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February 2020 CPO News

• School safety, safe routes, and bicycles
• January Meeting recap
• New CPO Program Coordinators
• Washington County legislative report
• Land Use and Transportation 2020-2021 Work Plan draft

February Meeting: School safety, safe routes, and bicycles

Tuesday, February 11, 7-9 pm, Leedy Grange Hall, 835 NW Saltzman

Join us for the February meeting to learn more on these topics. If you can’t attend in person, we live-stream the program on the CPO 1 Facebook page.

Lockout / Lockdown? What does it mean when schools are put on alert

Learn about options for getting kids to school car-free!

Representatives from Beaverton Police Department and Washington County Sheriff’s Office will explain the situations that call for schools to be secured, and what it means for students, teachers, and parents.

Safe Routes to School

Leah Biado-Luis, Beaverton Safe Routes to School Coordinator, will let us know more about this important program to encourage safe walking and biking around our neighborhood. She’ll be happy to answer questions, and she’d also like to know how she can support us in the areas of increasing accessibility and safety for pedestrians and bicyclists.

WashCo Bikes

Joe Kurmaskie, Executive Director of the Washington County Bicycle Transportation Coalition (WashCo Bikes), will describe their programs. Your county wide bicycle transportation coalition would love to get everyone, from young to old and in between, creating a sustainable, more livable community with two wheeled travel and fun. They host Saddle Up Summer Day and Overnight Bicycle camps for kids, families and adults; a year-round Adopt-A-Bike program that provides helmets, lights, locks and bicycles to students, veterans, immigrants, needy families, and hospital patients. They run a community bicycle center in Hillsboro and host classes, clinics, safety rodeos and school programs. They have tons of volunteer opportunities. Come hear more about their programs and enter a free raffle to win a bicycle and gear.

January meeting recap

We had a lively discussion of various aspects of vacation rentals at our January 14 meeting. Washington County is considering whether to begin regulating short-term rentals in the county. A large group of AirBnB hosts attended, along with neighbors who have rentals in their area. We’re sure that Senior Washington County Planner Suzanne Savin went home with lots of good ideas and more understanding of the issues. The meeting video is on the Facebook page.

We also brainstormed topics for future meetings. Working from a list of ideas we’ve been collecting, and taking suggestions from members, we tallied up interest to help us plan the year. Top vote-getters included:

• Terra Nova School, possibly combined with Master Gardeners
• Connecting the CPO with K-12 students: how can we help students be more aware of local issues and how democracy works in a community? We welcome suggestions for this topic!
• Oregon State Legislative Report: we’ll bring our state Senator and Representative to let us know how the short session went.
• Urban Wildlife: should we be concerned when we spot wild animals in the neighborhood?
• Bonnie Hays Animal Shelter; HOAs; and TriMet topics also were interesting to many, so we’ll do our best to bring these topics to you in the coming months.

With a primary election coming in May, we’ll cover levies and measures in March, and candidates in April. Sign up to get email reminders and learn more on the CPO 1 page at Washington County.

New CPO Program Coordinators

The CPO program is managed by the County Administration Office (CAO). Community Engagement Program Coordinators support the volunteer CPO leaders, and last summer two of them resigned, and the third budgeted position had been vacant for some time. A search was conducted last fall and three new PCs were hired. We’ll get a chance to meet Piseth Pich, the new PC who will work with CPO 1, at the February meeting.

Washington County legislative report

At the January meeting of the Committee for Community Involvement (CCI, the leadership group of all CPOs) we met and heard from the three new Government Relations Managers for the county. Each has their specialty but together they represent the county’s interests with the Oregon State legislature. Erin Doyle talked about issues relating to general government and public safety; Jagjit Nagra works on land use and transportation and economic development; and Paige Spence works on health care.

One of the issues they’re all interested in is the lack of funding for Community Corrections. This program works to prevent the recurrence of crime among adult offenders by supervising them and connecting them with the resources they need to change problem behavior. The county has had to close a residential facility due to lack of state funding.

CPO members are welcome to attend CCI meetings, but only CCI reps can vote. Let us know if you’re interested. Meetings are generally held on third Tuesday evenings.

Land Use and Transportation 2020-2021 Work Plan draft

Public comments are sought on the draft Washington County Work Plan for 2020-2021. The plan determines what LUT Long Range Planning (LRP) staff will be working on throughout “Ordinance Season,” from March-October, including proposed Ordinances (the laws of the county) and “Issue Papers,” which staff puts together to explore topics that may result in future action. Interestingly, one of the issues under consideration is to end Ordinance Season so that ordinances can be considered throughout the year. Staff says that would take a revision of the County Charter and a public vote.

Projects addressed in the Work Plan come from various sources: staff recommendations; requests from developers, business, and community organizations including CPO committees; requests from other governments such as cities, counties and state; and unfinished tasks from previous years.

Among the priority tasks this year are: Housing Affordability; Significant Natural Resources; Short-term Rentals; and Transit Planning. The document is online here. A copy will be available at the February CPO 1 meeting, and in the Community Information section of Cedar Mill Library—ask at the Reference Desk.

Visit the Draft Work Program page on the county website to download the draft and find out how to comment. All comments received by February 28 will be provided to the Board of County Commissioners as they evaluate the plan.

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