OKNA Overlook Neighborhood Email 06/20/14

1) Pittman Addition Sculpture HydroPark Party this Sunday (6/22)
2) Transportation Meeting Moved to Convention Center (6/24)
Second Meeting at Kaiser Town Hall (6/25)
3) Host Japanese Students This Summer 2014!
4) Communications Help Needed!!
5) Sign up for 2014 Overlook Yard Sale / Free Share (now)
6) Free Your Soil with Depave:  2014 Events & 2015 Call for Sites
7) 25th Sunday Parkways in North Portland (6/22)
8) Sustainable Overlook Garden Tour 2014 (6/28)
9) Town Hall on Portland Parks Replacement Bond (6/30)
10) JULY- Special OKNA Meeting Location (7/15)
11) From the OKNA Facebook Page


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1) Pittman Addition Sculpture HydroPark Party this Sunday (6/22)

Don’t forget to stop by to enjoy art, music by the New Iberians and light refreshments this Sunday from 4-7.  Meet the artists and neighbors who helped transform an empty open space into Portland’s first public sculpture park.  In case you haven’t been there before, just follow N Concord Ave south to the Going Street pedestrian bridge and soundwall.  Come and celebrate our new community space!

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2) Transportation Meeting Moved to Convention Center (6/24)
Second Meeting at Kaiser Town Hall (6/25)

With higher-than-expected interest in the transportation funding proposal, the Portland Bureau of Transportation has decided to relocate Tuesday’s town hall to the Oregon Convention Center, Portland Ballroom 255.

The event is free and open to the public. The Tuesday meeting is intended to focus on how the transportation fee would work for businesses, non-profits and other non-residential land uses. Participants are encouraged to discuss ways improve the proposal or suggest alternative ways of raising money for transportation safety and maintenance. A Wednesday night meeting will focus on the fee for households.

“Portlanders are passionate about participating in local government,” Mayor Charlie Hales said. “We welcome ideas about how they want to improve the transportation fee, or alternative proposals on par with the $53 million it would raise. There’s no question we need to invest in basic transportation maintenance and safety.”

The Tuesday event is the first of two town halls coming up:

  • Town Hall on Business and Non-Residential Fee: 8 to 9:30 a.m., Tuesday, June 24, at Oregon Convention Center, Portland Ballroom 255, 777 NE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. Directions and visitor info.
  • Town Hall on Residential Fee: 6:30 to 8:30 p.m., Wednesday, June 25, at Kaiser Permanente’s Town Hall, 3704 N Interstate Ave.

The town hall meetings will provide an opportunity for the public to speak with transportation staff, ask questions and make comments to Mayor Hales, Commissioner Steve Novick and Transportation Director Leah Treat.

The City Council delayed the proposal June 4, after five months of Our Streets PDX town halls, online surveys, advisory committee meetings and a five-hour public hearing May 29. Two upcoming town halls will kick off the next phase of outreach through October, designed to gather input to address the needs of businesses, non-profits and low-income households.

For more information about the Our Streets PDX funding conversation and the proposed Transportation User Fee, see the project web page: www.ourstreetspdx.com.

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3) Host Japanese Students This Summer 2014!

BeGlobal Foundation is a nonprofit study abroad organization that focuses on accepting Japanese grade school students to learn English is Portland for a short-term program.  www.beglobalfnd.org

Why you should be a Host Family: Hosting a student opens opportunities of learning new concepts and building international relationship all from the comfort of your own home. It is a great opportunity to expose the youth community, such as your child, to develop global awareness and gaining personal development by communicating with people they do not encounter on a daily bases.

BeGlobal is looking for families who would be interested to experience the joy to build international relationships and the beauty of cultural exchange!

For this summer students from Tokyo, Japan from 12 to 17 years old will be coming to Portland.

DATES: August 4th til August 14th
Students schedule will be to go to ESL classes on weekdays from 9am to 12pm then go on a afternoon field trip till 4pm. Weekends will be where families will get to spend personal time with the students.

There are 3 responsibilities we ask host families:
1. to provide 3 meals per day 
2. to drop off and pick up students from their ESL classes at PSU
3. to treat students as if they are your own family member and have fun!

