Budget Hearing in Council Chambers May 20th 6:30 to 8:30 pm
SWTrails Had requested funds to maintain our 40 plus miles of SW Urban Trails and assist neighborhoods in improving their trail infrastructure on unbuilt rights of way.
The word we have gotten back is that: the city is not responsible for trails, SWTrails built them without permits so we have no responsibility even though the city funded the construction of many connections. We need to refute this accusation. The SW Urban Trail Plan states that volunteers we can build in the public right of way with hand tools, and it further states we can build stairs with railroad ties. All of our construction was done with hand tools.
We need your presence at the budget hearing to impress on our city leaders that we are a low cost way to improve our pedestrian infrastructure. Google is showing many pedestrian connections on their maps, TriMet is using shortcuts, these pedestrian connections to show people how to get the the bus faster and easier than a long walk around. It is time PBOT and the City of Portland wake up and figure out how to provide safe easy to use pedestrian connections in an economical manner.
SWTrails has demonstrated that we can do that if we do not have to jump thorough needless hoops of red tape to get the improvements done. The first step is to get a commitment for funding for our work in the next year. That coupled with a rewrite of the proposed trail policy to make it fit with the needs of our community will enable us to help to improve our SW community and develop ways to replicate our work across the City of Portland with a very minor costs.
We will have limited time to speak at the budget hearing. Please let me know if you are willing to do 2 minutes. We can organize our comments.
Wednesday, May 20th, 6:30pm-8:30pm – Budget Committee Public Hearing
Residents will be provided with the opportunity to offer testimony before City Council.
Most testimony will be by lottery system.
City Hall, Council Chambers
1221 SW 4th Avenue
Portland, Oregon 97204
SW Trails on Facebook
Comments are closed