As you plan public involvement or critical staff meetings, it’s important to keep the following dates in mind.  

Per PBOT’s Media Policy (2.01), when the media asks you questions (even if it's a simple factual or technical question), you must refer them as soon as possible to PBOT’s Public Information Officer Dylan Rivera or Communications Director Hannah Schafer. PBOT’s Communications team handles all communications with reporters and bloggers, local or national.  

Never talk to a reporter on “background” or “off-the-record.” There is no such thing. Talking with a reporter, even as part of what you consider a casual or friendly conversation, is potentially on the record and fair game. Always contact the Communications team first to help navigate communication with media. If you’re unsure, email the full Comms team at PBOTcommunications@portlandoregon.gov. 

Please take a moment to refresh yourself on PBOT’s full media policy, found on our internal website.  

By Jeramy Patton 

I want to recognize some great work by our Payroll team: Beth Van Aernem, Marilou Nazario, Laurie Lee, and Lauren Hunter. 

In late April, they worked long hours to ensure that our 272 employees represented by LiUNA Local 483 were properly paid based on recent changes to their labor agreement. Payroll made 13,630 lines of upgrades in the payroll system and reopened 2,057 work orders. This all happened April 26-28, an vast amount of work on top of normal high workload during the close of a pay period.  

Special thanks to John Chin from our Technology Services team for assisting Payroll in this endeavor and working side by side with them late into the evenings!  

Please join me in thanking these staff for their continued dedication to their work! 

In early May, a community member asked Gena Gastaldi about the pedestrian walkway and stairway connecting the 6500 block of SE Thorburn Avenue and SE Ash Street in the Mt. Tabor neighborhood. The constituent wondered which agency was responsible for it, hoping someone could clean tree limbs, debris, and slippery moss off the steps.  

Gena dug a little and found that it’s a PBOT asset. She contacted Maintenance Operations team and six days later Gena got this lovely email:   

Hi Gena,  

Gena concurs. “Shout out to MO for getting out there so quickly and responding to our city’s needs constantly and professionally,” Gena adds. 

Summer is a very busy time for PBOT’s Financial Services team closing out Fiscal Year 2022-23 and heading into 2023-24. With the last day of fiscal approaching June 30, please help our team by getting contracts, invoices, transfers, reimbursements, billings, etc. submitted ASAP for processing. Check out our Fiscal Year-End Resources page for more information. 

Contracts and Procurement 

Many year-end procurement deadlines already passed. Remaining deadlines are in this February 2023 memo from the Office of Management & Finance.  

If your project is fiscal-year sensitive, the team is actively working on it as a priority. If your project is not fiscal-year sensitive, expect delays. Contact Contracts Supervisor Cary Watters for more information. 

P-Cards 

P-Card Administrator Emilie Ibanez needs your help completing your allocations and sign-offs as soon as transactions post. Help Emilie make year-end closing easier!  Friday, June 16 is the last day you can use P-Cards and have those transactions count as part of Fiscal Year 2022-23. Purchases after June 16 that have not been posted by June 28 will be applied to next fiscal year (2023-24). Look for an email with additional deadlines from the Central P-Card team in the next couple of weeks.  

Budget 

PBOT’s Budget team kicks off the next fiscal year this summer with year-end audits and preparing for the Fall Budget Monitoring Process (BuMP). Contact Budget Supervisor Megan Cummings or your team’s Financial Analyst with questions. 

For questions on any of this, contact Accounting Supervisor Shannon Devereux.

There's just a little over a week to sign up for the next round of Coffee Talk. This program helps PBOTers connect with each other across groups.  

The next round runs June, July, and August. Each month, you’ll be matched with a new PBOTer to meet and have an informal chat with. Sign up now using the Coffee Talk sign-up form here.  

Form closes 8 a.m., May 30. Questions? Contact Kailyn Lamb. 

Warmer, drier weather means striping season is upon us! Like clockwork, our teams have been out there freshening up and installing new markings all over town.  

The pictures below show crews working on NE 43rd Avenue at Tillamook Street. The green paint they’re installing is a methyl methacrylate two-component traffic paint. It’s made from mixing a pigmented base resin with a polymer curing agent. When mixed and applied immediately, these two elements polymerize to form a strong, long-lasting compound. A typical layer takes about 15-30 minutes to cure after application. It lasts about 3-5 years with proper maintenance.  

Crews pictured are applying paint with a long-handled roller, similar to what you might use at home to paint a ceiling or wall. They prepare for this step by cleaning the road surface, then marking out the area with heavy-duty tape.  

Portlanders have noticed!  

PBOT’s Safety team participated in this year’s Safety Break through Oregon Occupational Safety and Health (Oregon OSHA). Established in 2003, Safety Break for Oregon is celebrated the second Wednesday of May and highlights safety in the workplace.  

