Bridgeton Neighborhood Association Board Meeting for April 16, 2008
The meeting was called to order by chairman, Matt Whitney at 7 pm.
The first item was a request from Jim Litton of the Rivers West Boat Shop asking for our backing of their grant application to PDC. They were turned down on their last request but have been informed that there are more funds available and were encouraged to reapply. They operate a nonprofit shop helping people build and repair wooden boats in the basement of Pier 99. They hope to get moneys to repair their electrical needs, improve water access, improve storage and other things. We voted to give them a letter of support.
Walter had an in-depth outline of the proposals coming out of the tree negotiations. Funding is still a huge issue, but everyone is working to get grants and funds from many sources. The committee has come up with the trees (80 in all) that it feels need to come down to meet the USAC guidelines and get certification (we have very little bargaining power because River Keepers is insisting that we not cut any tree that qualify to be saved and it wants as tall a canopy as can be obtained with our guidelines).
The committee members are now meeting with the land owners who are affected (They met with PYC today.) Only four more of the PYC trees are going to be cut. They are conduction a special study of the black cottonwood with the people most opposed to it being cut and the person at USAC who will make the final decision.
A comprehensive study and design specs have been done for the entire road with emphasis on replanting everywhere that we can. Special emphasis is being made of widening efforts at the school and PYC. They want to widen the levee on the river side—totally controlled by USAC and environmental issues--and the non river side. The school has agreed to as much as 35 feet filled in, which would give us room for sidewalks and qualified trees on that side of the road. PYC has been asked to plant trees on the water side on it’s parking lot and to consider some planters in the parking lot in addition to a widened section for green near the road.
As has been mentioned before, we can only plant trees that grow less than 30’ high at 20’ intervals on the water side of the levee where it is far enough from the road to keep the roots out of the core of the levee. The city forester is not in favor of saving “bad trees”. He is not apt to support saving the hacked trees at the school. The drainage district will pay to cut down the trees, but has to get help to fund the mitigation for the loss of the trees. Alise is drafting the agreement which will then have to be signed by the drainage district, bna, the city forester and the USAC. We should have tree removal near the end of summer—exception might be the trees on the non-water side which may be cut early to start the filling of that side to increase the size of the levee.
The board members may be asked for a quick vote to move the actions along for the committee. They will need to start the tree cutting permit process as soon as possible so that trees in certain areas can be cut quickly if we get a chance to fill in with dirt.
A related topic is asking people for ideas of what we want to do with the wood. Wayne has found a group that could make some art objects out of certain types of wood. Others want to put chips on proposed trail near Blue Frog.
There was a short discussion of the benefit concert. It will be held April 27th and only 87 tickets have been sold at this time. We are getting good media coverage-Jim has sent out many announcements and it has been in a number of sections of the paper. Jim was wondering if someone would have a donation jar for the bands. Matt will be handling the money.(Walter will try to get a visa account available for us to use for the auction items.) He will sell the script that will be used to buy drinks and food and he will take the money for the auction items. He needs someone to assist him. Leslie volunteered to head up the bake sale portion of the function. Carol is working on donations for the silent auction. Kim, Bob and Karen will be handling the sale of beer, wine and pop. Decorating will be done on Saturday. There will be a meeting for the concert at Cherry Ann’s on Wednesday night the 23rd at 7:30 to discuss any problems.
Jim Miller suggested that we pull together a Bridgeton Navy to help ferry volunteers to the shore of the Willamette for clean up day on May 17th.
We voted to change the by-laws so that there can be 15 people on the board, but our current by-laws require a vote of the general membership. So that may have to be redone at the May meeting prior to the vote for board members and officers.
The list of people who are running for the board are as follows:
Richard Brown secretary
Leslie Sawyer chair
Karen Jeffers co-chair
Chuck Wilson treasure
Julie McKinney
Anne Neuenschwander
Chrys Pappas
Jon Peterson
Debbie Robertson
Elizabeth Sanders
Brian Stipak
Kim Swenson
Linda Taylor
Walter Valenta
Matt Whitney
The neighborhood Spring Clean-Up is this weekend April 19 and we will have three bins with volunteers watching to make sure that nothing is put into the bins that is prohibited. There will be a shredder at CE and free coffee for volunteers. Help is needed to clean up the triangle and section of road near it as well as volunteers to clean along Marine Drive.
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