For every family that participates there will be a stipend covers meals, mileage, basic utilities, etc. 

For more information please contact Toa Suruki at toa@belglobalfnd.org Or visit our website at www.beglobalfnd.org

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4) Communications Help Needed!!

Do you enjoy your Friday e-blast newsletter with all the latest news in Overlook?

Are you a voracious reader of our print copy of the Overlook Views that comes to your home or business every three months, rain or shine? 

Do you enjoy our Facebook posts that keep you in the loop day in and day out? Do you know how to manage a WordPress website?

Sadly, our wonderful, hard-working, tireless Communications Chair will be stepping off the board of the Overlook Neighborhood Association at the next election cycle in September. This will leave us with a BIG silence if some new wonderful folks don’t step up to share the various pieces of keeping us all informed about what’s going on in Overlook. 

Please contact us personally or by emailing info@overlookneighborhood.org for more information or to volunteer for any part of the communications fun. See the communications tasks outlined at www.OverlookNeighborhood.org

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5) Sign up for 2014 Overlook Yard Sale / Free Share (now)
Yard Sale:  Saturday July 19   /   Free Share:  Sunday July 20
Declutter your home and get unwanted items into the hands of folks who would happily reuse them. This is the fourth year running and we already have almost 20 households signed up to participate. If you would like to be a part of this fun event of sharing, purging and just plain socializing please e-mail Josh with your home’s address at sustainable@OverlookNeighborhood.org before July 10th in order to be included on the event map.
If you simply want to join in the Yard Sale / Free Share as a deal-hunter, you will be able to view a map showing all of the participating households at www.sustainableoverlook.org starting July 16.  Hope to see you there!

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6) Free Your Soil with Depave:  2014 Events & 2015 Call for Sites

Depave would like you to know that there are a bunch of transformational events coming up this summer around town. In each case, volunteers from across the metro area come together to remove unnecessary asphalt in order to introduce more greenspace into the city while fostering more environmentally-sound stormwater management. We would love to see you at an event; it’s hard work but also fun and very inspiring. Check out http://depave.org/work/projects to learn more about the events that will be happening around Portland this summer and fall.

Also, do you know of any (non-residential) properties that could benefit from depaving? Depave is looking for a diverse group of sites for its 2015 season.  Examples include schools, places of worship, businesses, or even just plain parking lots! If you own, or know someone who owns such a property, please reach out to josh@depave.org or apply to be a 2015 Depave Site at
http://depave.org/work/submit-site

Do you have any Depave questions in general?  E-mail eric@depave.org   Thanks for your time!

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7) 25th Sunday Parkways in North Portland (6/22)

Kaiser Permanente Northwest original, continuing sponsor

Portland will celebrate the 25th Sunday Parkways on June 22nd in North Portland, on the same date and in the same neighborhood where the hugely popular summer event series began seven years ago.

The City of Portland Sunday Parkways presented by Kaiser Permanente rolls through the neighborhood from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., offering a nine-mile loop of traffic-free streets where people can bicycle, walk, stroll, roll, and play while enjoying music, food and activities along the way.  The route connects five parks, including the beautiful Peninsula Park Rose Garden.

Sunday Parkways’ purpose is to open the city’s largest public space – its streets – for people to walk, bike, roll and discover active transportation, while connecting neighbors to each other and the community.

See maps of the routes and find more information about Sunday Parkways, including volunteer information, at www.PortlandSundayParkways.org or call 503-823-7599.

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8) Sustainable Overlook Garden Tour 2014 (6/28)

Next Weekend! Saturday, June 28, 10 am to 3 pm

Our 3rd annual garden tour will feature yards that express Sustainable Overlook’s mission of ‘Building Community and Resilience’ in 10 unique gardens. Explore neighbor’s creative, pesticide-free solutions for rain harvesting, play spaces, edible landscaping, bird and pollinator friendly gardens and more. Each garden will host a community partner info table. We need volunteers to help at each garden and with set-up/take-down. Contact Mulysa at sustainable@OverlookNeighborhood.org.