PBOT even ran a slogan contest for employees. Here are your winners: 

• Practice Care, Stay Aware by Allie Callow-Spencer 
• Be Precise, Think Twice by Allie Callow-Spencer 
• Safety Has No Limits by Bob DeLucco 
• Safety is No Accident by Zim Zimmerman 

And an honorable mention: 

• Safety Is Not a Secret, Spread the Word by Gayle Wilson 

PBOT’s Safety team appreciates the contributions and participation for this first annual celebration of Safety Break Oregon! 

Jim Scanlon’s career in civil design started in the early 1990s, although he had a love of public transportation from an early age (see picture above). Now, with over 30 years of professional civil design work behind him, Jim’s retiring from his role at PBOT as a Senior Engineering Associate with the ADA Ramps team.  

Jim’s interest in civil design started as a volunteer for the City of Sherwood’s Design Commission. Reviewing development plans for the city, he eventually realized he could do a better job than what the developers were submitting. After taking classes in computer-aided design (CAD), he started working as a survey technician, doing construction survey field work for a small firm. 

Even before PBOT, his career in the private sector involved transportation. At David Evans and Associates, Jim worked on four different legs of TriMet’s MAX expansion as an inspector and 3D modeler. Jim describes this time as a fun highlight of his career. Then in 2009, Jim joined the public sector, working at the Portland Water Bureau for 10 years.  

In addition to providing construction support for Water, he also looked back in time to solve puzzles. Jim cross-referenced records of the Bull Run conduit system from 1929 and translated them into modern GIS coordinates. This let him reconfirm underwater pipe alignment to the center of the intake structure at the bottom of Bull Run. In fact, the as-built records from 1929 matched the modern survey within 1 foot (across a distance of 2,600 feet).   

ADA Ramps 

Jim moved to PBOT in 2019, joining the ADA Ramps team just six months after the city settled with the Civil Rights Education and Enforcement Center (CREEC). Per the agreement, the city (i.e. PBOT) agreed to build 1,500 ADA-compliant curb ramps per year rather than risk being sued for lack of them. Civil Engineering & Drafting Manager Eva Huntsinger helped decide this route because the cost of potential litigation far exceeded that of building new ramps. PBOT is currently five years into the 12-year agreement with CREEC.  

Jim assembled the manual for inspectors to use in assessing ramp placement in the field. He then focused on special design projects that came up such as a ramp with intricate geographic complexities, or utility conflicts. 

“Jim was my seat neighbor when I first started working at PBOT,” Kaitlin Littleford remembers. “We were still in the Congress Center. I have fond memories of his hilarious commentary and he was always so generous with dahlias and fruit from his garden!” 

One last project 

Before retiring May 31, Jim’s final project is developing an open, uncontrolled intersection in Northeast Portland. Heavily used by bikes and pedestrians, the intersection is where NE Ridgewood Drive, Stuart Drive, Regents Drive, and 26th Avenue converge. Jim is designing 18 (!) new ADA curb ramps here he hopes will improve pedestrian and bicycle safety in this busy (and potentially dangerous) spot.  

After retiring, Jim hopes for sunny weather so he can focus on his garden and riding his motorcycle. He’ll also continue playing Renaissance music, something he’s been doing for 46 years, the last 12 with a program run through Portland Parks & Recreation’s Community Music Center.

Parting words and thanks 

Jim expressed so much thanks to the Civil Design team who created such a welcoming environment these last four years at PBOT. 

“In the short years I have worked with Jim, he’s been one of the most pleasant and helpful people I have ever encountered over my many years of work,” said Daniel Tariku. “I appreciated Jim’s thoroughness and always following up on things that need it. Jim validates people's views and otherwise was a great all-around colleague.” 

By Stacy Brewster 

June 1 officially kicks off Pride Month for the LGBTQ+ community. Pride traditions and marches began in June 1970 as a demonstration for equal rights and justice and to mark the one-year anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising in New York. At a time in our history when queer and trans people are being targeted by repressive laws and tactics across the country, we hope all PBOTers will reflect on the origins and importance of Pride. 

Portland Pride has moved to July 

Although June is typically Pride Month, those of us in the Queer Alliance employee resource group are now calling it Pride Summer now that the Portland Pride Festival has moved to the weekend of July 15-16. You might be wondering why the change. Pride celebrations in Portland have been in June since 1977. However, the festival was often timed so it fell on different June weekends than celebrations up and down the West Coast. As a result, Pride weekend here often conflicted with community observances and celebrations such as Juneteenth and the Delta Park Pow Wow, not to mention Father’s Day. The move to July was a welcome change. 

