Think Out Loud

City councilors in Beaverton voted unanimously to do away with including parking in new developments in the city. Kevin Teater is the newest member of the council and campaigned on this issue. Beaverton joins seven other cities in the state that have made the same shift recently, including Portland, Salem and Bend. Last year the state’s Land Conservation and Development Commission passed rules to lift parking requirements in many places and encourage cities to do the same. Teater calls the policy “absolutely transformative.” We talk with him about the vote and what this could mean for his city and others in Oregon.

After five Portland monuments were toppled in 2020, some city and community leaders called for a robust public engagement process before any decisions were made about their reinstatement.

The city partnered with Lewis & Clark College late last year to determine what that public engagement process would look like. A committee of artists, educators, urban planners and public historians has been meeting for the last six months to explore how community members can navigate the complicated history the monuments represent. They recently presented a report to the city with their recommendations, which include public talks, arts programming, walking tours and an archive.

Jess Perlitz is an associate professor and head of sculpture at Lewis & Clark College. She led the Monument Engagement Process Committee and joins us with more details on its recommendations.

Clatsop County has recently awarded $35,000 to LiFEBoat Services, a homeless service provider in Astoria. The organization hopes this funding will help with improvements and allow it to become a year-round shelter. Osarch Orak is the executive director of LiFEBoat Services. He joins us to share what this funding will mean for the community and LiFEBoat's plan for the future.

:  Earlier this month, a panel of judges for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals allowed the Chinook salmon season in Alaska to open for the summer while it considers arguments in a lawsuit filed by the Wild Fish Conservancy. The Seattle-based organization sued the State of Alaska, the National Marine Fisheries Service and the Alaska Trollers Association to stop the harvesting of Chinook, also known as king salmon, which is the primary food source for an endangered population of orcas in the Puget Sound. Julia O’Malley is a third-generation Alaskan and freelance journalist based in Anchorage, Alaska. She recently wrote an article for the New York Times that explores how declining numbers of Chinook impact the culture and livelihoods of coastal communities in Alaska, and the demand for wild salmon on dinner tables and gourmet restaurants. She joins us to talk about her reporting. 

Within the last month, seven breweries and taprooms have closed or announced their upcoming closure. Rising costs of operation, change in consumer drinking habits, and the  lingering effects of the pandemic have all affected the market. Ezra Johnson-Greenough, the founder of the blog The New School Beer, joins us to share what’s happening in Portland's beer market and to shed light on whether the craft beer bubble has burst. 

Last month, two service providers announced they would not open cooling shelters this summer for people experiencing homelessness in the Columbia Gorge. The shelters used to open only for day use when the National Weather Service issued an excessive heat warning for the region, and other air-conditioned facilities, like libraries, were not available. Washington Gorge Action Programs, which operates in Klickitat and Skamania counties, made the decision to close its Emergency Cooling Center in Stevenson after it found that not a single person visited the facility last summer. Instead, the organization has been distributing “cooling kits” which contain items like a battery-operated fan, water and sunscreen. The kits are being distributed at its offices, a thrift store it operates and through partnerships and outreach events with community organizations. Mid-Columbia Community Action Council is distributing cooling kits throughout its service area of Hood River, Sherman and Wasco Counties. Jennifer Pauletto, associate director of WAGAP, and Kenny LaPoint, executive director of MCCAC, share with us how this effort is going so far, and the impact it’s having for their clients.

 A Seattle tree ordinance passed earlier this year has frustrated some tree advocates in the city. Onlookers say developers played too big a role in helping craft the policy. The city’s own Urban Forestry Commission, a panel that provides expertise on tree policy and regulation, says it didn’t have enough time to review the proposal. Still some tree experts say that the ordinance provides better protection than what was in place before. We dig into these issues with Eric Scigliano, an independent writer and author. He covered this story for InvestigateWest. 

A new study from the University of California San Francisco is the largest study of homelessness in the U.S. in several decades. The California Statewide Study of People Experiencing Homelessness includes 3,200 administered questionnaires and 365 in-depth interviews with adults experiencing homelessness in urban, rural, and suburban areas. We talk to Margot Kushel, principal investigator on the study, about what researchers learned and how the data might be relevant outside of California.

The Sports Bra opened last year as the first bar to exclusively play women’s sports. It’s a small bar in Northeast Portland, but owner Jenny Nguyen wanted to host a Women’s World Cup watch party that was big enough to accommodate the enormous enthusiasm for the team, including the Portland Thorns. The event, in collaboration with the Portland Football Club, starts at noon at Portland’s Pioneer Courthouse square and will include a showing of the classic movie “Bend It Like Beckham” at 2 p.m., with the match between the U.S. and Vietnam in Auckland at 6 p.m. We'll talk with Nguyen about the event and the excitement leading up to the U.S. team’s first match in pursuit of its third consecutive World Cup title.

This week the Malheur Enterprise published the last in a series of stories looking at child poverty in the county. The series covered housing, mental health, food insecurity and more. We talk to Shane Dimapanat and Christina Chkarboul, who worked on the series along with Andie Kalinowski, Suejin Lim and Venice Tang.