Minutes for May 2026 WNA General Meeting

2026-05-22

Minutes for May 2026 WNA General Meeting

Woodlawn Neighborhood Association General Meeting Agenda

Tuesday, May 5th, 2026, at 6:30 pm

Please make every effort to join us In Person: CHANGE OF LOCATION for MAY 8th

MEETING AT GOOD NEIGHBOR PIZZERIA 800 NE Dekum St

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 – 7:15 Neighborhood Meeting General Business

Quick Board Introductions (5 minutes)
Approve April Meeting Minutes (1 minute)

Anjala makes a motion to approve the April minutes. Joy seconds. All are in favor. April minutes are approved.

Woodlawn Plaza Updates – John Tudisco (9 minutes)

Woodlawn Yards—the historic name of the train depot here in Woodlawn—is the name of the the new pedestrian plaza between Dekum and Madrona on Durham has been approved as a pilot project for two months and after that it likely will become permanent. Sam M. did an art design. PZ and John will be out on Thursday for PBOT site visit and to over the layout. First phase will be planters and tables. Still waiting to finalize a painting contractor. Timeline for painting the plaza is likely to be in early June.

NNO/POP is our annual August Party in Woodlawn Park — PZ (10 minutes)

The date for 2026 is Tuesday, August 4th from 6 to 8pm at Woodlawn Park. Need an Event Chair and Co-Chair and someone to coordinate fundraising to host the event for our community. There is a lengthy to-do list already available from years past. We are open to alternative ideas about what this event could also be in light of budget constraints—perhaps pot-luck? Angela Taylor said she has names of all the Woodlawn business managers who could be approached for possible donations and gift cards.

Woodlawn Farmers Market Updates – PZ & Joy (5 minutes)

East Multnomah Soil & Water Conservation District (EMSWCD) Seed Event – 50 people received training and supplies to start front yard gardens. John T. applied for the grant for this two-part event. Thanks to Joy and Liz for all their work on this. In the fall we will have a seed-saving event. There is one more indoor market on May 9th at Classic Foods. The Woodlawn Farmers Market outdoor season begins in June and will be held every Saturday until the end of October, every 9am to 1pm. To volunteer with us, folks can sign up online at: https://signup.com/go/bPHsYZf

Community Topics – Open Mic – please prepare your topics at 2-3 minutes with 2-3 minutes for questions (5-6 minutes total) – It’s your turn to activate in Woodlawn! (15 minutes total)

Update re: NET and Earthquake Preparedness

May 30, 2026, there will be city-wide deployment exercise re: earthquake preparedness from 1 pm to 4 pm. The Woodlawn Park Staging Area is at the basketball courts along NE Dekum. The NET teams are going to enlist Spontaneous Unaffiliated Volunteers to participate use during the exercise. Update on the old NET/BEECN storage boxes. Unfortunately, ours was stolen; it will be replaced by insurance. Signup link for volunteers available.

Woodlawn Neighborhood Yard Sale will be held on May 15, 16, 17. Maps will be available. Linde and Matt will be a “host house” for the Woodlawn Neighborhood Association and offer coffee and snacks and printed copies of maps as well as share information about the WFM indoor market and the WNA.
Anjala as Land Use and Transportation Chair. The hearing about the tree on NE Liberty happened via Zoom on April 21^st. James and neighbors were part of getting this development delayed. The city lawyer talked about how developers follow the development guidelines as “aspirational goals.” We are now appealing the denial of our appeal on this topic.
A marked “safety” crosswalk across NE 15^th and Morgan appeared! Other recent safety additions include a pedestrian walk sign on NE Buffalo and NE 11^th. North leg of intersection. School Crossing also added at many places. Part of this work if from the “safe walks to school” program. Linde emailed the city about this and got this response:

“Thank you for reaching out and for your appreciation of the new marked crosswalk at NE 15^th & NE Morgan! I will pass that along to the team members that made it possible.” Apparently, this marked crosswalk was the product of a school circulation visit in January 2025 in coordination with Woodlawn Elementary’s principal and PPS staff. The PBOT team noticed the pedestrian crossing sign without a marked crosswalk which is not PBOT’s standard practice. Pedestrian counts were met to justify the marked crosswalk, and PBOT maintenance crews recently completed the striping.

Other changes made included the following:

NE Buffalo and NE 11^thAve
- Added school crossing signage to the existing crosswalks
- Added a marked crosswalk to the north leg of the intersection
NE Buffalo and NE 13^thAve
- Added school crossing signage to the existing crosswalks
NE Holland and NE 11^thAve
- Added school crossing signage to the existing crosswalks
- Added a marked crosswalk to the south leg of the intersection
- Added a stop bar to the north leg of the intersection

There are no other planned marked crosswalks at this time.