Pride at PBOT 

As we’ve done the last several years, we offer PBOTers the opportunity to change their email signatures during Pride season by adding a Pride version of PBOT’s logo (pictured below). The image is available for download on our logos page on our internal website here and we’ll include it in an upcoming Scoop as well. Based on Portland designer Daniel Quasar’s “Progress” Pride flag, the logo helps us celebrate the diversity of our queer and trans employees, their families, and the broader LGBTQ+ community we serve. Reminder you must change your signatures separately in Outlook, Microsoft365 online, and on any city iPhones or iPads. Instructions in our Email signatures and templates guide here. 

Queer Alliance 

To learn more about the city’s Queer Alliance employee resource group and how to get involved, visit their website here. In addition to hosting supportive and action-oriented monthly meetings, the group provides a ton of helpful community resources and digs in deep on city policy. A big shout-out to PBOTers Valency Astris and Judge Kemp who are part of the Queer Alliance’s leadership team! 

PBOT Zazzle Store 

We never miss a plug for our PBOT Zazzle store featuring shirts, mugs, and other PBOT-branded items including PBOT’s Pride logo, Pride unicorn mascot, and other gift ideas you might have to treat yourself or the PBOT fan in your life. 

Submitted by Rob Hemphill 

The SW Strolls community walks are underway! This series of group walks highlights the new SW Capitol Highway project as well as the urban trails PBOT helped build through a partnership with SW Trails. With over 70 attendees between our April and May events, the series is quickly establishing itself in the neighborhood. 

A big project, a long time coming 

PBOT is almost done with the SW Capitol Highway project, something the neighborhood has been clamoring for since the early 1990s. It includes new sidewalks, a bike path, and a multiuse path where people used to use a “goat path” along the side of the road. The SW Capitol Highway project is a collaboration with the Portland Water Bureau and the Bureau of Environmental Services, funded through the Fixing Our Streets 10-cent gas tax, transportation system development charges, Oregon Lottery-backed bonds authorized by the 2017 state legislature, as well as our bureau partners.  

Activation, activation, activation 

The Active Transportation & Safety team created SW Strolls to activate the area and capitalize on the neighborhood’s enthusiasm for the new infrastructure. Activation of this kind highlights and normalizes walking for daily trips. It also reduces driving. Given how many neighbors were walking these sidewalks before they were finished, we knew there was great demand for active transportation options. 

To ensure that we were meeting the community’s needs, PBOT staff met with neighbors, the Multnomah Village Neighborhood Association, the Multnomah Village Business Association, Barbur World Foods, and SW Trails to discuss what type of activation would be useful. Settling on the idea of community walks, we worked with SW Trails, a volunteer-based organization that maintains the half-dozen urban trails in Southwest Portland and organizes two community walks each month. SW Trail #7 runs adjacent to the new SW Capitol Highway corridor which made it ideal for SW Strolls which incorporates both urban trail and the newly paved sidewalk. The walk became a loop that shows two different ways to get around the neighborhood.  

SW Trails agreed to lead the walks and incorporate SW Strolls into their monthly walking series. 

Many thanks 

SW Strolls wouldn’t be possible without help from those both in and out of PBOT. Thanks to Rachel Lobo, Renata Tirta, and Alyssa McGhghy with Active Transportation & Safety as well as Steve Szigethy and Ashley Lopez in Capital Delivery. Thanks as well to Cat Cheng with PBOT Communications for the amazing graphic design. Big shout out to our many partners including SW Trails, Multnomah Neighborhood Association, Multnomah Village Business Association, Barbur World Foods, and individual neighbors in the area. 

Join us for our next stroll June 3 and stay tuned for details on our ribbon-cutting grand opening later this summer! 

Submitted by Rob Hemphill 

Ride Every Wednesday wrapped its two-month campaign April 26 with our final event at Deadstock Coffee in Old Town. Throughout March and April, the campaign, hosted by the Active Transportation & Safety team, rewarded commuters who used active modes of transportation for getting downtown such as transit, biking, walking, and rolling.  

This campaign was in tandem with employers encouraging employees to prioritize coming into the office Wednesdays. PBOT wanted to encourage these workers to choose other means of travel other than driving. Those who attended our pop-up events were eligible for rewards, free coffee, and Rose Lane swag. At the booths, PBOT staff shared information about Rose Lanes and how they were making transit and biking trips faster, more reliable, and safer.  

Participation far exceeded our goals from day one. Over 1,600 Portlanders attended a coffee pop-up! As part of the campaign, we also used a texting program to send messages that encouraged a change in behavior to more active transportation. Texting this way netted over 800 subscribers who were highly engaged. Over half even completed our post-campaign survey!  

Despite the early mornings, attendees were cheerful and grateful for the coffee and conversation. One attendee said “your program is a delightful part of my return to office effort!” Some attendees even became weekly regulars starting their mornings with hot coffee and social time with fellow bike and transit commuters.