading and has manifested into a 10 billion dollar monstrosity. We, as Portlanders, have long stood fast against highway projects that cripple our budgets and diminish our quality of life. This bridge will carry 12 lanes and encourage sprawl and further pollution and nothing for us.
There are proposals to seismically retro fit the current bridge and bring light rail and pedestrian/bike lanes and this would be a far more sensible alternative. A retro fit would cost less than 100 million and create a great number of jobs. Large scale new projects have been shown repeatedly to create fewer jobs for our investment because of start up costs and consulting fees.
Imagine 100 million versus 10 billion. Imagine that much more money to invest in education, social services, public transit and other socially conscious endeavors. Only 9% of bridge traffic is commercial; the bulk of drivers are commuters who live in Vancouver and drive to work in Portland. A better use of those funds would be to encourage light rail and bus use with fare subsidies and park and ride stations.
We do not need a new boondoggle bridge. We need to preserve and protect our region from sprawl and pollution. Visit the website Stop the CRC for more info.
By William Youngren
There are proposals to seismically retro fit the current bridge and bring light rail and pedestrian/bike lanes and this would be a far more sensible alternative. A retro fit would cost less than 100 million and create a great number of jobs. Large scale new projects have been shown repeatedly to create fewer jobs for our investment because of start up costs and consulting fees.
Imagine 100 million versus 10 billion. Imagine that much more money to invest in education, social services, public transit and other socially conscious endeavors. Only 9% of bridge traffic is commercial; the bulk of drivers are commuters who live in Vancouver and drive to work in Portland. A better use of those funds would be to encourage light rail and bus use with fare subsidies and park and ride stations.
We do not need a new boondoggle bridge. We need to preserve and protect our region from sprawl and pollution. Visit the website Stop the CRC for more info.
By William Youngren
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Want to know how to be a good neighbor?
Check out this article on http://ouvcommunityoutreach.org/stories/supportive-neighbor-checklist/
Won’t You Be My Neighbor: Supportive Neighbor Checklist
This is an ongoing checklist of ideas from neighbors. Five tips appear in every issue of The Pulse, the Community Outreach quarterly e-newsletter. If you have ideas about ways to connect and make a friend of your neighbor, please email your suggestions to outreach@ourunitedvillages.org.
Suggestions from Neighbors:
1. Say hello
2. Borrow an egg
3. Host a neighborhood swap and share
4. Clean up litter in a 2-block radius from your home
5. Exchange books with each other
6. Swap seeds with a neighbor
7. Set up a BBQ in your front yard
There are 40 ways listed in this article. For more, see this site: http://ouvcommunityoutreach.org/stories/supportive-neighbor-checklist/
Won’t You Be My Neighbor: Supportive Neighbor Checklist
This is an ongoing checklist of ideas from neighbors. Five tips appear in every issue of The Pulse, the Community Outreach quarterly e-newsletter. If you have ideas about ways to connect and make a friend of your neighbor, please email your suggestions to outreach@ourunitedvillages.org.
Suggestions from Neighbors:
1. Say hello
2. Borrow an egg
3. Host a neighborhood swap and share
4. Clean up litter in a 2-block radius from your home
5. Exchange books with each other
6. Swap seeds with a neighbor
7. Set up a BBQ in your front yard
There are 40 ways listed in this article. For more, see this site: http://ouvcommunityoutreach.org/stories/supportive-neighbor-checklist/
Saturday, March 5, 2011
Friends of Trees Planting -- Saturday, March 12 -- ORDER TREES / VOLUNTEER
It's time for the annual Friends of Trees Sabin Neighborhood Tree planting! The event is next Saturday on March 12, 2011 at Holladay Park Church 2120 NE Tillamook St at 8:45 am -1:00pm It's too late to order tree for this year's planting, but we would love volunteers. This is a really fun family event. The day starts at 9:00am with bagels, juice and coffee. You will join a planting team who goes through the neighborhood helping to plant your neighbors trees. And guess what? The holes for the trees are already pre-dug the week before. You will get a little dirty and learn the proper way to plant and stake a tree.
After wards there will be lunch provided to refuel you for the rest of your Saturday. This is a great way to get to know your neighbors and get dirty on Saturday morning.
How else can you help?
Volunteer roles include:
- Planting crews
- Help with food/refreshments. Help serve or contribute a crockpot of soup or chili
- Truck drivers (we need open bed trucks to carry trees to homes)
- Helping with registration
Please contact Lisa Johnston-Smith at sabin@plantitportland.org for more info.
After wards there will be lunch provided to refuel you for the rest of your Saturday. This is a great way to get to know your neighbors and get dirty on Saturday morning.
How else can you help?
Volunteer roles include:
- Planting crews
- Help with food/refreshments. Help serve or contribute a crockpot of soup or chili
- Truck drivers (we need open bed trucks to carry trees to homes)
- Helping with registration
Please contact Lisa Johnston-Smith at sabin@plantitportland.org for more info.
