Category: What’s Happening in Sunnyside?

SE Community Kitchen Tool Library in the Works

Sunnyside is a neighborhood with friendly folks who feel comfortable lending a cup of sugar to their neighbors. But what if there was a place where people could borrow a food dehydrator or cider press?

Everyone deserves access to kitchen tools for food processing, preserving, and serving. With that in mind, community members are developing the Southeast Community Kitchen Tool Library, a place where anyone can borrow from an extensive collection of kitchen appliances and tools. We hope to offer pressure cookers, canners, knife sharpeners, bread machines, popcorn makers, grain mills—even place settings and ravioli crimpers! The goal is to provide a wide variety of handy items that are infrequently needed and often prohibitively expensive.

We also envision the Community Kitchen Tool Library being a place where neighborly connections can be fostered through a shared love of food. The library might even grow into a community-supported kitchen where we can share our culinary skills, nourish our bodies with healthy local food, and collaborate on difficult or intensive projects.

We are inspired by other successful lending libraries, such as the Southeast Portland Tool Library and North Portland Preserve and Serve Library, and believe that together we will make this a reality. By making expensive equipment freely available to all, and by sharing our collective skills and knowledge about food preservation and preparation, the future Southeast Community Kitchen Tool Library will make our community a more equitable and sustainable place to live.

This is a community-directed initiative and we need your input, creative energy, and kitchen items. Please contact Kim Hack for more information ([email protected] or 971-285-7372). Join us on November 7 for a planning meeting at 1221 SE 35th Avenue between Salmon and Main streets. Thank you!

 

 

Planting Work Party at SEUL

SE Uplift is building a pocket-park at 36th and Main, and would love to have help putting in some native plants!  For a few short hours we’ll plant a portion of the property and spread some mulch.  If you have some time to help turn what used to be an unmaintained grass patch into a beautiful native landscape, please stop by. The planting will take place from 9 a.m. to noon, Saturday, Nov. 5 at 3534 SE Main.

Contact Tim at (503) 232-0010 ext. 313 or [email protected] for more information.

Board Meeting on Thursday, Oct. 13

Here’s what’s on tap for this month’s general meeting. Please join us at 7 p.m. at Southeast Uplift, corner of 34th and SE Main.

  1. Introductions (3 min)
  2. Approve agenda, circulate August minutes (2 min)
  3. Sunnyside Tree Planting (Jeff Cole, 5 min)
  4. Leaf Day Overview (Grant Morehead, PDOT 10 min)
  5. Domestic Violence Awareness Month (Choya Adkison-Stevens, YWCA 5 min)
  6. Committee Reports (15 min)

Sustainability (?)
Land Use and Transportation (TJ)

Crime Prevention (HW)

Southeast Uplift (HW)

Treasurer’s Report (JP)

  1. Announcements (5 min)
  2. Approve minutes (2 min)
  3. Next meeting on November 10 / Newsletter articles (due Oct. 15)
  4. Adjourn

Neighborhood Leaf Day Information

By Grant Morehead/Portland Bureau of Transportation

One of the joys of living in Sunnyside is our virtual urban forest of trees, especially in the next few months when they’re ablaze with autumn color.

But with autumn comes falling leaves, and leaves can’t just be left on the ground. Not only are fallen leaves a slippery safety hazard to pedestrians, bikes, and cars, they also clog sewer drains and degradeasphalt, both of which take a lot of money to fix downstream. Enter Leaf Day, the Portland Bureau of Transportation’s leaf removal and recycling service for the city’s most tree-lined neighborhoods.

Incorporating suggestions from across Portland, this year’s “2.0” version represents a significant upgrade from last year, offering a lot more value for the $30 fee. For example, sweeper crews will now take any tree leaves, not just those from trees in your parking strip. Just rake them into the street the day before the crews come by.

Because our neighborhood tends to generate a large volume of leaves, we’ll get two Leaf Days, spaced about three weeks apart. Not all of Sunnyside is in a Leaf Service Zone, so to be sure, enter your address in the new Leaf Zone Locator at www.portlandonline.gov/leafday, which will be available when the new Web site is launched this fall. You’ll also be able to find service dates for your address, tips about how to get ready, online payment information, and a streamlined opt-out process if you’d like to manage the street leaves yourself.

One of those Leaf Day tips? Be sure to move your car and any other obstacles off the street on your Leaf Days. Since the sweeper machines can’t fit between and behind cars, you’ll get a better cleaning if they can get right to the curb.

Neighborhood Grants Up For Grabs

The Office of Neighborhood Involvement and SE Uplift are excited to offer the sixth year of the City of Portland’s Neighborhood Small Grants Program. They invite neighborhood associations and community-based organizations in Portland to apply.

This year, a total of $46,058 is available to neighborhood and community-based organizations in the Southeast Uplift coalition area. Grant proposals may range from $1,000 to $7,500. The submission deadline is Nov. 1. A grants writing workshop will be held at SE Uplift Thursday, Sept. 29.

To find out more about the grants program and to apply, please visit www.southeastuplift.org