October meeting to focus on Sumner neighborhood plan

13. October 2012 · 4 comments · Categories: health, land use, planning, san, transportation

Update 30 Oct 2012: This is a revised draft handed out at the October 16 meeting. Send us your comments per the instructions below.

By Sumner neighborhood land use & transportation chair Jacob Warren & SAN chair Scott Somohano

This month’s Sumner neighborhood meeting (in NE Portland) will be devoted entirely to developing our goals and visions. So be sure you mark October 16 at 7 PM on your calendar and bring your great ideas. Refreshments and pizza will be provided.

Three maps from PDX Plan

Caption: Three views of Sumner neighborhood from the draft Portland Plan. From left, grocery store distance, park distance, and connectors and neighborhood centers.

This next year is going to be a busy year in land use planning for our fair city. Coming off the success of the Cully Plan, the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability is getting down to business updating the city’s Comprehensive Plan. The Comprehensive Plan is essentially the city’s long term plan for the management of land-use, transportation, education, public health, and natural resources. It provides the vision for what our city will look like in the next twenty to thirty years.

Most importantly, the plan update is an opportunity to get some of the goals and visions of our neighborhood into action.

But wait, what are our goals and visions? That’s where we can really use your help. We need to know what you would like your neighborhood to look like in the next 10-20 years.

As a starting point, here is a rough draft plan (218K PDF) shared at our September 2012 neighborhood meeting. (It has been supercede by the October draft cited in the update above.) What do you think is missing? What do we need more of? What do we need less of? We can’t know unless you tell us. Just about anything is up for grabs: streets, schools, parks, clean air, shopping, dining, you name it.

If you can’t make it to the meeting, but still want to give input, feel free to let me know any time, at jawarren86@gmail.com or sumner.neighborhood@gmail.com. Also if you’re interested in following the Comprehensive Plan Update, send an email to pdxcompplan@pdx.gov and they’ll subscribe you to their monthly newsletter.

If you need proof that this kind of input can make a difference, just look at the sidewalks installed on Sandy Blvd this year & the community garden under construction at Helensview. Both projects are the result of priorties set by you — our neighbors — in your responses to our 2009 neighborhood survey (44K PDF).

For more background about the Comp Plan Update, see ‘Citizen slots open on Comp Plan Update Advisory Groups‘ published in March earlier this year.

Upgrade planned for city pump station at NE 88th and Skidmore; Type III review ensures public input

13. May 2012 · Comments Off · Categories: grotto, health, land use, noise, planning, safety

The city Bureau of Environmental Services (BES) has informally notified Sumner Association of Neighbors (SAN) in NE Portland about the start of design work to enlarge the city’s pump station at NE Skidmore and NE 88th Ave.

City pump station at NE 88th and Skidmore

Caption: The city pump station at NE Skidmore and 88th is at the start of a two-year upgrade process. Construction is expected to start next year.

This project requires a Type III Environmental Land Use Review. Design will take about a year, and then construction will require another year after that.

Here are the high points, per Rhetta Drennan of BES:

  • The current pump station is old and undersized to meet the demands of additional development.
  • The new station would be about twice the size of the existing station.
    The new pumps are planned below ground in the wet well, and they should be quieter than the pumps are now in the current setup.
  • BES is very early in the design process. In fact they won’t begin the real design work until after the project has had its funding approved at council.
  • At about 30% design, BES will hold an open house for the public input and questions.

Sign on the pump station gateBES has also contacted The Grotto, as well as Madison South neighborhood association and the city of Maywood Park.

Anyone who wants to be notified of project update can email
Rhetta.Drennan@portlandoregon.gov with “Grotto” in the subject line and she will be happy to add you to the list. SAN will post updates and the date when an open house is announced.

Shameless plug on an unrelated topic: Don’t forget to sign up for the Sumner neighborhood garage sale on Saturday, June 2.

