The Portland Votes 2024 Grant Program has awarded $210,000 to 11 different organizations to support education efforts about ranked choice voting. The adoption of a new city charter has changed multiple aspects of city government. One of the most prolific is that in November, voters will participate in a ranked choice voting process to choose city council members, which is different from how many people are used to voting. Direct voter education grantees including APANO, NAYA and Urban League of Portland will provide cultural and language-specific educational opportunities about the new system to the communities they serve, while other grantees will hold broader voter education efforts. Grace Ramsey, co-founder of Democracy Rising and the project manager of the grant program, joins us to share more about these educational opportunities.

The Multnomah County Board of Commissioners unanimously voted Thursday to approve a temporary staffing plan that aims to improve ambulance response times in the county. The decision comes after months of disagreement between the county and its sole ambulance services provider, American Medical Response.

The company hasn’t met its contractual requirement to respond to 90% of life-threatening calls within eight minutes since 2022. AMR has long blamed the delays on the county’s requirement that each ambulance be staffed with two paramedics. The new agreement will allow some ambulances to be staffed by one paramedic and one EMT through July of next year.
Multnomah County Chair Jessica Vega Pederson joins us to talk about all of that and more.

Oregon hop growers will be harvesting their crops next week, but at a much smaller yield than last year. The acreage for the plant has fallen by 18% this year in Oregon and nationwide. The driving factor is declining beer sales and changes in consumer habits. Michelle Palacios is the administrator for the Oregon Hop Commission. She joins us to share more on the future of the industry.

Coastal Curry County is home to several different rivers but all of that open water can lead to accidents like drownings. Luke Martinez is the aquatic safety officer and lifeguard for Curry County. He says he’s seen tourism in the region grow and has witnessed more incidents around water safety. He joins us with details of what the county has been experiencing and how a junior lifeguard program can help educate residents. 

When Matt Swihart started Double Mountain Brewery in 2007, his vision was to sell beer in the most ecologically sustainable way possible: in reusable bottles, which would be returned, cleaned and refilled, to be sold again. He says it wasn’t a new idea at all - this was common for all kinds of beverages in the early 20th century. And it wasn’t even novel - in other countries, refillable beverage containers occupy a solid share of the market. Nevertheless the regional infrastructure didn’t exist, so the company started small and took its time. The game changed in 2018 when the Oregon Beverage Recycling Cooperative partnered with Double Mountain to help develop standard refillable glass beer bottles that any brewery in the state could use. 

Now, the Newberg company Revino is working with a number of vintners to put their wine in its returnable, refillable bottles. And while the company is still scaling up all the infrastructure needed, it’s gotten significant traction already, with Willamette Valley Vineyards announcing its rollout of over 1500 cases of one of its Pinot Noirs being released in Revino bottles. We talk with Double Mountain Brewery’s Matt Swihart and Revino cofounder Adam Rack about the significant environmental benefits of glass bottles over other kinds of containers, and the role they see refillables playing more broadly in helping states meet climate goals.  

Since 2018, Portland-based developer Avangrid Renewables has been working to develop an industrial solar project on a piece of state-owned land in eastern Washington. The parcel, known as Badger Mountain, is also an important ceremonial and first-foods site for tribal nations such as the Yakama and Colville. 

An investigation from High Country News and ProPublica earlier this year revealed that Avangrid omitted more than a dozen sites of cultural and archaeological significance from its survey of the site. The company has now announced it will pause the project while it reevaluates feedback from landowners and tribal nations. 

Toastie Oaster is a staff writer for High Country News. They join us with more details.

The largest public works project in Oregon history is coming to completion. After four years of construction and a little more than $2 billion, the PDX airport’s new terminal is open to the public. The main terminal remodel features skylights made of local Douglas fir, the return of the beloved original carpet and a 120-foot-long video wall that serves as a 24-hour art installation.  This opening is just one phase with more to come in December 2025. Curtis Robinhold is the executive director of the Port of Portland. He gave us a sneak peak of the terminal in late July to share the thinking behind the architecture, the indoor tree garden and more.

In Oregon, farmers and ranchers are contending with wildfires, water shortages and invasive species. Still, Oregonians continue to start small farms in the state. Next month, Oregon State University Extension Service – along with other agencies – will offer Small Farm School, an event at Clackamas Community College that includes workshops and classes on farming in Oregon. We learn more about how the extension service is supporting producers and what the industry looks like right now from Hayley White, a small farms coordinator for Marion and Polk counties. 

Burnside Bridge, which is nearly 100 years old, is set to undergo a five-year seismic rebuild, likely beginning in 2027. It’s a major travel route as the only bridge in Portland that touches all four quadrants of the city. Two potential designs have been put forth by Multnomah County: a tied arch bridge like the Fremont Bridge and a cable-stayed bridge like the Tilikum Bridge. Project managers asked for public input on the design back in early July. The survey was open for a month and gathered over 19,000 responses, with the majority of the public choosing a tied arch bridge. An article by architecture and design journalist Brian Libby explains that according to lead project designer Keith Brownlie, the tied arch bridge is typically the most popular design amongst a general population of non-architects. The Multnomah County Community Design Advisory Group, composed of local architects, designers and other experts, will provide a recommendation to the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners who are expected to vote on the final design in October. Libby joins us to share more about the design process.

Oregon State and Washington State are the only two schools left in the Pac-12 athletic conference. The University of Oregon is heading to the Big Ten conference for the 2025 season. Is the Ducks football team set up for success in their new conference against opponents like the Buckeyes, Wolverines, Nittany Lions and others? And how will athletes in less well-funded sports fare in a conference that requires a lot more travel? Zachary Neel, managing editor for USA Today’s Ducks Wire, joins us for a preview.