Back in 2007, a controversial effort to rename Interstate Avenue after César Chávez collapsed in on itself without the name change ever taking place. This time, things will be different—at least if the City of Portland gets its way.

On Wednesday night, February 11, about 30 neighborhood organizers filled the seats of a workshop called, "When Controversy Comes to Your Neighborhood." The meeting, at the Portland Building on SW 4th, was led by Judith Mowry from the city's Office of Neighborhood Involvement, and revolved around a new pamphlet the city put together to help neighborhood associations manage tense meetings and hostile crowds.

"This is sort of an accumulation of lessons learned," said Mowry. "If you have ranters and screamers, you haven't created a way for everyone to be involved."

The guidebook includes tips on how to run tough meetings, and on how to deal with racially or otherwise prejudiced comments—"Be playful, keep it light, but don't let them off the hook."

The controversy workshop analyzed the 2007 Chávez renaming ordeal as a model scenario of process gone wrong. During that particular controversy, participants voiced some criticism of the city planning process, saying it often excludes regular Portlanders from the important early stages of big project plans.

Meanwhile, others argue that most of the controversy around the last attempted Chávez rename came about because the city didn't follow its own code regarding street renaming—although the city has never, in fact, followed the code. It waived the process when it renamed Union Avenue after Martin Luther King Jr. in 1989, Front Avenue after developer Bill Naito in 1996, and Portland Boulevard after Rosa Parks in 2006.

This time, the city has employed three mediation consultants—at a cost to taxpayers of $35,000—to shepherd the rename through to completion, while attempting to follow city code to the letter.

"Oregon is known for wanting lots of public process," says Mike Greenfield, one of the three consultants. "[City council] could just haul off and do it, but there might be a little trouble at the ballot box."

Council will ultimately make a decision on whether to rename a street this spring, but only after it has sought input from the Portland Planning Commission and a newly established historian panel, which met for the first time on Thursday, February 12. The panel's job is to decide whether any of the three streets now up for renaming—39th, Grand, and Broadway—have enough "historic significance" to keep their current names.

The panel will not be hearing testimony on how much it may cost to rename the streets, or the price of printing new stationary for area businesses.

"That's something that would be more appropriate for the planning commission," says Kathy Fuerstenau from the Cully Neighborhood Association, who sits on the panel.

In addition to surveying residents near the three streets by postcard, the historian panel also plans to hold three three-hour hearings, tentatively slated for March 23 (Grand), March 30 (Broadway), and April 6 (39th), near each of the streets, to ask residents about the historic significance of their street's current name, and the appropriateness of renaming their street after César Chávez.

Last week, the panel discussed logistics for the hearings. They'll be in public, accessible locations, with a plainclothes security officer present, and each member of the public who signs up to testify will get three minutes to speak.

"Hopefully the process will be more respectful and run more smoothly, and that's the whole goal here," said Fuerstenau.

"This is a new start for everybody," said Marta Guembes, co-chair of the committee pushing for the rename.