Author: Chris Waldmann

News from the President

Hi Sunnyside! March. It’s such a time of transition. It comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb, with a big 4-leaf clover right in the middle! Hopefully, we have indeed passed the worst of winter as we look forward to a fresh set of spring flowers and longer days. It’s a great time to prep your garden and plant those peas for mid-spring deliciousness.

Back in wintertime February, the Board met and discussed some needed updates to our bylaws. They are mostly technical, spelling out in more detail how Board transitions occur and modifying the process for declaring a Board seat vacant mid-term.  From a general membership standpoint, the big update would allow for voting for Board members at the annual meeting remotely over Zoom. I think that this could be a great update that will allow more people to participate in our hyper-local democracy. These amendments will be put before the membership for approval at our annual meeting in May.

We also took some time to talk about potential projects for this year. Last year, our main project (besides the Shower Project) was to repaint the Sunnyside Piazza. We’ll look at repainting that again next year, but we hope to have more events this year to bring the community together! Some of the ideas we discussed were:

• Sunnyside Cleanup Day
• Community potluck
• New mural on the blank wall of the Sunnyside Community Center facing Sunnyside Enivoronmental School
• Neighborhood Garage Sale

What do you think? What would you like to be involved with planning or participating in? The idea line is open, so share your thoughts with us on Facebook or at [email protected]m. We’ll be kicking off the runup for one or more of the events in the coming weeks, so stay tuned.

We will see you Wednesday, March 11th for our next general meeting. We’re excited to have Councilor Steve Novick join us to discuss all the happenings at City Hall. Bring your questions, concerns and comments!

February 11, 2026 SNA General Meeting

Tonight is our monthly board meeting at SE Uplift at 7 PM. The board will be doing the exciting business of looking at updates to our bylaws and looking at our goals for the next year. As always, the public is welcome to join us!

The meeting, which will be held in the upstairs conference room at Southeast Uplift (3534 SE Main St.) and online at https://us06web.zoom.us/j/85776168096?pwd=dTU3V0wycWZxTmhSVGNjNjJxdjNldz09, will start at 7 p.m. and go until approximately 8:00 p.m.

The full agenda is available at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-rWUptnqFq4JWMxLwezzrA4VtbOAaQgg5PAVKqBjBp8/vie

News from the President

Hi Sunnyside and welcome to February! This always feels like a month where I want to hunker down and ride out the winter. The big events of the holiday season are long past and the warmth of spring still feels so far out on the horizon. It’s a good time to find a cozy haunt in the neighborhood and settle in with a good book. Might I recommend one of my favorites, which I read last year, So Far Gone by PNW author Jess Walter? It’s a great (and funny!) story of rediscovering your family in these times that are trying to tear us apart. I think Sunnyside’s own Bar Mame on Hawthorne would be a lovely location for reading, but there are so many great places to hang out in our neighborhood. We all have our nooks.

At the January General Meeting, we focused on this little newsletter you are now reading. I would like to extend a special THANK YOU to all the volunteers who make the Sunnyside News happen and those who donated to keep it going!

The Board will be back at work in February when we will dive into our by-laws to see where we can modernize (like allowing online voting during our annual elections). In the coming months we hope to hear from our local state representative, Rob Nosse, about the legislative short session and to engage with our city councilors about their second crack at the city budget. If you have any issues or concerns you’d like to raise, please reach out to us via email or our Facebook group.

Despite the grey, dark times, there’s a lot to look forward to in Sunnyside in the coming months. Stay tuned for more information and stay warm out there!

January 14, 2026 SNA General Meeting

Please join us TONIGHT for our regularly scheduled general meeting. We will be discussing the future of our printed newsletter as costs rise and our neighborhood grows. Do you read the Sunnyside News? Do you read it online or in print? Would you subscribe to the Sunnyside News if it was an online-only publication? What new features would you like to see in the newsletter? We want to hear from you!

The meeting, which will be held in the upstairs conference room at Southeast Uplift (3534 SE Main St.) and online at https://us06web.zoom.us/j/85776168096?pwd=dTU3V0wycWZxTmhSVGNjNjJxdjNldz09, will start at 7 p.m. and go until approximately 8:00 p.m.

The full agenda is available at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-rWUptnqFq4JWMxLwezzrA4VtbOAaQgg5PAVKqBjBp8/view

News from the President

Happy New Year Neighbors! I hope you had an amazing holiday season and are ready for an amazing 2026 in Sunnyside, Portland and hopefully, a better year for the country writ large.

In December, the SNA hosted a special General Meeting to discuss traffic safety issues on some of our neighborhood corridors, particularly César E. Chavez Blvd and 30th Avenue. This was prompted by the tragic accident that took the life of Richmond resident, Grey Wolfe, as she was out for her daily walk up to Mt. Tabor. We had representatives from the PBOT office of Vision Zero, which has been seeking to eliminate traffic-related deaths and serious injuries for over a decade (with mixed results), a senior PBOT traffic engineer, who is also a Sunnyside resident and parent of SES students, as well as Councilmember Morillo and representatives from Council VP Tiffany Koyama Lane’s office.

We learned about how Chavez Blvd is one of the city’s designated High Crash Corridors, which despite encompassing only 8% of Portland roads, account for 67% of traffic-related deaths. These corridors are a priority for the agency, but as we know, infrastructure change comes slowly. Work will soon begin on the southern end of the four-lane section of Chavez between Powell and Holgate, but unfortunately, work on the northern section, starting at NE Sandy Blvd is still a long way, and many budget dollars, away. But, there is some good news for advocates of safety on Chavez coming soon. PBOT is planning to use its emergency authority to lower the speed limit on Chavez from 30 to 25 and to add two radar signs that will help drivers realize how fast they may be driving through our neighborhood. This is not the panacea of putting this road on a diet by eliminating general travel lanes and improving the atrocious sidewalk situation, but hopefully it will save lives, as reductions in speed directly correlate to lower crash fatalities.

On the west end of the neighborhood, SE 30th has seen some recent “improvements” that we don’t believe are helping too much with safety at a major crossing for the Salmon St. Greenway. PBOT added “speed cushions”, which include cutouts to allow emergency vehicles to pass unimpeded, and freshly painted crosswalks. Unfortunately, the speed cushions do not seem to be having the desired effect. Drivers are easily able to use the gaps to pass through without slowing down a bit and if they do hit the bumps, the angle of the hill appears to make the bump less effective as drivers approach the intersection. Also, these changes do not protect pedestrians crossing at Main and Taylor, which are both downhill from Salmon, meaning they have very limited visibility into oncoming traffic that is cresting. Spurred by neighbors on this issue, the SNA Board agreed to sign on to a letter to PBOT seeking remediations to this project and further monitoring to ensure the changes are effective. Area neighbors are seeking help for purchasing crossing flags to aid pedestrian safety, particularly for the many school children who use this route. You can contribute at gofundme.com/f/keep-se-30th-and-salmon-safe-for-pedestrians.

Also traffic-related, the Board named a new chair for our Land Use & Transportation Committee (LUTC). Connor Lirot is a new Board member this year and lives just off of another of our corridors–Belmont. He has a passion for traffic and land use issues and has the mandate to examine a wide swath of the issues affecting the neighborhood.

Keep an eye on our Facebook page for an announcement about LUTC’s meeting schedule and upcoming agendas. You can reach out to the committee with issues at [email protected].

That’s it for now. As I write this, we are still planning our regular January General Meeting; keep those ideas and concerns coming to us at [email protected] and on our Facebook page.

Wishing you peace and joy in 2026.