At two jam-packed neighborhood association meetings last
week, neighbors overwhelmingly voted against a proposal that would
change Interstate Avenue to César E. Chávez Boulevard.
“You cannot have the avenue,” one elderly woman told the Chávez
committee, after they presented the idea to the Overlook Neighborhood
Association on Tuesday, September 18. “It’s Interstate, and always will
be.”
At both the Overlook meeting and an Arbor Lodge Neighborhood
Association meeting two nights later, neighbors who testified stuck to
the same themes: They like the idea of honoring Chávez, but
would prefer the committee take a look at alternatives to renaming
Interstate, which has its own identity and history in the neighborhood.
Moreover, neighbors are frustrated that the committee is following the
lead of those who renamed Portland Boulevard for Rosa Parks last
year—a change that skirted city rules governing street renaming,
and blindsided many North and Northeast Portland residents.
Several neighbors at both meetings asked the committee why they went
straight to the mayor and city commissioners to ask for their support
for an Interstate rename—which has given neighbors the impression
that the rename is a done deal—instead of coming to neighbors
first. The process requires signatures from 2,500 local residents (or
75 percent of property owners on the street).
But the committee sees the Portland Boulevard rename as a precedent.
“All we want is the same treatment that everyone else has gotten,”
committee member Sonny Montes explained to Overlook neighbors. “What
they want to do now is to treat us differently from the other groups,
and we said that’s not fair.”
Neighbors didn’t accept the rationale. At Overlook’s meeting, one
man who owns two businesses on Interstate asked if “the city council
and the mayor [would] break the city’s own laws” to change Interstate’s
name. “Or is it going to follow the city’s own process? There are a lot
of people still upset about Rosa Parks [Way] because it broke the
process.”
At Arbor Lodge’s meeting on Thursday night at Chief Joseph
Elementary, frustrated neighbors questioned their neighborhood
association chair, Christine Duffy, asking if their input on the
proposal really mattered. “Is this another token meeting for us silly
people who have an interest in our neighborhood? North Portland people
are getting real tired of this,” said one woman in a button-down shirt,
sitting with her neighbors in the school’s lunchroom.
Duffy encouraged neighbors to speak up. “The final decision lies
with the mayor and the city council. They can either go with our
consensus or go against it. But they are there to represent the best
interest of everyone within the city, so I think they do hear us.” Both
neighborhoods’ message was clear: A motion to “actively oppose” the
rename won 64-10 in Arbor Lodge, and 92-12 in Overlook.
There are two more community meetings scheduled to gather input on
the proposal. Both are at Ockley Green Middle School at 6:30 pm, on
October 3 and 9. A city council vote on the proposal is not currently
scheduled.