Author: Chris Waldmann

January 8, 2025 SNA General Meeting

The SNA’s January General Meeting will be held Wednesday, January 8, 2025, at 7:00pm.

This month we will be focusing on neighborhood and District 3 priorities for the coming year with the SE Uplift District 3 Community Priorities survey as our guide. Bring your hopes, dreams and opinions!

Meeting is open to the public, but please note that this is a board meeting and may provide limited opportunity for community input.

Meeting Agenda. Times are approximate. Agenda items are subject to change.

This meeting will be held in person at SE Uplift (3534 SE Main St, Portland, OR 97214) and virtually at https://us06web.zoom.us/j/85776168096?pwd=dTU3V0wycWZxTmhSVGNjNjJxdjNldz09

 

News from the President

Happy New Year Sunnyside! I don’t know about you, but I am excited to put 2024 in the rearview mirror and look forward to new challenges in 2025! On that note, the biggest change in Portland is that, after years of preparation, our whole new government structure is in place and getting down to work! The new district-based council should offer many more opportunities to interact with our elected legislators to let them know about the issues we care about and the potential policies that the community think are appropriate to address them. So please continue to join us for our bi-monthly meetings and join our committees on Land Use (LUTC) and the Community Care Committee (SNACC). On to the news….

Continuing the theme of community engagement, the Sunnyside NA has
teamed up with other District 3 neighborhoods and community-based
groups in the Southeast Uplift Neighborhood Coalition to gather your input on a range of civic matters related to community safety, housing, transportation, land use, the environment, and economic development. The results of this survey will be shared with our three newly-elected City Council members (Tiffany Koyama Lane, Angelita Morillo and Steve Novick) to inform their policy-making efforts. Take the survey at tinyurl.com/2uhhaub3 by January 31st. The SNA will  discuss our priorities during our January General Meeting as well!

Here’s some good news– our own Sunnyside Shower Project (SSP) just received a $40,000 grant from the Oregon Community Foundation to help with the work the team does with our homeless community! The SSP is hiring its first two paid staff members – a Project Director and a Volunteer Coordinator. With the new Project Director coming on board, founder (and SNA VP) Hannah Wallace will be taking a step back from the day-to-day SSP leadership. This project has come a long way since Hannah conceived of it during the height of the pandemic in 2021. Congratulations to Hannah, Diana and our entire SSP team!

Looking for a way to get involved with the SNA? Interested in helping us manage our meager budget? Have some basic math skills? We’re looking for a new treasurer! We are currently transitioning to a new model to take much of the burden off this important position, but we still need help to keep track of balances, request reimbursements and create our state filings. It is about a 1-2 hour per week commitment plus attendance at monthly board meetings, with the term up for reappointment this summer. It’s a great opportunity to meet new friends and be involved in your neighborhood! If you’re interested, please reach out to me at [email protected].

Finally, if you don’t want to help manage our budget, how about contributing to it? You can make your tax-deductible contribution today to the SNA at secure.givelively.org/donate/southeast-uplift-neighborhood-program-inc/sunnyside-neighborhood-association!

December 11, 2024 SNA Board Meeting

The SNA’s December Board Meeting will be held Wednesday, December 11, 2024, at 7:00pm.

We will be discussing a number of topics this month.
– Planning for 2025 at the SNA
– Voting on support of the board for the proposed pedestrian plaza pilot project on 37th at Hawthorne
– Looking at a proposal from Metro that could affect funding for permanent supportive housing
– And much more….

Meeting is open to the public, but please note that this is a board meeting and may provide limited opportunity for community input.

Meeting Agenda. Times are approximate. Agenda items are subject to change.

This meeting will be held in person at SE Uplift (3534 SE Main St, Portland, OR 97214) and virtually at https://us06web.zoom.us/j/85776168096?pwd=dTU3V0wycWZxTmhSVGNjNjJxdjNldz09

 

News from the President

Happy Holidays Sunnyside! I know that we are always so busy this time of year, buying gifts for loved ones, attending festive parties with friends and family, and generally feeling the spirit of the season. I’m so happy that you are taking a little bit of your time to spend with the SNA either in person at our meetings or just keeping up with the neighborhood news right here. I’ve said it before, but I feel lucky and am so thankful to be a member of this community.

