Monthly General Meeting Minutes
November 21, 2013
The Watershed Building in Hillsdale
6388 SW Capitol Hwy
Portland OR 97239
DRAFT
Attendance: Don Baack, Barbara Bowers, Keturah Pennington, Sharon Fekety, Glenn Bridger, Virginia Hendrickson, Lee Buhler, Dave Manville, Barbara Stedman, Hans Steuch, Dianne Mays Chris Mays, Robert Hamilton, Rick Kappler, Doug Rodgers, Tim Hamilton Joan Hamilton Aimee Erickson, Michael Kisor, Joan Fredrickson, Jill Gaddis, Keith Liden, Wes Risher, Claire
The meeting was called to order at 7:05pm
After introductions the agenda was approved.
Walks: Virginia said Pete will lead the December hike which will go from Hillsdale to Albert Kelly Park and Healy Heights. Don will lead the hike in January.
Don said there will be a walk on Thanksgiving and it will go through parts of the Red Electric. It will be about three miles long and start at 9:00am at the usual location.
Membership:Barbara said there were two new members and one renewal. There was also one donation.
Don said they will put up no parking signs along Safeway and on the corner of Capitol Hill Road where Safeway made the extended shoulder.
Aimee said she is working on a brochure for SW Trails. It will be good to hand out at events. The format will be grass roots neighborhood feel. She would like to show who we are in an appealing way.
Aimee said nine people showed up for the work party on the Red Electric route across from the Sasquatch Brewery. This is the location of the bridge that will be built. She said a lot of blackberries were cleared and the City will haul away the weeds.
Don introduced Joan Fredrickson from the Portland Bureau of Planning. Joan gave out printed material on the Comprehensive Plan and the Map App. She had a computer connected to the Internet and displayed it on overhead. She gave an overview of the Comprehensive Plan. It is a twenty year plan to manage growth. It includes an infrastructure piece. It is the foundation for zoning. She said it is important for the community to be familiar with the plan. We are now in part two of the plan. She said there are high level and low level maps but nothing in between and that is what this part of the plan will do.
Joan said the most important part of part two of the plan is the mapping app. She said the map app has a commenting tool as well. She talked about the previous parts of the plan. She said all comments are due by the end of December. She said they expect 125,000 new households and 140,000 new jobs in the next twenty years. She said we have sufficient capacity under current zoning to meet the demand. However, the mix may not be optimal. Don asked if the numbers account for a duplex on every corner and Joan said she assumed so. Aimee pointed out that the increase is half of what exists and Joan said yes, it is a lot. Joan said we have a deficit of employment land. They are looking at option such as how to utilize current industrial land. Wes asked if land with conditional use on it was included in the deficit and Joan said yes.
Joan said the working plan proposes to have most of the growth around town centers and corridors. She said it makes the best use of resources. Jill asked about services and Joan said it is things such as grocery stores, libraries, shops etc.
Joan said they hope to complete the plan by the end of 2014. Wes asked how many comments they had and Joan said hundreds. She said the comments are entered into a database. She said people can see comments on the map app.
Joan displayed the map app on overhead. Clair said the best browser to use for the app is Google Chrome. Joan handed out printed sheet on how to use the app and the layers. Joan demonstrated how to use the map and read and leave comments.
Keith said there will probably be a lot of comments and asked how they would be integrated into the plan. Joan said they would be sorted and some of them would apply directionally such as infrastructure. Keith said he is worried that people may be frustrated when there are so many comments and they may not know how theirs would be used. Joan said the first plan was to remove comments after a time period but they have been leaving them on. She said users can filter days they want to see comments. Joan described the layers and how to turn them off and on. Joan described greenways and public trails. She said they have tried to consolidate all trails into one map.
Dianne asked if the trails on the map are existing or proposed and Joan said there are both and the proposed trails are dashed. Don pointed out the Red Electric trail and showed were it was incorrect on the map. Don said a part of the 4T was also missing. Wes pointed out that the improvements on Vermont are not shown. Keith said it has some good stuff but it is missing a lot. Dave asked if you could agree or disagree with a comment and Joan said no but you could add a comment. Wes asked if the Hillsdale Town Center would be removed and Joan said no. Joan said West Portland and Hillsdale will retain the Town Center designation even though it does not have the density compared to other centers around the city. She said they are the only areas in SW that approach a town center.
Don said one of the important things was to classify walkways as good as bike-ways. He said urban walkways should have the same criteria as neighborhood greenways and be mapped in the same way. Wes said Terwilliger should be a greenway. Don suggested a group response about trails. Keith asked about a heritage pathway vs a greenway. Joan said it was symbolic.
