By Belinda Ray

WHIRLWIND. In a word, that’s what the last eight weeks have been. From being sworn in on December 7th to attending the first meeting of the Housing Committee last night (January 27th), my days have been full. As with any new job, there is a sharp learning curve in the early months, but truth be told, I’ve loved every minute of it so far and enjoyed the challenge of taking in so much information in such a short time frame.

One of the highlights of my first two months has been receiving my committee assignments. As part of my Council duties, I will be serving on three committees: Housing, Health and Human Services, and Finance. Each committee has its own set of challenges, as you can imagine.

The Housing Committee, which is new this year, was formed to address the housing quandary Portland finds itself in at present. The two main problems, of course, are that we don’t have enough housing and that the housing we have isn’t affordable for a large segment of the population.

We had our first Housing Committee meeting, as I said, on January 27^th, and we heard from many different stakeholders about their views of the problem and how it should be addressed. Of particular interest was Dr. Christopher Herbert, who is the managing director for the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University (www.jchs.harvard.edu). Dr. Herbert emphasized that a lack of affordable housing is a problem in cities across the country. He also mentioned that he believes Portland has already taken many crucial steps to address the problem, which is a testament to the excellence of our planning department and, of course, my predecessor, Councilor Donoghue, for whom affordable housing was a major priority. Still, even with the steps that have been taken, there is more to do, and I look forward to working with the members of the Housing Committee, the City Council, and city staff over the next year to continue to make strides in this area.

I haven’t yet had my first Health and Human Services Committee meeting, but the Finance Committee met in early January to go over the city’s most recent audit. I’m in the process of combing through our Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR) to get a better overall feel for the city budget, and the Finance Committee will begin discussing the city’s Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) in February. (Suffice it to say I’m learning a lot of acronyms on this committee.) If you’d like to join me in reading the CAFR, you can find a copy of it on the city’s website on the Finance Department page. Maybe we can make it a District One Big Read project (www.neabigread.org).

In terms of challenges for the Finance Committee, I’ll leave you with this: annually, we have about $12 million to spend in our CIP, and to date, the City has received over $50 million in requests for that funding from its various departments. Needless to say, setting priorities for the city’s capital spending for the next five years will be (you guessed it) challenging.

At the February meeting of the Bayside Neighborhood Association, board members and guests got a preview of some significant infrastructure and development projects coming to Bayside. The City of Portland’s Director of Economic Development Greg Mitchell and City Planning Director Tuck O’Brien presented a preliminary map of the Bayside Infrastructure Improvement Program, a collection of planned work that the City aims to manage, and communicate about, as a coordinated effort.

The Program includes sidewalk and trail enhancements, waterline improvements, and roadwork throughout Bayside. The two major projects that make a coordinated approach critical are the Midtown residential development and a combined sewer overflow project, two of the largest construction projects in Bayside in recent memory.

Midtown, at Somerset Street from Pearl to Elm streets, will have 450 residential units and 800 parking spaces, and construction is set to begin shortly following the sale of the property in February, from the City to The Federated Cos.

The combined sewer overflow project, which will utilize or impact all of Marginal Way, is a complex hydraulic engineering project designed to free up existing capacity otherwise used for stormwater runoff and to alleviate the increasing flooding in Bayside.

These two massive projects will entail work from multiple utility providers and large construction crews and significant rerouting of traffic. So it only makes sense to plan ahead and incorporate other infrastructure work into a coordinated approach. Other projects included in the Program include improvements that have been in the works for some time as well as newly planned efforts that simply make sense to do when there’s a big hole in the ground already. The overflow project is just one part of Portland’s goal to address sea level rise citywide. Other flooding mitigation projects in the Bayside Program include rain gardens, which utilize plants with a tolerance for the high concentrations of elements typically found in stormwater runoff, such as nitrogen and phosphorous, and that absorb more stormwater than conventional gardens.

Funding allocations have been authorized for all projects in the Bayside Infrastructure Improvement Program. However, some projects are still early in the design process, and Mitchell and O’Brien acknowledged that allocations are based on projects “as originally envisioned”; thus budget adjustments are expected as these complex projects move toward realization.

The City aims to coordinate both the management of projects and the communication to residents and commuters about plans and impacts. Public meetings will be scheduled about the Program as a whole and about specific projects, as appropriate. The City is planning to introduce innovative ways to keep the public informed throughout the process, including a website with an interactive map to find the latest status on projects impacting a given location.

It’s going to get messy for a while in Bayside. When the dust clears, we’ll have more housing, better flood protection, and improvements to our neighborhoods. We’ll post updates on this Program on the BNA Facebook page and in our next issue of The Baysider. Stay tuned!