Mountain View Neighborhood Association News – November 28th

Hello MVNA neighbors,

Here are updates regarding Mountain View Neighborhood Association news.

Our November meeting featured guest speaker Rachel Zakem from CET. Did you know that currently all busses with CET are fare free and will be until April 2022? This is a great time to try riding public transit! Furthermore, CET is creating a new route in our area that will serve as a “floating route” – meaning it will not return to the Hawthorne Station but will connect with other existing bus routes (4, 5, 6, and 24). This new route, known as route 8, will provide access to many key Northeast Bend locations such as Cascade Village Mall and Pine Nursery Park and it is set to start running summer of 2022.

Secondly, thank you to everyone who has submitted feedback to us via our MVNA Member Feedback Survey. If you haven’t yet completed the survey, we are still accepting responses. We have received some excellent detail on concerns in a wide variety of areas within our neighborhood, as well as suggestions for meeting agenda items. And, some of you have graciously volunteered to be more actively involved! If you are one of these interested volunteers, you will be hearing from us shortly, via email, for how to get connected.

Here are some of the highlights of the information we gathered. In terms of topic themes, many of you identified street safety, public safety, and transportation issues. The top concerns were speeding and cut-through traffic, better enforcement by police for various issues, congestion and hazards caused by on-street parking, improved safety for pedestrians and bicycles, and more safe routes to schools. We also heard concerns regarding code enforcement and efforts to address houselessness in our community. There is a graph below that shows the rate of key word topics we heard.

Two pertinent updates regarding houselessness solutions are the new zoning changes proposed by the City and the effect of Short-Term Rentals on the availability of affordable housing. First, the Sounding Board to House our Neighbors met this month to review feedback gathered through their survey. An overview of those survey results, along with other materials and the tentative dates for their work with the Planning Commission and up-coming public hearing can be found here. Regarding Short-Term Rentals (STRs), Councilor Megan Perkins shared with the MVNA board that a Council work session regarding STRs is expected in the new year. We will keep you posted as we know more.

We are also working on developing easy-to-access information on our website for the upcoming transportation projects for our area, some of these being GO Bond projects and some being already-funded capital improvement projects. Examples include the Purcell extension, Butler Market – Wells Acres roundabout, Neff-Purcell intersection improvements, and the Neighborhood Safe Streets Projects (NSSP). The next round of NSSP should include our NA’s recommendation for a crosswalk on Providence, near Providence Park and Locksley. Our first NSSP project for MVNA was the crosswalk near Mountain View High School on Wells Acres.

Finally, we want to thank you, our neighbors, for your continued interest and participation in our Mountain View Neighborhood Association. It is the people who make a neighborhood, and we appreciate all of you who continue to make MVNA a great place to live, work, and play!

Sincerely,

The MVNA board