Sellwood Moreland Improvement League

Dec-Jan. 2025 SMILE Newsletter

SMILE General Meeting

The January monthly SMILE General Meeting, scheduled for January first, has been canceled due to its falling on New Year’s Day.  But the January Board Meeting, as always open to the public, will occur on Wednesday evening, January 15th, at SMILE Station.  The February General Meeting will take on the first Wednesday evening of February from 7:30 to 9 p.m., as usual, at SMILE Station – on the southeast corner of S.E. 13th Avenue and Tenino Street (a block south of Tacoma Street). Everyone interested in the affairs of Sellwood and Westmoreland is invited to attend and participate in these meetings.

 

Sellwood Sewer Project advances

The lengthy project to update nonconforming sewer connections and failing sewerlines – mostly in Sellwood, but also in a few small locations in Westmoreland – which began last April, and planned to take 18 months to complete – is advancing more or less on schedule, according to a detailed update presented by Tracie Heidt, Community Outreach Lead for the Portland Bureau of Environmental Services, at the SMILE December General Meeting on the first Wednesday of the month at SMILE Station. The work is to advance block by block on S.E. 13th Avenue, from January through May of 2025 weekdays between the hours of 8 to 4 (7 to 6, south of Spokane Street). It takes two to three weeks to complete for each successive section; Brian Mean, Superintendent at contractor J. W. Fowler, said that every effort is made to keep access available during work hours for those whose driveways are in the construction areas, and at the end of each day steel plates are put down over the excavations to allow access at night. If you have a nonconforming sewer connection to your house or business (such as a shared connection with another property, or your sewerline crosses another property), this will need to be corrected, and you can either arrange with a plumbing contractor to fix it in advance of the streetwork occurring in your block (which might be cheaper), or the city will correct it and charge you. There are no charges to anyone living in the affected area for the sewer work being done in the public right of way.

For more detailed information on this lengthy project, go online to:  www.portland.gov/SellwoodSewerExtension -- or you can call Tracie Heidt with specific questions: 503/865-6492; her email address is – tracie@jla.us.com. If you are not on the email list to receive regular updates on this project, visit www.portland.gov/bes/signup  o add yourself to the list.

 

A setback at Oaks Bottom Overlook Park

 SMILE Board Member Grant Huling reported on the progress of the trash can project he’s been helming for SMILE’s Oaks Bottom Overlook pocket park, on S.E. 13th just south of Bybee Boulevard.  Although the replacement of the current trash can with a sturdy and well-anchored steel receptacle is progressing better than expected, there is a new problem.  A homeless person with an axe who publicly admitted the vandalism has caused severe damage to the picnic tables there; President Dugan said that although the tables may be repairable, their built-in seats have been completely destroyed and will have to be replaced.  Pat Hainley suggested that SMILE might ask past-President John Fyre – who is a blacksmith/ironworker, as well as being very experienced in working with wood, be asked to go examine the damage and make recommendations for repair or replacement.

 

Bylaws update in the works

 The major item for discussion at the November SMILE Board Meeting dealt with the planned update of the SMILE bylaws – one purpose of which would be to reexamine the current two-consecutive-year term limit restriction on the President, who is also necessariily CEO for the businesses we run, renting both the Oaks Pioneer Church and SMILE Station.  Short term limits may potentially harm our rental revenue with untimely changes in the volunteer SMILE Board leadership at critical times.  Past President and current Board Member Elaine O’Keefe has been collecting Board comments on that and other possible updates to our bylaws, and they were all discussed in turn.  No decisions were made, but there was much discussion, and it appears there is as yet no firm consensus on some of the alternatives proposed for various parts of the bylaws.  There is, in our bylaws, a strict and defined multi-month process for making such changes, and President Dugan wants a public airing, for comments, of the proposed changes at our February General Meeting (the January 1 meeting is cancelled due to the New Year’s Day holiday) – with a Board vote, after considering public suggestions, to finalize the planned changes in March.  That way, the results can be announced at the April General Meeting, at which meeting we are also scheduled to announce our annual election at the May General Meeting, and invite candidates from the SMILE membership for all open positions.

 

SMILE was part of DECEMBERVILLE!

The annual business district promotion by the Sellwood-Westmoreland Busioness Alliance – “Decemberville” – was on Saturday, December 7th, and SMILE Station was be open for visitors all that day. A big draw for the neighborhood was the free pancake breakfast from 10 a.m. until noon – in addition to the pancakes, there was sausage, coffee, tea, hot chocolate, and juice. From 11 a.m. until 3:30 p.m. nine successive local musical performers entertained at SMILE Station. There was a raffle, and activities for kids and visitors – and there was also a successful blanket drive for the Willamette Center.  SMILE expects to be equally involved in “Decemberville” again next December, and SMILE firmly supports our local business community!

 

Update on the fight against wood smoke and pollution

 The featured speakers at the SMILE November General Meeting on November 5th were Jonathan Cruz and Jaycob Padron, from the Multnomah County Health Department – with a follow-up presentation to the one presented previously when the county first announced the effort to mitigate wood heating smoke in the county.  The duo presented an illustrated talk on Multnomah County efforts to reduce particulate matter in the air from residential activities, with special attention to mitigating wood smoke, smoke from wildfires, and emissions from gasoline-powered leaf blowers.  “Air pollution is a silent killer,” they reminded.