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9) Town Hall on Portland Parks Replacement Bond (6/30)

June 30, 2014 — 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm
Cleveland High School Cafeteria (3400 SE 26th Ave, Portland, OR 97202)
Co-hosted by: Portland Parks & Recreation and Portland Parks Foundation

Portland Parks has identified more than $365 million in needed replacement and major maintenance projects. We have a unique opportunity – if Portlanders continue to make the same rate of parks bond payments on property taxes over the next 20 years, it can generate an estimated $56-$68 million in bond revenue to pay for the most critical repairs to our parks system — and not increase tax rates. Please join us at the June 30 Parks Replacement Bond Town Hall to learn more, and give your feedback: https://www.facebook.com/events/321009148063243/

In North and Northeast Portland, a Replacement Parks Bond would fund major maintenance at St. Johns Community Center, pool renovations at Grant, Matt Dishman Community Center and Peninsula Park, urgent accessibility and restroom repairs at multiple parks, and more.

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10) JULY- Special OKNA Meeting Location (7/15)

Hey, it’s a special location for the July OKNA General Meeting! Find us at the Lucky Lab Taproom, 1700 N Killingsworth on Tuesday, July 15th. We’ll have a chance to socialize as well as enjoy our regular meeting agenda items: public safety updates, reports on upcoming activities and ways to be involved in the neighborhood and an introduction from your Overlook NET (Neighborhood Emergency Team).

Mark your calendars now and we’ll see you at the Lucky Lab on July 15.

Tuesday, July 15, 2014
Arrive at 6:30 to order drinks and nosh
Meeting is 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM
Lucky Lab Taproom
1700 N Killingsworth Street

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11) From the OKNA Facebook Page

Odds & Ends of use and amusement. Like our page at www.facebook.com/OKNAinPDX

– For those of us who couldn’t attend the panel on Demolition & Infill last week, a handy video of the event.
http://www.youtube.com/embed/NPCiH4DlG70

– Thank you, Overlook Neighborhood PDX neighbor Cynthia Sulaski, for making the case at City Council today!
Be sure to enjoy the fruits of Cynthia’s movie committee labors this summer and come out to Overlook Park for Indiana Jones and Raiders of the Lost Ark extravaganza! If you thought last year was fun.. well just wait til you hear what they have in store for us!

These park heroes presented to City Council today after raising funds to make Summer Free for All concerts, movies, and recreation programs possible.
Special thanks for Bank of America‘s gift to help 118,000 lunches be served to hungry kids, as well as supporting the Foundation’s work to fund raise and increase parks awareness. Well done, Portland Parks & Recreation and everyone!

– PORTLAND PARKS & RECREATION POOLS ARE READY FOR SUMMER! Outdoor Pools Open Tuesday, June 17
Another splendid summer of swimming, lessons, and other aquatic activities will kick off this month at Portland Parks & Recreation (PP&R)’s outdoor pools. Opening day for outdoor pools is Tuesday, June 17. Indoor pools are open year-round.
Parents who want to enroll their children in swimming lessons should act now. Lessons are available for all age groups and ability levels. More info at our web site, with a list of pools and swim lessons available.
PP&R pools also offer open play swims, water exercise classes, junior lifeguard training, junior swim instructor training, summer swim teams, and special events.
For more information on how to register for swimming lessons or participate in other summer activities, contact the pool in your area or the Aquatic Administration Office at 503-823-5130.
http://www.portlandoregon.gov/parks/finder/index.cfm?ShowResults=yes&AmenityTypeID=44

– And, for everyone wondering about last weekend’s Intersection Repair Ride (my first Pedalpalooza ride..) yes, we got washed out after a few stops. I did, anyway. I’ll use the map and go back for the tour on a dryer day!

– Our business neighbors at Carquest (N Interstate @ Skidmore) are having a problem with people leaving used dog waste bags on top of their dumpster, or just throwing it on the ground nearby. Please remember that not all neighbors are OK with you using their garbage bins for your dog’s waste (and a surprising number of others don’t care, but how will you know which is which?).

Be a good neighbor, and take your doggy bag home with you.