Sunnyside Neighborhood Association
Helping connect neighbors through events and information in Portland's Sunnyside Neighborhood.
Nov. 17th SNACC meeting will be preceded by an emergency board meeting to vote on whether we want to apply for the SEUL Communications grant as well as the SEUL Community Small Grant again for 2023.
Meeting agenda. Times are approximate.
Meeting will be held in person at Matt Lembo’s house. Please email Matt for address. [email protected]
As I write this at the end of August we just had our first Board Meeting with our newly formed board. We elected Chris Waldmann to be our President but we plan to rotate some of the duties traditionally performed by President between four board members over the coming year to give each of us a chance to be presiding officer. Each person will assume these duties for three months (Chris being the first) but Chris will remain the official elected President. Chris, who has lived in Sunnyside for six years, has been a board member for a year and was formerly the president of his neighborhood association in Washington, D.C.
The SNACC committee has been busy organizing two volunteer orientations for later this week. We hope to gain a handful of new Shower Project volunteers as a result.
We will hold the General Meetings on the 2nd Thursday of the month, as per usual, but the new board has decided to have a General Meeting only every other month. There will be a General Meeting in September, November, January, etc. (One way to remember it is that they happen on odd numbered months.)
Our Sept. 8th General Meeting will be held in person at Southeast Uplift (3534 SE Main St.) from 7-8:30 p.m. (We plan to have a Zoom link for those who don’t want to attend in person. Check the website for details a few days before.) Our guest speaker will be Melanie Billings-Yun from the City Charter Review Commission. She will speak about the upcoming Portland Charter Commission ballot initiative, so come prepared with questions. This will be an important meeting because at the end, we would like the SNA membership to vote on whether or not to endorse the initiative. We need at least 15 members present in person or on Zoom in order to hold a full vote. If we don’t have at least 15 members, the board will vote on the measure, but we really want to have a larger neighborhood voice on this issue. So, please join us and bring a Sunnyside friend!
We hope to see you in September!
When she became the principal of Sunnyside Environmental School (SES) last year, Dr. Eryn Berg says it felt like a homecoming. “I was born on Southeast 53rd St,” says Berg. “And my grandma used to have chickens. So last year when I moved my stuff over to the school and and heard the chickens, I was like, ‘I feel like I’m home.’” A former high school English teacher who also writes poetry, Berg is a huge fan of Sunnyside, the neighborhood, as well (though she currently lives in Roseway). With school starting on August 30th, she has her hands full with meetings and welcoming teachers back to SES but she took the time to speak to us in mid-August.
What did you do before being principal at SES?
I’ve been an administrator at PPS for 15 years. Before that I was a high school English teacher at the High School of Telecommunication Arts & Technology in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. I used to live in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn.
Happy Summer! As I write this in mid-July, the weather is sunny and there’s not a cloud in the sky. These are the Oregon summers we look forward to all year long. Hopefully you’ve been getting outside, spending time getting your hands dirty in the garden, or spending time at the Coast or river(s) for some kayaking or swimming!
At our board retreat in July we came up with a new schedule for the SNA General Meetings. We’re going to have them every other month, starting in September. Board meetings will continue to happen on a monthly basis. Our next General Meeting will be on September 8th at 7 p.m. We are hoping to transition to in-person meetings, but we know that the option to attend virtually may be better for many people so we plan to maintain that as well. Check the SNA website in early September for details.
Q&A with Cole White
Cole White has been a steady presence at the Sunnyside Shower Project for over a year—first as a guest and then as both a guest and a volunteer. Always ready with an open mind and some witty banter, he is fun to do a shift with because you can swap book recommendations (most recently he had Italo Calvino’s short stories in his back pocket) and discuss everything from punk rock to religion. In March, the SNACC committee applied for and won a grant to pay him a stipend, so now he’s the only paid member of our team, stocking toiletries and other supplies at the Sunnyside Methodist Church and generally ensuring that things run smoothly. A graduate of UC Santa Cruz, where he studied math and literature, White writes creative nonfiction including a newspaper called The Portland Interrupter. He recently landed his own apartment and he’s also the most recently elected member of the Sunnyside Neighborhood Association. Please join us in welcoming him to this new role.
