Woodlawn Neighborhood Association General Meeting Agenda
Tuesday, October 7, 2025, at 6:30 pm
Please make every effort to join us In Person at Classic Foods: 817 NE Madrona
Or join the meeting online via Zoom (now with improved audio): https://zoom.us/j/3014662210?pwd=d3VKbXkzVldqYzNWU2RwVm9OUkZyZz09
Meeting ID: 301 466 2210 , Passcode: WNA
Streamed/recorded on our YouTube channel: youtube.com/@woodlawnneighborhoodassoci5818
Welcome and Vision: “In the future, Woodlawn will be a place where people live harmoniously, respectfully, and in support of one another. The neighborhood will be a clean and thriving community… All Woodlawn residents will share and pursue the common values of health, efficiency, beauty, equity, and justice.”
6:30 – 6:45 Social Time & Pizza!
- Get to know your neighbors & have some free food!!! Thanks to Ranch Pizza and WNA board members for organizing the free food this evening.
6:45 – 7:30 General Business
- Melissa makes a motion to approve the September minutes. Keith seconds it. All are in favor. Minutes are approved.
- Board Elections for WNA Board
2025-2026 Board—Barbara England for Chair; Melissa Jura for Treasurer; Nancy Flynn for Secretary; Linde Parcels for Outreach; Anjala Ehelebe, Land Use and Transportation; Keith Baich, Farmers Market Liaison, and Members-at-Large: Dave Sanders and Shirley Minor.
Liz Kennedy makes a motion to accept these nominations. Erin Cooper seconds. All approved.
- Petition for New Board Members for Farmers Market
Linde expressed a heartfelt thank you to the current board members for all their effort over the past ten years. Woodlawn Farmers Market, an arm of the Woodlawn Neighborhood Association, has been a great incubator for start-up businesses. But now the Farmers Market needs new board members and will have to shut down if we don’t get new board members. If you are interested, you can go to the market website and learn more as well as sign up here. FYI, the new board term will run from January 2026 onward. In early November, an interest meeting will be held to discuss what is needed to keep market going and the challenges. Erin notes that the WNA has not had time or effort to commit to the Farmers Market board in the past. Linde notes that the survey is in the latest WNA newsletter. In the meantime, there will be a winter market again this year open once a month at Classic Foods. More details and information about this to follow soon.
- Special Guest—Portland City Council President and District 2 Councilmember Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Elana gave an overview of the new representative form of city government at City Hall. She is one of the three reps for our N/NE District 2 along with Sameer Kanal and Dan Ryan .She stressed that all the reps and their staff are working to engage directly with PDX communities as to what our needs are. Each have staff who work in the district. In fact, there is a common scheduler for all three District 2 reps—contact information for Jennifer is on their website. Here is that address: https://www.portland.gov/council/districts/2. Elana’s assistant is Pierre Jury and he is available as a resource for us. In spite of tough budget times, councilors want to hear about neighborhood issues and concerns so they can build a list of priorities for N/NE PDX.
Priorities right now include:
Big priority—Columbia Pool restoration. We need these pools as our summers get longer and hotter. They are seeking community partners to keep this resource open;
Huge Priority —Albina Vision Work. Opportunity to the Albina neighborhood restoration work that was wronged decades back.
CEI Hub — ongoing issues and concerns about these storage sites especially since they are located on soil that will turn liquid in an earthquake. This poses immense hazards to N and Inner NE Portland – difficult to move the tanks quickly but we can do some things to make things a bit better in the near future.
Elana then took questions. Below are brief summaries of Elana’s responses:
Topic 1: Ongoing funding for neighborhood associations (NAs) for events we have offered for many years.
The City Council knows this needs to be addressed. However, what NAs are needed to do under our new form of city government never got addressed. NAs may have to hang on for another year or two until this situation can be sorted out.
Topic 2: Community Engagement Officer status
This is another part of the issue around the role of NAs in the city and needs to be addressed in the future. There are now Program Officers in the new governmental structure, and the Engagement Officer oversees this work across all of the bureaus. Unfortunately, this office did experience budget cuts this year. Right now, the bulk of discretionary funds continues to go to Public Safety and Parks & Recreation.
Topic 3: Concerns about ICE presence and activity
This is a very hot topic right now as there is pressure to move the ICE facility out of Portland. There are pros and cons on both sides of this issue. Lawyers working with the asylum and immigrant communities are concerned about hardships a move from the city might pose for people who regularly have to interact with the facility. There is an ongoing case around the complaint that was filed re: ICE breaking the conditional-use permit for the building it currently occupies. There is a legal process for the federal government to respond and then potential hearings before a neutral auditor. This is an ongoing situation.
Topic 4: About the future of the city-wide arts tax.
This is currently under review. An overhaul may occur in the future.
Topic 5: Increased freight train traffic and noise in the neighborhood.
Elana will find out if this has increased. Unfortunately, this topic is out of the jurisdiction of the city council.
Topic 6: The issue of “masked” ICE agents here in Oregon.
Councilor Kanal actively working on this along with people in the state legislature. Unfortunately, federal agents are not beholden to our local laws so there are limits to what we can do.
Topic 7: Downtown and the need for “re-vitalization” and the excess of office space there
Thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, when so many people were working from home, we ended up with “excess” office space/availability downtown Businesses also moved out of downtown, but many are now moving back. However, many businesses are also shrinking their office footprints because there are now more hybrid work options. And many neighborhoods throughout the city—like Woodlawn—have their own “mini” business distracts. Elana feels that downtown Portland is never going to be held up by folks going downtown to work 9 to 5 anymore unless city grows in size and grows jobs as well. She feels we need to bring more people to live downtown, to go to one-off events downtown, etc. We also need to maintain our industrial land and the jobs that it provides. She will continue to be an advocate for good, green sustainable manufacturing jobs of the future.
Topic 8: Industrial land and the CEI hub
There are many conversations happening at the local and state level about the future of the CEI hub. The long-term goal is to move away from these types of fuels. In the short-term we need to work find the least worst place to store these fuels. Unfortunately, the Governor’s emergency management team is not willing to do this work right now. These are very challenging topics that the City Council needs to continue to address.
- Time for Neighbor Open Comments/Concerns
*Feel free to leave or stay for Board business!
7:45 – 8:00 Board Business
- Treasurer’s Report – Melissa
$2804.00 in the bank account.
- Farmer’s Market Update – Keith
Successful market at the University of Oregon Portland on October 4th. The Farmers Market was at U of Oregon Welcome Back Students event was on October 4th.
- Secretary Report – Nancy
Posters from Protect Oregon (located at SEIU) over on the table. Help yourself. Take some for friends, too.
- Outreach and community engagement Report – Linde
Mail Chimp got updated and now it will sign you up for our newsletter. Shelly fixed it.
- NECN Report – Anjala
October 20 at NECN will be a discussion of the CEI hub issues and concerns.
- Land Use and Transportation Report – Anjala
Notice re: a Type II Development Proposal for Property at 1725 NE Bryant was received.
In the next issue of our newsletter, we will talk about proposals to make a public plaza in our neighborhood.
- Wrap up 2025 Movie night—tabled due to the meeting running overtime.
- Discussion of future of Farmers Market & representatives for upcoming meeting
Barbara, David, and Linde will continue to be involved.
- November meeting – We will be discussing neighbor traffic concerns along with the PBOT neighborhood plaza discussion.