Report from PSU Presentation on Coyotes in NE Portland (3/3/11)
Two to three hundred people crowded into a Grant High School room at 6:30 on Thursday 3 March to hear a representative from the Audubon Society of Portland talk about coyotes in our Alameda, Sabin, King, and Cully neighborhoods. Though in the past rare west of the Cascades, coyotes have been with us here for seven or eight years, mostly keeping to themselves and feasting on rats, raccoons, goose eggs, and insects, probably to our benefit, but in the last five months Northeast coyotes have changed their behavior, killing backyard chickens and small pets, walking the sidewalks, sleeping in streets, and playing with off leash dogs in parks. A second grade class at Alameda Elementary has been tracking their sightings, inspiring Barbara Brower, geography professor at Portland State University to follow up on their work and try to understand what is happening. Last night, some of her students were present with surveys to learn more about residents’ response to the more visible presence of coyotes.
Presenters emphasized that coyotes are here to stay. If removed from a territory, they return, traveling as much as sixty miles a day. Only the alpha pair mates under ordinary circumstances, but, if they are killed or threatened, all the other coyotes in the pack mate, too, and litter size increases. Extensive study of the hundreds of Chicago coyotes shows that if coyotes are exterminated in a territory, others quickly come from outside to take their place. Therefore, our only recourse is to “restore instinctive behavior” in the animals by refusing to feed them and aggressively making noise, waving arms, and stamping feet to scare them back into hiding if they approach.
Experts believe that the changes in coyote behavior in our neighborhoods may have come from feeding the coyotes. Some residents of Alameda defiantly feed the coyotes forty to fifty pounds of cat food every night, making the creatures comfortable to come into yards and onto porches. One resident described how a coyote who had killed his chickens ate them on the roof of his garage but left the remains on his front porch. Jeff Cogan is proposing a county wide no-feed ordinance with a hefty fine for anyone caught voluntarily feeding coyotes.
Other recommendations are to keep pets indoors, secure garbage cans and compost bins, remove fallen fruit from yards, eliminate opportunities for rats to breed in your yard, never approach coyotes but instead scare them away, remove unnecessary brush, and install motion sensitive lights or water jets.
Coyote attacks on humans are rare and usually result from human attacks on coyotes. The only known death caused by coyotes was a two year old whose parents had been feeding coyotes. Rabies is rare in coyotes in Oregon. Dogs are a much greater threat to humans than coyotes, but the behavior changes are troubling and need to be discouraged.
Presenters emphasized that coyotes are here to stay. If removed from a territory, they return, traveling as much as sixty miles a day. Only the alpha pair mates under ordinary circumstances, but, if they are killed or threatened, all the other coyotes in the pack mate, too, and litter size increases. Extensive study of the hundreds of Chicago coyotes shows that if coyotes are exterminated in a territory, others quickly come from outside to take their place. Therefore, our only recourse is to “restore instinctive behavior” in the animals by refusing to feed them and aggressively making noise, waving arms, and stamping feet to scare them back into hiding if they approach.
Experts believe that the changes in coyote behavior in our neighborhoods may have come from feeding the coyotes. Some residents of Alameda defiantly feed the coyotes forty to fifty pounds of cat food every night, making the creatures comfortable to come into yards and onto porches. One resident described how a coyote who had killed his chickens ate them on the roof of his garage but left the remains on his front porch. Jeff Cogan is proposing a county wide no-feed ordinance with a hefty fine for anyone caught voluntarily feeding coyotes.
Other recommendations are to keep pets indoors, secure garbage cans and compost bins, remove fallen fruit from yards, eliminate opportunities for rats to breed in your yard, never approach coyotes but instead scare them away, remove unnecessary brush, and install motion sensitive lights or water jets.
Coyote attacks on humans are rare and usually result from human attacks on coyotes. The only known death caused by coyotes was a two year old whose parents had been feeding coyotes. Rabies is rare in coyotes in Oregon. Dogs are a much greater threat to humans than coyotes, but the behavior changes are troubling and need to be discouraged.
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Community Forum feedback and next steps
Thank you to those who attended the Grant Cluster Enrollment Process Public Forum last Thursday, 1/14. An eyeball guesstimate puts attendance at about 250 participants, many of whom engaged in small group conversation and written exercises to offer feedback to PPS on the school reconfiguration options and boundary changes for Sabin, Alameda and Beaumont schools. The comments have been compiled and are available on the PPS website: http://www.pps.k12.or.us/departments/system-planning-performance/5072.htm (first 4 links in right-hand column).
The next steps in the process are as follows:
The next steps in the process are as follows:
- January 20 @ Sabin, 6pm: Final BAC Meeting and recommendation[s] to Superintendent
- Week of January 24: Superintendent's recommendation
- January 27 @ Beaumont, time tbd: Community Meeting on Superintendent's recommendation
- February 2: Recommendation to the Board Ad-Hoc Committee on School Assignment Program Initiation and Reconfiguration
- February 7: Board Vote
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
www.SabinParents.org -- Learn more and share your views
To shed additional light on the Sabin School enrollment process, a couple of Sabin parents spent last weekend developing www.SabinParents.org, "a place to gather facts, share opinions, and advocate for the students of Sabin School." Please visit the website to learn what your neighbors are saying and to join the conversation.
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