The Portland Plan

This morning I got a chance to go to a Portland Plan workshop at Mt. Scott Community Center in SE Portland. It was awesome. Unfortunately, there were mostly white middle- to upper-class citizens there, which didn't accurately represent the diversity of the city, but there were still great comments and opinions shared.

Mayor Sam Adams led the event by taking us through a PowerPoint regarding the city. The Portland Plan is a city-wide plan to think about the city's future and where we want to be 25 years from now. There is actually no draft plan as of now. The workshops are just to build awareness and invite opinions and feedback from the citizens to let the city planners to know what to focus on before writing the plan.

There was a good amount of discussion among table groups at the workshop. In our particular group, we talked a lot about education, transportation (biking specifically), and housing issues. I brought up the fact that in my neighborhood, in East Portland, there is a large population of poor and uneducated communities that lack the basic skills to thrive. Basic education is one of many topics mentioned at the workshop that the Portland Plan needs to spend time reviewing. And not just educating our youth, but adults as well.

Overall, it was a great time to meet people from other parts of the city and talk about something that we all have common ground on: where we live. Nobody disagrees with the fact that we want our city to be the best that it can be, so it is a great way to find unity and cooperation together.

I'm planning on attending our neighborhood association's monthly meetings and possibly contributing my thoughts on the board meetings. Would be a great way to contribute to the city and make a difference!

More information:

Portland Plan website: pdxplan.com