Neighborhood Newsletter Archives - Sunnyside Neighborhood Association

News from the President

Hi friends! Isn’t April grand here in the PNW? Who needs April showers for May flowers, when you get them both in one month! The winter daydreams of putting on the hiking shoes and traipsing through fields of wildflowers are turned to reality, and I couldn’t be more psyched for the beautiful days to come.

At the March General meeting we were joined by three special guests, our new city councilors, Tiffany Koyama Lane, Angelita Morillo and Steve Novick. We had a GREAT turnout with over 60 neighbors joining in-person and online to hear about how the new form of government is taking shape, and the looming budget crisis that will be consuming much of the council’s efforts. Bottom line on the budget—it’s going to be tough. Depending on how the deficit is calculated, the city faces a deficit of between $92–120 million dollars for the next fiscal year. I was, personally, very impressed with how thoughtful all three councilors were in their responses to constituent questions. Councilor Novick seems to be very much a realist, going through how we got into this situation, not just over the last five years, but through disinvestment in our infrastructure over the past 30 years and with some programs created permanently based on one-time or short-term funding streams. Councilor Morillo appears to bring a keen eye for budgeting and oversight, looking for duplicative efforts and inefficiencies that can be consolidated to improve our long term outlook. Councilor Koyama Lane, in a leadership role as the council Vice President, brings the enthusiasm and optimism of the 3rd grade teacher that she is, trying to bring people together to solve the big issues. The council is still figuring out the exact rules of how legislation will advance, but with the new policy committees having the first review, let’s hope there will be ample opportunities for citizens to make their voices heard on the issues. For the record, the committees District Three members are in are:

• Climate Resilience & Land Use (Novick, Morillo)
• Community & Public Safety (Novick, Morillo)
• Finance (Novick)
• Governance (Koyama Lane)
• Homelessness & Housing (Morillo)
• Labor & Workforce Development (Novick)
• Transportation & Infrastructure (Morillo, Koyama Lane)

Learn more about each committee’s work and sign up to testify at: portland.gov/council/policy-committees.

We also heard about something much more fun than the city’s budget – the Earth Day Parade and Church right here in Sunnyside! Making Earth Cool is planning the event for Saturday, April 26th. Events will kick off at the Sunnyside Environmental School at 11 a.m. with crafts, information booths and other activities. The parade gets going at noon with an approximately one mile route. Individuals and groups are welcome to join the parade. Make a banner! Put on a costume! Walk for the Earth! There will be an Earth Church ceremony at the Sunnyside Community Center (the former Methodist church at 35th and Yamhill) later in the evening. Find out more at makingearthcool.com.

Finally, our annual Board elections are coming up on May 14th at the SNA’s annual meeting. If you are interested in getting more involved in the neighborhood and working with some great folks on important issues, please reach out to me ([email protected]) or call (202-421-5822).

Getting to Know Your Neighbors

Q&A with Anthony Myint, Executive Director of Zero Foodprint

In the midst of the pandemic, Anthony Myint and his wife Kara Leibowitz left San Francisco’s bustling Mission District and moved to Portland with their daughter Aviva. They settled in Sunnyside to be close to family and with the hopes of starting a garden. Myint, a former chef, is passionate about local, regeneratively-farmed food. Years earlier, he and Leibowitz had two of the most talked-about restaurants in San Francisco—Mission Chinese Restaurant and The Perennial. Knowing that agriculture and the food system are responsible for one-third of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, they strove to make The Perennial carbon neutral. They did a great job but after a few years, they realized that if they really wanted to change the food system (and they did!), they needed to incentivize farmers to change their practices. In 2015, Myint co-founded Zero Foodprint, an environmentally-focused nonprofit that makes it easier for farmers to switch to regenerative farming practices. Zero Foodprint invites restaurants, grocery stores, wineries and other businesses committed to reversing climate change to accelerate regeneration. Most businesses accomplish this at no cost, by adding an optional 1% surcharge to consumers’ bills. That money is then pooled into a ZFP coffer to be equitably distributed to farmers via grants. (It’s akin to rounding up your bill in the checkout line at the grocery store to donate to the food bank.) ZFP is active in four states, including Oregon, and has affiliates in Asia and Scandinavia.

Zero Foodprint, which has so far given away $7.5 million to over 500 regenerative farming projects, won the James Beard Humanitarian of the Year Award in 2020. We talked with Myint about the importance of accelerating regenerative agriculture, the cool Oregon projects that are underway, and why “voting with your fork” is not enough. And what about that garden? It’s flourishing with decorative plants, euphorbia volunteers, and, in summer, cherry tomatoes and berries.

How long have you lived in Sunnyside?

Anthony: Three and a half-years.

What do you love about Sunnyside?

Anthony: I love the community vibes. We came from the Mission District and our reason for moving was to garden, and to be more involved in the community. In San Francisco, we had a tiny backyard, and it was pretty shady.

Tell me about Zero Foodprint. In a nutshell, what is it doing?

