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Sharon Meieran is gone from the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners, but she’s not forgotten.
On Friday, she sent an email to County Chair Jessica Vega Pederson, the four county commissioners, Portland’s mayor, and all 12 new city councilors, urging them to extend the life of the Sunderland RV Safe Park off Northeast 33rd Avenue just south of the Columbia River. WW first reported on the letter in Wednesday’s Murmurs column.
Sunderland, always intended to be temporary, has been so successful in getting RV dwellers and their rigs off city streets and into a central location where they can get services that its life should be extended, Meieran argues.
Her husband and co-petitioner, Fred Cirillo, a fellow doctor who ministers to the homeless through Portland Street Medicine, has treated people with chronic injuries at Sunderland. “It was the right place and the right time,” Cirillo tells WW. “It seems like it is really well run.”
Even so, the city intends to close the park March 31, as planned.
At a City Council work session Tuesday, City Councilor Dan Ryan, who helped open Sunderland, asked city staffers if the park was being closed to make room for a giant leaf mulching machine operated by the Portland Bureau of Transportation. “It’s hard to sit here and think we’re choosing a monster mulcher over saving the lives of Portlanders,” Ryan said.
City officials assured him that residents at Sunderland could move into a new RV safe park 5 miles away on Portland Road that has room for 70 vehicles.
Meieran says the city should keep both RV sites because there are enough vehicles on city streets to fill them. “They could double the number of people they serve and get double the number of derelict vehicles off the street,” she told WW in an email. “Expand the scale, scope and efficiency of an ideal shelter model. Finally start picking the low-hanging fruit.”