Onto the news…

In November we were joined by our newly re-elected state representative, Rob Nosse, for a freewheeling conversation on the 2025 legislative session. Rob hopes to spend much of the coming session working on one of his priority issues – strengthening the arts community in Oregon. As the health committee chair, though, I’m sure his plate will also be filled with many of the weighty topics on so many minds in Oregon – mental health care, the homelessness crisis and trying to insulate the state from potential conflicts with the newly-elected President and Congress. On health care, Rob is determined to find more money to continue the much needed expansion of mental health services in this state, where we rank 48th in the country in the availability of care. He hopes to find excellent working relationships with our new city and county leaders to move the region forward, together with a common vision for continued recovery. On transportation, Rob is not deeply involved in the discussion of the renewal of our transportation funding system yet, but he hopes that new mechanisms can provide the funds needed to modernize our transportation system and provide climate resiliency to our network. It was a really wonderful conversation and I hope you can all join us the next time Rob comes to an SNA meeting, hopefully in the spring in the midst of the session.

There are plenty of holiday activities around Sunnyside and I want to highlight a few here:

Sunnyside Environmental School will be holding its Winter Craft Fair on December 13th. For more details see Valerie Kahn’s News From SES on page 3.

The annual Peacock Lane Christmas Street celebration will be December 15th-31st. Pedestrian-only nights are the 15th and 16th. Parking is very limited in the area, so I suggest putting on warm, dry clothes and either walking over or taking the #15 or #75 bus.

The Sunnyside Shower Project’s annual Winter Clothing Drive will be held on Sunday, December 8th from 1-5 p.m. The Drive helps our less fortunate neighbors stay dry and warm through the dreary winter months. Please drop off adult-sized winter clothing and other cold-and-wet-weather gear to the Sunnyside Community Center at 3520 SE Yamhill St. on the morning of December 8th. Volunteers will be on hand from 9:30 a.m.-1 p.m. in the basement of the Center to collect clothes. (Drop-off at the basement entrance on 35th St.) 

Finally, if you are planning any end of year donations, please don’t forget your local neighborhood association! Your donation to the SNA is fully tax-deductible and helps us do all the projects that I have talked about in this space, including the Shower Project, upcoming work around the Sunnyside Piazza, the bike garden we hope to install at 4511 SE Hawthorne, not to mention printing this newsletter every month! You can make your donation by clicking this LINK. 

Happy holidays from the SNA Board to all of your families and we will see
you in 2025!

News from the President

Hi Sunnysiders! By the time you receive this newsletter, the election season will be over (or nearly so) and we’ll know who will be in charge of our city government from the new city council to the mayor (and beyond). I don’t know what the results will be, but I am hoping that all those elected have the ideas, strength and ability to help this city continue to grow and recover from the recent difficult times and to enable all Portlanders to live and thrive in our beautiful city. All elected officials will need our support and guidance, so keep on making your voices heard, starting at the hyper-local level with your neighborhood association which is a collective voice to your government.

On to the news…

In October, the SNA Board discussed a letter of support for the upcoming pilot of the pedestrian plaza at 37th and Hawthorne, by 3 Doors Down and Buffalo Exchange. Representatives from Buffalo Exchange and Gold Door Jewelry & Arts joined us and expressed some reservations about how they would handle deliveries if automobiles could not park on that street. They expressed tentative support for the project, but are hoping for some accommodations for their businesses’ needs. Given the concerns from these constituent businesses and the fact that several Board members were not able to attend the meeting, the Board decided to table the decision on a letter of support until November. The first design workshop is on Nov. 2nd from 10:00 a.m.-2:00 p.m. at Southeast Uplift. (You can drop in any time.) If you miss it, please reach out if you have an opinion on this new proposed neighborhood space.

On the lighter side, did you see that Time Out magazine rated our neighbor to the northwest, Kerns, as the fifth “coolest” neighborhood in the world? Congratulations, Kerns! I don’t want to start an inter-neighborhood fight, but really, let me tell you why they overlooked an even better neighborhood: Sunnyside! You want great coffee? I give you Tov, Never Coffee and a multitude of others! A fun bar with great food? Alto Lounge, Bar Loon, Gold Dust Meridian, Horse Brass Tavern and on and on. Vintage stores? Take a stroll down Hawthorne any day! Delicious local bakery? Tabor Bread! Lovely homes on tree-lined streets? We have that in spades. As Time Out says, 28th is “the heart” of Kerns, but I posit that Sunnyside gets to have two hearts, each with its own character and amenities. I feel so lucky to live with all of you in this neighborhood and hope to for a long time to come.

Finally, we’d love to see you on Wednesday, November 13th when Representative Rob Nosse joins us for a discussion on the upcoming legislative session. Bring your questions!

Have you emailed the SNA but not gotten a reply? If so, we sincerely apologize. We identified an issue that seems to block some emails (without any notification) to our [email protected] email address. Until we resolve this issue, please feel free to reach out to me directly at my personal email [email protected]. Talk to you soon!