Joan gave an update on the Transportation Service Plan component of the Comprehensive Plan. She said work on it will resume at the beginning of the year. She said the Citywide Systems Plan begins to talk about the plan. There will be new criteria for prioritizing projects. There will also be a Financial Plan. There is an advisory group and their meetings will be public. She said PBOT will pull concepts from the Comprehensive Plan and put them in the TSP.
Joan talked about the TriMet Transportation Plan. Joan said the Southwest Corridor plan is in a refinement process and there will be a Portland Working Group which will start to meet on December 5th.
TRAIL PRIORITIES TO BE SENT TO AMANDA FRITZ
Don talked about the priorities for trails. He said Amanda Fritz has asked for feedback on what our priorities are.. Don listed trail alternatives on white board and described each one.
Jill talked about the grant for April Hill Park and what would be constructed. There will be several trails and protection of a wet land. The need an additional $24,000. Don said it could also connect to trail 3. Jill said it would give them a safe way to get off 60th.
Dave described the Wood Park trail project. This will allow access from the Ashcreek neighborhood to Woods Park. They will need about $100,000. He said it makes a nice walking route to Multnomah village.
There was discussion on each of the projects. Don asked the group to vote on the top priority in sequence. He then asked for the next priority and so forth. The priorities are as follows:
1. Red Electric Trail next steps as defined in our letter to Commissioner Fritz earlier in November.
2. April Hill Park $33,000 needed (less if Parks will allow the trail to be built by volunteers—the RAZ BAACK walkway shown in the Trail Guidelines was built by volunteers with zero Parks Supervision.
3. New Trail in Woods Park the Marigold to Market Trail connecting parts of Ash Creek to the Multnomah Village. $100,000, less by far if volunteers were permitted to build the trail.
4. Trail 1 Whitaker from Barbur to Terwilliger. New Drainage installed by home owner required because they use parks land as a driveway, 30-40 feet new concrete walkway, 10 new concrete steps, handrail entire length of stairs, and lighting entire length of trail to Terwilliger.
5. Woods Trail from SW 4th and SW Woods to Terwilliger near Campus Drive. Rebuild stairs at both ends, this could be done by volunteers. OHSU stands ready to recruit workers.
6. New Trail (On OHSU Plan) from Marquam Trail to SW 6th Drive south of Gaines near the satellite dishes on south side of OHSU parking lot. This trail will be a key pedestrian loop for those having limited time to get out at lunch time, and will be a key connection for workers coming from South Portland via Slavin, Buhler Cutoff, Terwilliger and then the Marquam Trail, a very pleasant walk.
Planning Needs 1. Plan for Albert Kelly to align the Trail 1 through the park so it can be improved and signed.
2. Bike and Ped trail routes through Gabriel Park, again so the routes can be improved and signed.
Don said he was also asked to provide priorities for bathroom facilities (loos) in parks. There was a discussion on which parks needed loos. Don had the group vote on the top priority and then removed that one and asked for the next priority and so forth as was done on the park projects.
1. 4T at Council Crest, Parks recently removed a bathroom there with no input from the hiking community. At Present there are no public bathrooms along the entire route of the 4T. That leads to the use of the woods by anyone needing to answer the call!. The 4T has become very popular, it is an important feature of the Portland Tourist Landscape.
2. April Hill Park to replace the existing porta potty. This is along Urban Trail 3.
3. Rieke Soccer Field and Hillsdale Farmers Market. This is along Urban Trails 3 and 6. This will replace the porta potties that are open only part time.
4. 4T at Marquam Shelter, again along the popular 4T, folks working on the Mosaic report many people walking the 4T inquired about a bathroom. It is another ½ hour of walking to get to OHSU.
5. Dickinson Park on Trail 5, also near the new playground.
6. Marshall Park on the Hillsdale to Lake Oswego Trail, and a new playground will soon be installed there. The six mile Hillsdale to Lake Oswego Regional Pedestrian Trail, AKA Trail 6, does not have a public bathroom close to the trail along the entire length.
Other sites for future Loos not in priority order: 4T at Talbot and Fairmount, Caruthers Park in South Portland, Terwilliger at Nebraska which will serve the Red Electric Trail and Terwilliger Parkway. The 1983 Terwilliger Master Plan calls for a bathroom at this location. When the Red Electric is in place, the traffic at this point will increase dramatically.
Holly Farm Park, DeWitt Park along Trail 6.
The meeting was adjourned at 9:10pm
Respectfully submitted
Lee Buhler
SW Trails on Facebook
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