Anjala noted that there have been no changes re: the status of Roger’s lot on corner across from Breakside. It is zoned for buildings like the one that Campana is in across the street. No notices have been received for any plans re: an imminent development on this site.
What is the status of the Dekum Street Theater? It has been having shows but isn’t so great at doing publicity for their events. They are now working on creating a green room where the performers can get prepared—it’s almost done! John T wonder if we can do a collaborative event with the theater some time in the future.
Friends of Ainsworth Linear Arboretum. Accredited now because of its threshold of diversity of trees. Need help with watering — 15 gallons a week for the first 5 years. Sign up to be a waterer on their website: https://ainsworthlineararboretum.org/get-involved
Any updates on alterations to NE 15^th and NE Lombard—any movement on that in the last few months? Anjala met with Cully and Concordia folks in March to talk about these issues. But everyone is super busy! Reach out to Anjala if you are interested in doing this kind of work.
Any updates re: the change in the bus transit line. Tri-Met said two years ago they were thinking of stopping the new U of Oregon campus line. Tri-Met has less money because fees are paid by employers who have been leaving the city unfortunately. They aren’t going to extend this line to MLK because they don’t have the money and are trying to cut time the drivers drive. Changes are maybe also happening in August at University of Oregon/Portland? Is the decrease in frequency only related to “outside standard” business hours?
If anyone has concerns about city budget, now is the time to give input. Lots of deep cuts on the Parks and Recreation side are happening. Union is arguing for a more reasonable span of control. Looking to more equitably spread the work load. Hiring freeze/contractor hiring issues also have been going on. If you care about this, offer your public comments. There are Zoom meetings.
May 26^th Columbia Slough Tree Equity Walk from Eliot to Irvington.

*Conclusion of neighborhood meeting, feel free to stay to socialize briefly!

7:15-7:30 Social Time

Meet your neighbors – this is a great time to connect with your neighbors, presenters, and partner with others doing awesome things in Woodlawn.

*Feel free to leave or stay for Board business!

7:30– 8:00 Board Business

Process Architecture – Guthrie

Guthrie has been working on documentation sets for WNA. He started with an old zoning map at PCC. He has put together a style guide, templates, fonts, best use practices, tables, and average dos and don’ts. He has mock-ups available of these early drafts. Templates include board member roles; event documentation to-do lists incuding pre- and post-reviews; internal memo sets; financial documents; guidance. Internal memo sets, financials, memo sets. Right now these are MS Word docs to make as easy as possible for as many people are possible.

Guthrie also wants to set up a “ticketing” system. This would be a link on the Go Woodlawn website to register if/when there are errors or concerns re: information and the website. We cann also use this to put old documentation into a new style. External documents can also be done.

Guthrie also worked with Anjala on the “how-to” Zoom our WNA meetings. For now, he is starting first on the Farmers Market documentation. Joy will start a Style Guides folder on Google Drive for all these templates. Filing system etc. to be available here. Naming conventions will be in the style guide. We can also get print copies of the style guide.

Next process that needs help is “How to Run Neighborhood Night Out” document.

Chair Updates – PZ

See above.

Vice Chair Updates – Joy

Trying to put together an “audit” to look at whole WNA and all that we do/own/manage and pay for. Joy will send this out and ask folks to fill in the blanks as to what folks know.

Google Workspace – goal is to figure out how to stop paying for it! Do we also need a password manager? You can self-house them easily. Guthrie and Joy will meet and talk about templates. Joy will send a spreadsheet re: who owns what for WNA and the WFM.

Treasurer’s Report – Melissa (sent in as she was unable to attend the meeting)

Bank balance: $2861.30. This includes the $1,000 communications grant funds from NECN. Some Egg Hunt monies are still owed to Dave. There is still the issue of access to Venmo funds.

Fundraising— Melissa feels unable to cite a specific amount we need to target for Party on Portland or any other event. Party on Portland can be whatever we make it based on what we have. Last year we had a fraction of what we had the prior year, so we worked with what we had. So we can pick any amount and go with that, but the long and short of it is that every dollar helps. Melissa wonders—maybe whoever is going to chair Party on Portland can come up with a number for that event based on what they want to plan?

Melissa also looked into some platforms that can help us collect donations and manage email, She liked Zeffy the best. With Zeffy, we would get 100% of the donations; they make their money by adding a “tip” onto what people donate. The donor can zero it out and just do their donation. Melissa thinks that the fundraising part is great— we can set goals, accept one time and recurring donations, manage raffles, etc. We can even sell things. Melissa suggests that Linde check out Zeffy and see if it works for her e-mail needs as well you can sign up for.

Farmer’s Market Finance Update – Keith

No update as Keith is traveling and unable to attend the meeting.

Land Use and Transportation Report – Anjala

See above for Anjala’s comments as part of the Community Topics section of the general meeting.

Secretary’s Report – Nancy

Nancy will transfer all the secretary files to the reorganized Google Drive. Nancy will also meet with Shelly Caldwell re: our website/email program best options before our June meeting.

Outreach and Community Engagement Report – Linde

Linde needs decision re: bot issues with Mail Chimp. Could we find out via Free Geek how best to deal with this? Also, we don’t have a captcha on our signup form. Cloudflare has services that might be helpful. Shelly Caldwell is worth asking about all this stuff too. These are possible options to replace Mail Chimp—Google Group; Internal List Serv; Give Butter; and Zeffy.

Meeting Adjourned

June 2026 Meeting Agenda –