The Portland Bureau of Transportation may include a provision in their five-year budget forecast to cut contracts for street re-paving.
While the proposal would cut contract street paving, PBOT would continue to do “in-house” paving. Contract paving is done for particularly large projects and the city is required by law, because of the budget, to put it out to bid to private contractors.
Gil Latz, former vice provost of the Office of International Affairs, retired from his position of 10 years to pursue alternate employment. Professor Patricia Wetzel was appointed as interim vice provost on Dec. 20, 2011.
In the fall of 2010, Roy Koch, provost and vice president for Academic Affairs, created the International Program Review Committee to oversee an internal review of international academic programs at Portland State, including the OIA. The review, conducted by an external panel, was completed in August 2011.
The holidays are a time for family, friends, warm meals, gifts—a break from the daily hassles of life. However, not everyone in the Portland metropolitan area is so fortunate; many are homeless and in desperate need of food and shelter during the winter months. During the holidays, there is a particular need for able-bodied volunteers at local nonprofit organizations to provide for the less fortunate.
There are faith-based organizations such as the Portland Rescue Mission, the Salvation Army and the Father’s Heart Street Ministry. Secular organizations include Outside In, the Red Cross, Doernbecher Children’s Hospital and Hands On Greater Portland. The holiday season is a great opportunity to lend a hand to such organizations and the people they serve.
Today, Mayor Sam Adams, Portland Public Schools Superintendent Carole Smith and TriMet General Manager Neil McFarlane will meet to determine the fate of Trimet’s YouthPass program, which allows Portland Public Schools students currently enrolled in high school to ride public transportation for free during the school year.
Since the state legislature decided that the program’s major source of funding, Business Energy Tax Credits, would no longer be allowed to finance student transit costs, the future of TriMet’s YouthPass program has been uncertain.
In September, Alta Bicycle Share—an affiliate of the Portland-based company Alta Planning and Design—was awarded a contract to work with New York City to establish a bike-share program.
Alta Bicycle Share’s goal is to become a leader in designing, deploying and managing large-scale bike-share systems around the globe. The corporation is unique in that it focuses solely upon operating bike-share programs. Alta has established bike-share programs in other cities such as Boston, Washington, D.C. and Melbourne, Australia. In the first year of D.C.’s bike-share program, there were over one million rides.
A $68,344 grant was awarded to a consortium of schools, including Portland State University, Pacific University and Western Oregon University, to be shared for the cooperative Governor’s Papers Project.
The Governor’s Papers Project aims to process, preserve and enable access to important gubernatorial documents that are not included in the official state archives. The official state archives have strict categories for what is included in their collection, and the Governor’s Papers Project archives some documents that fall outside those categories.
The TriMet YouthPass program lost its major source of funding and is in danger of being cut entirely. The current funding will continue until Dec. 31, 2011, at which point a new source of funding must be found if the program is to continue.
The program allows any high-school student currently enrolled in the Portland Public School District to ride public transportation (including buses, MAX and the streetcar) for free at any time during the school year.
YouthPass began as a pilot program for three schools in the PPS district (approximately 2,200 students) in the 2008–09 school year, and the following year expanded to include all the schools in the district (13,000 students).
A “green screen” was installed in Smith Memorial Student Union Oct. 18, which displays the building’s water, electricity and gas usage and updates its report every 15 minutes.
The green screen allows “both the university and the building users to see exactly how the building is performing over time,” said Mark Gregory, associate vice president of finance and administration, in an email.
On Oct. 12, after only a year of service, the director of the Institute for Sustainable Solutions, Robert Costanza, was replaced by Jennifer Allen. Costanza’s position was changed to professor of sustainability, and Allen was named acting director.
Beginning this fall, Portland State now offers one of only two real estate development master’s degree programs in the Pacific Northwest—the other being the University of Washington.
A joint effort by the Center for Real Estate Development, the School of Business Administration and the School of Urban Studies and Planning is responsible for the new program.
Excessive use of textbooks and paper leaves a sizable carbon footprint, and because Portland—and Portland State specifically—is concerned with sustainability, e-reading methods are gaining popularity.
Other organizations, such as Multnomah County Library, have begun to implement measures that can potentially reduce paper use. In September, Multnomah County Library launched a program allowing readers to check out books online to read on their Kindles. A user must have accounts with the library and Amazon in addition to a Kindle (or the free Kindle application for mobile phones) to download the Kindle e-books from the Library2Go website.