Complaints about smoke and particulate matter emissions may be sent by email to: woodsmokecomplaints@multco.us.  There are opportunities to receive county subsidies for replacement of wood-burning stoves by a nonpolluting heat source – specifically cited was a heat pump.  The county also offers residents more information on “healthy homes”, online, at: https://www.multco.us/wildfiresmoke.

 

September General Mtg. highlighted community safety

The monthly SMILE General Meeting for those who live in, work in, or own property in, Sellwood and Westmoreland is on the first Wednesday of the month, and in September, it was on the 4th – from 7:30 to 9 p.m.  The September meeting was devoted almost entirely to the subject of “community safety”, as arranged and hosted by Grant Huling, a SMILE Board Member who Chairs two SMILE committees – he appeared that evening in his role as Chair of the standing SMILE Crime Prevention Committee, which is currently informally known as the “Community Safety Committee”, pending any change in the name of the standing committees defined in SMILE bylaws. 

The two new Neighborhood Response Team police officers at Central Precinct were the featured guests: Officer Laura Frear, whose email is – laura.frear@police.portlandoregon.gov; and Officer Joseph Bernard, whose email address is – joseph.bernard@police.portlandoregon.gov.  Both of them invite direct citizen contact on ongoing issues in the neighborhood. 

They stepped up to discuss their specific community-focused role at Central Precinct; they spend a lot of time learning about and attempting to resolve community issues.  Unlike patrol officers, they have the opportunity to pursue these issues.  They are interested in chronic problems, particularly – building a case for prosecution, if necessary.  They then invited questions and comments from the large crowd in attendance.

 

Members of the audience asked questions about various such situations they are familiar with.  In the course of responding, the pair made the point that they are responsible for all of Central Precinct in their NRT roles – which led to questions about the understaffing of the Portland Police Bureau; they said that “thirty more officers are coming onboard”, but there still are not enough officers to respond to problems in a city the size of Portland.

There was some discussion of shoplifting, and the officers commented that not all shoplifters are homeless – some appear to be “very well off” citizens.  There followed various other questions, with the subjects ranging from Measure 110 drug use recriminalization, to Portland Street Response, to the use of 9-1-1, to homeless encampments, to PBOT policy, to ownership of military weapons, to  the criteria for involving the police in community situations, to inconvenient neighbors, and to public access to granular crime statistics from official sources.

For merchants in particular, the two officers advised “upgrade your camera systems” – the older ones still in wide use yield grainy and often useless results – but nowadays even cheap cameras and surveillance systems “make great photos and even videos”, making criminal identification far more likely to lead to arrest and prosecution. “Good photos make a difference in solving crimes.”

Someone in the audience, referring to a comment by the NRT Officer who spoke to a SMILE General Meeting a year ago, asked, “Can anything be done to deal with the Fentanyl crisis?”  Officer Frear said that the recriminalization of these drugs has given the Portland Police a new way to address the problem.

There followed more discussion of the value of having a sufficiently-sized police force to have enough officers to respond in timely fashion to issues in the City of Portland.

The officers concluded by telling, in answer to a question, how the Portland Police are developing a drone program of their own, so they will no longer be dependent for drone surveillance on the availability and response of other neighboring police agencies who already have and use such programs.

There was much applause from the large number of attendees at the end of this presentation.

 

Attempt to stay with SE Uplift vetoed by city

 SMILE President Dugan says that despite the near-unanimous votes of the four Southeast neighborhoods which had been scheduled to leave Southeast Uplift’s purview to be shifted to a Southwest coalition to stay with Southeast Uplift, and despite the city having an established and published process to accomplish this which all four involved neighborhoods had successfully completed, the City of Portland has now decided to deny it anyway.  Apparently there is no way to appeal this decision, despite the fact that the choice of Coalition to be represented by has no relationship at all to the arbitrary assignment of the four neighborhoods to the west-side District 4 for voting for City Council candidates, which is based on population proportions. Had this move by the four neighborhoods been approved, all four City Coalitions would have received similar funding amounts per neighborhood, thus increasing the equity of the city’s new funding model; now the District 4 coalition will receive the same funding as the other three but will have way more neighborhood associations to spread it across. That fact was disregarded as well. The four neighborhoods – SMILE, ENA, Reed, and the Portland portion of Ardenwald – are all quite disappointed by this arbitrary city decision, which assigns each to a coalition in an entirely different part of the city.

 

Cut-through traffic in Sellwood still a major concern

 Grant Huling arose, as Chair of the SMILE Transportation Committee, at the June SMILE General Meeting, to give an overview of PBOT’s Traffic Safety Assessment of S.E. 13th from Tenino to Knapp. The new assessment started with a SMILE petition, and SMILE’s elevated traffic concerns about S.E. 13th. The assessment is underway, and has been expanded to S.E. 17th Avenue near Linn Street. A second ticket has been opened for S.E. Milwaukie Avenue in north Westmoreland, where S.E. Milwaukie Avenue is accessed from McLoughlin Boulevard, near the Willamette Center owned by Multnomah County, and operated in service to homeless individuals by Transition Projects. Of concern is limited bike and sidewalk access in the vicinity.