Citizen slots open on Comp Plan Update Advisory Groups

27. March 2012 · Comments Off · Categories: health, land use, parks, planning, san, transportation

As many of you know the city is going through a comp plan update process. They are supposed to update the comprehensive plan every 20 years and they are about 10 years overdue. The process has been a bit confusing. The first phase — known as the ‘Portland Plan‘ — was the concept plan setting strategic goals in a variety of areas.

3 maps of Sumner in PDX Plan

Caption: Three views of Sumner neighborhood from the draft Portland Plan. From left, grocery store distance, park distance, and connectors and neighborhood centers.

The recommended draft of the Portland Plan will be presented to City Council on April 18, 2012, at 6 PM — and presumably approved. The next phase, assembling the actual nitty-gritty comprehensive plan, is where there are opportunities available for citizens to serve on advisory committees.

In other words, if you don’t like or don’t understand how the city does this or that, here is your chance to learn something while helping to build the plan to last the next 20 years.

What kind of slots? Here’s a short blurb from the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability (BPS):

Work on the Comprehensive Plan Update will be guided by eight Policy Expert Groups (PEG) comprised of City and agency staff, as well as members of the community. The primary function of the PEGs is to advise City staff on the development of the Comprehensive Plan Update and related programs. Members will work collaboratively to develop policy recommendations.

The PEGs will be composed of approximately 12 members each. An effort will be made to have a balanced group of community members and city/agency staff members. Each PEG will have a professional facilitator and meetings will be open to the public.

The Policy Expert Groups will address major themes from the Portland Plan and tasks required by the Periodic Review Work Program. They will focus their work around the following goals and topic areas:

1 – Community Involvement
2 – Education and Youth Success
3 – Economic Development
4 – Residential Development and Compatibility
5 – Neighborhood Centers
6 – Infrastructure Equity
7 – Networks
8 – Watershed Health and Environment

More information and a signup application can be found on the BPS website.

Sumner Association of Neighbors (SAN) is in just the beginning phase of reviewing nearby neighborhood plans, such as the Cully-Concordia Action Plan (2011), the East Portland Action Plan (2009) and Imagine NE 82nd (2008).

If you’d rather sit with a neighborhood group shaping our Sumner’s plan — which will be delivererd for rollup into the citywide comp plan update — we welcome your involvement here too. Just email us at sumner dot neighborhood at gmail dot com or call Ronda at 503-823-3156.

Septic pumper WTS stopped receiving septage in early December; now taking only landfill runoff

10. February 2012 · Comments Off · Categories: health, land use, noise, odor, san, wts

Under a deadline to file for a conditional use permit or face daily fines, Water Truck Service (WTS) decided to pull the plug. On Nov 30, WTS notified the city and SAN that they would stop trucking and disposing septage — human waste from septic tanks — at their site at NE 89th and Killingsworth on Dec 2.

Instead, WTS said they would limit their activity to processing ‘leachate,’ which is runoff from landfills. Activity has ramped down sharply, but even so some nearby residents have reported noise and garbage odors since Dec 2 when WTS is active.

WTS wide shot
Caption: A short truck backed into a pumping bay at WTS, as viewed from NE 89th in June 2011

On Feb 1, new WTS site manager Jamie Hartley, called to request that his number be shared with all our neighbors, so everyone can contact him with concerns, questions and complaints. His number will be included in winter 2012 newsletter coming out in the next week or two.

WTS is based in Sherwood. They opened here in spring 2010. Noise and chronic odor issues — nuisances under city code — were noted by neighbors from early on. Two residents asked SAN for help at our June 2011 meeting. WTS was fined on Aug 27 for violation of land use laws, and completed a conference with the city on Oct 20 in preparation for the required conditional use permit. The tough compliance requirements for the permit — including traffic, setbacks, noise, odor and enclosed space for loading and unloading waste — led to the decision by WTS on Nov 30 to stop pumping septage in Sumner.

Despite these big positive steps, homework remains to see if leachate is also considered ‘waste-related’ under the city zoning code. Any waste-related use at the site requires the same conditional use permit.

For more background, see:

For a video report by local TV reporter Ed Teachout on KGW, see their report.

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