Hi neighbors! I hope that you are enjoying your Oregon summer—getting out into nature, scarfing down local produce, and enjoying all the festivals and events that Portland has to offer in the sunny season. Our neighborhood main street festivals are coming up, with the Hawthorne Street Fair (hawthorneblvd.com) on Sunday, August 27th and Belmont Street Fair (belmontdistrict.org/belmont-street-fair) on Sunday, September 9th.
The SNA board has been taking time this summer to get ourselves organized. We lost a ton of experience and history this year with three people deciding to leave us: longtime board member (and former president) Matt Lembo, treasurer Vincent Dawans and at-large member Emily McCadden. Thanks to all three for their service to the community! Luckily, several new folks have gotten involved. I’d like to welcome all the new board members and officers: Kendra Hansen (treasurer), Eric Miller (secretary), Andru Morgan, and Mike Thelin. I’m excited to have everyone on board! Please, if you see these folks around Sunnyside stop to say hi, thank them for their involvement, and let them know about issues you’d like the SNA to tackle.
One issue that I hope we can continue to advocate around is pedestrian safety and traffic calming. As many of you know, on July 15th a woman was tragically killed on Cesar Chavez Blvd. near the library. An allegedly drunken driver lost control and flipped their car, striking the woman who was simply waiting for a bus. We all know that the Sunnyside-stretch of Cesar Chavez has some of the narrowest, least protected sidewalks and that drivers frequently drive recklessly through this area. As of this writing, we don’t have many details about this particular crash, but we do know that the road design encourages high-speed driving and that there is very little buffer between the sidewalk and the travel lanes. As with anything around transportation, change will take time and money, but if we start now, maybe we can get a better, safer street.
As always, if you have issues that the SNA can take on, or projects that we can help you with, please reach out. You can contact us at [email protected] or you can reach me directly at [email protected].