Huling returned to the matter of the chronic problem of cut-through traffic in Sellwood, by motorists seeking to circumvent the Tacoma Street rush hour traffic backup to and from the Sellwood Bridge, resulting in much cut-through traffic on parallel residential streets.  The city has added speed bumps to address this problem, but it is still an issue. The long-planned Phase II study is needed to seek solutions for this chronic problem. S.E. 17th was mentioned as a concern from speeding motorists, and options were discussed.

 

2024 Board Members and Officers in place

 The SMILE General Meeting for May took place on Wednesday, May 1st, 7:30-9 p.m., at SMILE Station, at S.E. 13th and Tenino (one block south of Tacoma Street), in Sellwood.  SMILE Station’s January ice-storm repairs are completed, and meetings are again being held there.

The May General Meeting mainly focused on the annual SMILE Board election. At least four two-year at-large Board seats were up for election or re-election, and four one-year Officer seats as well. The election was again overseen by the Southeast Neighborhood Coalition, Southeast Uplift.

At the conclusion of the SMILE Board Election process it supervised and counted the vote for, Southeast Uplift announced that all four SMILE officer positions were won again by those seeking re-election.

 In the at-large Board Member election, all four incumbents were re-elected for a two-year term.  In the competition for the remaining partial Board seat term – to complete the second half of a two-year term of a Board Member who resigned in the middle of the term – the fifth-highest vote-getter in the election among those competing to join the SMILE Board turned out to be Jason Sturgill, so he was elected to the Board for one year until the May election in 2025, at which time he will have the same opportunity as any Board Member to run for re-election to a full two-year term.

 

SMILE President David Dugan personally contacted the several other candidates for these positions, thanked them for their candidacy, and urged them to get involved in SMILE – perhaps by joining one or more committees; certainly by attending SMILE meetings, and assisting in SMILE events and projects.  All are encouraged to consider running again for a Board seat next May, when there will be at least four at-large Board positions open, and all four officer positions as well.

Those who live in, work in, or own property in, either Sellwood or Westmoreland are automatically considered “members of SMILE” (unless they specifically don’t want to be, for some reason; there is no card to carry or dues to pay) – and only SMILE members can vote on motions in General Meetings, and only SMILE members can run for seats on the SMILE Board each May.

 

SMILE strives to serve everyone in the neighborhood

A message from the President of SMILE: Over the last several months, the SMILE Board had been meeting to create a set of beliefs and values for the organization that will guide all our efforts to engage with, support, and represent, our growing and ever-diverse Sellwood-Westmoreland neighborhood. We are grateful for the guidance and support we received from the Southeast Uplift Neighborhood Coalition in this process. We are proud to share an abridged version of our Beliefs and Values here, and we encourage you to visit us online -- http://www.sellwoodmoreland.org -- to read more.

Inclusion and Representation: At SMILE, we believe a strong and healthy community requires a diversity of voices, particularly in leadership roles, and we believe in representing all voices in our community.

Accountability: At SMILE, we believe that our policies, practices, and procedures should be consistent, transparent, and align with our values. We commit to being flexible and adaptable to community needs.

Equity: At SMILE, we believe in and are committed to being anti-racist. We recognize that our practices may have resulted in excluding some members of our community, and we pledge to learn from and correct our mistakes with humility and honesty.

Connections: We believe SMILE is only as strong as the community we represent, and the partnerships we nurture. We believe in prioritizing accessibility and fostering relationships among all residents to create a cohesive community. At SMILE we provide opportunities for our community to hear from one another and from a variety of perspectives. We commit to facilitating a safe space for respectful dialogue

Empowerment: We believe SMILE's role is to actively serve and inform the neighborhood.

Joy: At SMILE we use talents and resources, and collaborate with our community partners, to create opportunities for joy and celebration.

We hope our Sellwood and Westmoreland neighbors will join with us in these efforts.

Elaine O'Keefe, SMILE Past President

Simon Fulford, SMILE Past President

SMILE is a 501c3 nonprofit

Of the 95 recognized neighborhood associations in Portland, SMILE is one of the few to be authorized by the IRS as a nonprofit 501c3 organization. This means that donations made to SMILE are tax-deductible -- and are very welcome!

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THE 2024-25 SMILE BOARD OFFICERS (1-year terms)

President -- David Dugan

Vice President -- Elizabeth Milner

Treasurer -- Pat Hainley

Secretary -- Eric Norberg

 

AT-LARGE BOARD SEATS (2-year terms):

TERM EXPIRES 2025

Bob Burkholder

Tracy Fisher

Jason Sturgill  (elected in 2024 to complete the term of a member who resigned)

Elaine O'Keefe

TERM EXPIRES 2026

Zack Duffly

Jim Friscia

Grant Huling

Suzanne Kruse