This Monday night, June 2, City Council has a few big items on the docket: Housing Our Future plan and the annual budget adoption! Take a minute to read about them and let your voice be heard.
What are these items?
Housing Our Future plan is the culmination of a year’s worth of work to establish a state-required housing production strategy. The strategy is an essential link between where we’re at today and meeting state-required housing goals that are coming through the Housing Production Accountability Office. There’s a lot to unpack in these sentences, which I explored in 2019 (and will address in future articles).
The annual budget is the most critical place for funding and enacting our communities values in government.
Why is this important?
If you care about housing people who have been pushed to our society’s margins, you should support the Housing Our Future strategy.
If you care about continuing our commitment to a more diverse and inclusive community, and how that extends to our parks, libraries, transportation system, and community engagement efforts and events, you should speak up about the budget.
Take action, make your voice heard
On the city webpage, you’ll see different ways to show up, send an email, or give a ring to let the mayor and city counselors know your thoughts.
I’ve always found the easiest ways to just shoot the city recorder an email (CityRecorder@wilsonvilleoregon.gov), which will make it a part of the public record and it’ll be shared with the mayor and council. Below are brief and a longer-winded example of emails.
EXAMPLE EMAIL: BRIEF
Hi Mayor O'Neil and City Councilors,
You have a busy Monday night coming up, so I wanted to write in with my opinions on a few items.
1. Pass the Housing Our Future Plan.
2. Pass a city budget that continues our commitment to the national award-winning SMART transit, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and our Town Center. Specifics include:
Keep supporting our DEI committee.
The Boones Ferry Messenger is an essential piece of community communication and recording our history.
The City hosting events like Memorial Day Remembrances, Pride Murals, and Juneteenth celebrations ensures that these happen.
Our world-class library staff. Really, check out other ClackCo libraries and see why investing in our staff makes our location the best.
Keep the Town Center plan on track.
Thank you for your service and consideration.
EXAMPLE EMAIL: MY email, which is longer and includes a rant about transit history
Hi Mayor O'Neil and City Councilors,
You have a busy Monday night coming up, so I wanted to write in with my opinions on a few items.
1. Pass the Housing Our Future Plan.
As someone who was intimately involved with the Equitable Housing Strategic Plan, I believe the thorough community vetting, Planning Commission review, and excellent work by City staff have developed a plan that we can all be proud of. It is comprehensive and deep and will set the stage for targeted solutions to continue our part in being a leadership City in housing design and development.
2. Pass a city budget that continues our commitment to the national award-winning SMART transit, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and our Town Center.
SMART is an essential service in our community, serving families of all incomes, abilities, and ages. A few facts about the proposed new SMART service:
This proposed SMART route would take residents and students to West Linn, Oregon City, as well as Clackamas Town Center.
This route and employee costs are 100% paid for by grants in perpetuity, NOT by using any City of Wilsonville dollars.
This new service will use "bus on the shoulder" access, meaning you can avoid all of the freeway traffic.
Another fact about safety and transportation is that the most "criminal" element that comes into our community is through vehicles driving to and from I-5. As a former community development director in a town next to a highway, this was always the concern that I worked on most with law enforcement. Also, when our community faces the daily backlog of cars on our streets because of the highway, I fear that this is when we're going to see a person walking or biking struck by a car, trying to swerve around or drive quickly on other streets to get to a better place in line. Finally, heightening fear about buses (transit) and "outsiders" bringing crime has a long, racist history in this country. When I hear about people raising these fears, I'm reminded of the narrative sewn by white nationalists post-integration.
Other things I think we should fund:
Keep supporting our DEI committee.
The Boones Ferry Messenger is an essential piece of community communication and recording our history.
The City hosting events like Memorial Day Remembrances, Pride Murals, and Juneteenth celebrations ensures that these happen.
Our world-class library staff. Really, check out other ClackCo libraries and see why investing in our staff makes our location the best.
Keep the Town Center plan on track.
Thank you for your service and consideration.