I move that we attend this meeting....

So The Villager did in fact go the Multnomah Neighborhood Association meeting last night after all. I suppose it was about what I expected it to be. The crowd was just about skewing as old as I thought, although there were a few younger (30-ish) folks there. At least two reporters, one of whom - Don Snedecor of the Multnomah Village Post - is rather a bit younger than I expected. It was refreshing to see that there were a few "regular neighborhood residents" (I assume) at the meeting.

It was short. We discussed, or rather witnessed the discussion of, several "issues" including the following list, some of which I'll be posting about in greater detail later today.

• The proposed re-routing of Tri-Met's route 39 bus


• A few mystery land use issues most probably related to people building the "wrong kind" of houses, etc.


• Larger land use issues accompanied by mutiple, multiple-page handouts that the Villager has not yet read


• The potential closing, reduction in funding for Fulton Community Center, and Multnomah Center, along with parks re-zoning

A funny thing - I had forgotten about the practice of making and seconding "motions" to do things like end the meeting and offer support for proposals. This is funny to me since I spend a disproportionate amount of my life in meetings. However, I have not been in this sort of meeting since, I think, the last PTA meeting I attended, at that would have been as a student. A grade school student.

There was an amusing interval towards the end of the presentation on the potential Tri-Met rerouting, wherein one of the attendees "moved" that we support the re-routing, but discussion erupted before the motion could be "seconded". I enjoyed watching the interplay between the co-facilitators, as they looked for an opening in the conversation to mention that the motion still had no second. This was much more entertaining in the moment, than it is reading about it later, to be sure.

Nevertheless the motion was eventually seconded. No such problem occured when a motion was put forth to adjourn.

I'm glad I went - I'll probably go back. Gotta be careful though, since meetings like this tend to stimulate my management tendencies. The last thing I need is to get "involved" in government, even at the neighborhood level, but I'll make sure that questions get asked!

Oh - there was some discussion about the existence of this 'blog, and some good-natured speculation about "The Villager's" identity. Prompted no doubt by an email I sent to Don Snedecor at the Post. Not exactly a "blogging" crowd last night, by their own admission, which is OK - I'm still working up enough content to justify being more public about this experiment. Thanks for the compliment though, Don.