Anthony: It’s a nonprofit that enables every citizen, business, and government to accelerate regeneration. We’re doing that by making it possible for contributions to fund projects at farms & ranches like planting cover crops, switching from fertilizer to compost, reducing tillage, planting trees and perennials, and installing fencing for managed grazing.

New Seasons, Organically Grown, and Bob’s Red Mill have gotten involved?

Anthony: Yes and also Tillamook. They all have made and are making various contributions—New Seasons is going big on regeneration. They’re each funding regenerative ag projects in different ways. We have already funded eight projects and we just started the final phases of the next grant; another four or five will be funded. Two restaurants are contributing 1%: Hayward (in wine country) and Astera (Aaron Adams’ new restaurant).

Tell me about some of these projects.

Anthony: There are three projects with Tillamook producers that are implementing riparian restoration—planting new trees and willows along a creek that will provide shade. We are funding a compost application project with a producer in the Bob’s Red Mill supply chain. And Muddy Ranch, which is a part of the New Season supply chain, used the grant to implement a grazing technology that uses a radio collar on the cows so you don’t need a lot of physical fencing. (It beeps if they go too far.) That’s a really great project because it’s around 20,000 acres.

You mentioned that some wineries in California have signed on—Mariah vineyards in Mendocino and Massican in Napa. Are they donating a percentage of sales?

Anthony: Those two are sending 1% of sales. There is also a winery in Colorado called Carboy, and they are participating with 1% from their tasting rooms.

Have any Oregon wineries signed on?

Anthony: Not yet. But I think there’s a lot of room for growth in the wine industry.

Overall there still may be a disconnect where the food system, the public and consumers don’t know that they can make a direct intervention in agriculture. A lot of us, me included, have been trained to make better choices and then hope that farming will change—we’ve been trying to make the change happen by changing eating. But it’s too slow. The whole organic movement is just 1% of acreage after 50 years. So I think part of our mission and our message is: We can change farming directly. We don’t have to change our eating and hope that things will change someday. We can just change it now.

Not enough of us are “voting with our forks.”

Anthony: And also, that wouldn’t actually help a farmer make the transition to more regenerative practices.

I’m surprised that more Portland-area restaurants haven’t signed up to participate. Especially at PDX!

Anthony: What you’re getting at is fundamental; capitalism and business-as-usual is to not pay anything for the environment. So for any individual to make that decision, “I’m gonna raise my prices and give that money away” is a pretty radical act, even though it is very do-able. I think the airport would be the perfect organizing structure. They could do it and it could be part of their marketing and messaging. In a way, it should be central to tourism and hospitality anyway to benefit the community—even just slightly.

If you want to give to Zero Foodprint, go to www.zerofoodprint.org or visit Hayward (www.haywardrestaurant.com) or Astera (1407 SE Belmont) for dinner.

News From Sunnyside Environmental School (SES)

I am writing today to ask for your help with an urgent matter. As Portland Public Schools (PPS) heads into planning for the 2025-2026 school year, the district is expecting to make $50 million dollars in cuts. At Sunnyside we experienced several cuts last year when we lost our school’s restorative justice coordinator, and our library assistant. We also had our school secretary’s hours cut to half time and our middle school counselor’s hours cut to less than half time. This current school year we were able to make up the difference with generous parent and community donations to bring our school secretary back up to full time and to allow our middle school counselor to add eight hours to her work week. Our PTSA also fully funds the salary for our garden coordinator, field study coordinator, field study programs, and extracurricular activities.

Unfortunately, for the 2025-2026 school year our PTSA will be unable to supplement our funding in the same way. Previously, individual schools could raise funds to pay for all or some of PPS employee’s salaries through school foundations. However, the District eliminated individual school foundations last year, opting to centralize school fundraising through the District-wide Fund for Portland Public Schools. It is unclear how the Fund for Portland Public School’s money will be raised or allocated, other than that it will be done in a manner that aligns with the Superintendent’s priorities. We hope that it can offer a bit of respite to schools that have lost the ability to fundraise, but the fact remains that many schools will be losing three to four staff members next year. While our PTSA is able to hire some staff directly, it is no longer able to supplement the hours of PPS employees whose positions have been reduced to less than full time or eliminated.

Sunnyside is a unique K-8 community that offers programming that supports students in learning about the world around them while also learning about themselves. We support our students through our dedication to mission and vision. We create rich, place-based learning environments rooted in justice that empower students to become environmentally, socially, emotionally, racially, and academically literate, and who are collectively inspired to take action for a more just world.

As we move into the next year, we need help advocating for funding at the state level. Most funding for PPS is provided by the state legislature, and if the legislature gives more money to the District, all PPS schools will benefit. We are hoping that advocacy for funding can happen in a meaningful way and that we could benefit from that by being able to add back some counseling, additional PE, and music. In the meantime, we are making it work because every staff member here is dedicated to juggling all the different aspects of a special little place like Sunnyside, but it is hard to keep all the balls in the air without additional support.

School funding matters and every voice is needed to support our students and support our future.

I have circulated an Advocacy Kit to our school community and I would like to share it with you as well (tinyurl.com/597znf7x). If you care about public schools, please review this kit and contact your state representatives to advocate for better funding for our local schools.