Commissioner Kafoury
District 1 June 2010 e-newsletter
June 16, 2010
Dear Friends and Neighbors,
On June 10th, the Multnomah County Board adopted the 2010-2011 budget. This was a challenging budget year, but not for the reasons you might expect. The County did have to make cuts to existing programs to balance our budget, but given the level of cuts we made last year, these were relatively minor. The big challenge lies ahead. In just two months, we expect the State will require us to make major cuts to our public safety and health and human services programs. Given this situation, my priorities for the budget this year were protecting the most vulnerable in our community, responding to the economic crisis, and reducing the number of new programs started with one-time-only money.
Here are a few highlights I want to share with you:
Budget Highlights:
- Housing for Pregnant and Parenting Teens - Our homeless youth providers (Outside In, Janus Youth, New Avenues for Youth, and NAYA - Native American Youth & Family Center) serve 1,000 youth every year. In the last year, they documented a significant increase in homeless youth who are pregnant and/or parenting. This year's budget provides additional case management and housing for these youth and their children in a program run by Janus Youth.
- Homeless Outreach - With the economic downturn, we are noticing more individuals and families forced to camp as their only means of shelter. Periodically the Sheriff's Office will perform sweeps of camp sites in East Multnomah County, but with most of our shelters full, campers have little or no options and often just move from one camp site to another. Our budget this year provides some funding to do outreach to campers in East County and help them move into housing.
- Preventing Obesity - The budget includes federal grant funding from the CDC to our health department to prevent obesity (and the chronic health conditions and high health care costs associated). The County is one of 44 sites in the country funded under the Communities Putting Prevention to Work stimulus-funded grant program. I serve on the leadership team for this grant and look forward to working with the school districts, cities, and non-profit organizations on policy and system changes that make the healthy choice the easy choice.
I want to thank the many community members who took time out of their busy lives to share their advice and opinions on the budget with us. I hope you will continue to contact me with your thoughts on what we're doing right and what we could be doing better.
Sincerely,
Download the complete newsletter here.
Portland Children's Levy Allocation Committee Approves $2.5 million in Grants
I am now the County's representative on the Portland Children's Levy Allocation Committee. On Friday, June 4th we approved $2.5 million in Leverage Fund challenge grant investments to nine programs. The Leverage Fund matches public dollars with private ones to maximize community impact and make more resources available for Portland's children.
The organizations/programs receiving funding are:
- The Library Foundation Raising a Reader, $430,000
- Children's Relief Nursery Eastside Expansion, $283,536
- Morrison Child & Family Services' Family Sexual Abuse Treatment program, $275,000
- Rosemary Anderson High School After School Program, $255,888
- Hacienda CDC Expresiones after school program, $255,576
- Janus Youth Programs' Safehome, $250,000
- Neighborhood House North Portland CASASTART in New Columbia, $250,000
- Peninsula Children's Center Childcare Quality Indicators Project, $250,000
- Self Enhancement, Inc. Parent Involvement Program, $250,000
We received 40 applications for funding and it was unfortunate that we couldn't fund every single one.
PDX Bridge Festival: July 23-August 8, 2010
PDX Bridge Festival will produce their first annual citywide cultural arts festival July 23 - August 8, 2010. PDX Bridge Festival highlights the importance of our bridges to the daily life and culture of Portland. The festival kicks off on Saturday, July 24th with "Hit the Lights" at 10:00pm, a lighting and fabric installation on the Hawthorne Bridge that makes use of programmable and environmentally-aware lighting technology to interact with the nightly vehicle and bike traffic on the bridge. The lights accentuate panels of fabric installed in the bridge trusses and lift towers, turning the structure into a wash of color and moving light and marking the rhythm of commuter traffic as it moves across the bridge. The installation will be visible for the 15 days of the festival but make sure to attend the ceremonial opening night event when they "hit the lights!"
The Interfaith Summit on Homeless Children, Youth and Families
In September of last year, Oregon Department of Education announced that over 18,000 students enrolled in Oregon schools are homeless. This is a 14% increase from the previous year, and a 122% increase since Oregon schools began tracking homeless students in 2003/04.
The increase in the number of homeless children and youth is symptomatic of the broader trends with regards to overall homelessness. Oregon is now ranked number one among states in the percentage of its population experiencing homelessness.
Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon and other sponsoring organizations are inviting you, your congregation, or your organization to join in co-sponsoring, planning, and attending a statewide Interfaith Summit of Homeless Children and Families, to be held Thursday, June 24, 2010 in Salem.
The summit is intended for religious leaders of all traditions, congregational members, non-profit service providers, homeless activists, government officials, and anyone concerned about the growing numbers of homeless children, youth, and families in Oregon and nationwide.
To learn more about the summit or to register, click here.
Contact Us
Commissioner Deborah Kafoury
501 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Suite 600
Portland, OR 97214
(503) 988-5220
district1@co.multnomah.or.us
The Multnomah County Health Department's 2009 Speak Out LGBTQ Health Survey reported that 82 percent of respondents experienced insults or verbal abuse at some point in their life, 55 percent experienced threats of violence or intimidation, and 22 percent reported employment based discrimination based on sexual orientation and/or gender identity.