Please join Rep. Ben Cannon, Rep. Michael Dembrow, and me for a Town Hall focusing on our accomplishments from the 2009 Session and what we can look forward to in the February 2010 Special Session.  We will be hosting this Town Hall at the Hollywood Senior Center on Monday, September 21st, starting at 6:00 pm.  As always, the town hall is open to everyone and we will do our best to leave plenty of time for a question and answer period.

 

I hope you will be able to attend our Town Hall.  Again, here are the details:

Volunteers Support PPS' Community Care Day
 

Each year right before schools reopen in the fall, volunteers have the chance to help spruce up Portland Public School (PPS) grounds at school sites all over our area.  Most of the 50 schools participating in this year's Community Care Day held their events during August, and that included Fernwood School in Northeast Portland where I volunteered this year.  We helped to spread mulch and bark chips, trim bushes, edge grass, pull weeds (as you can see us doing in the photo), and clean up litter around Fernwood.  I thoroughly enjoyed my morning at Fernwood making it a more welcoming place for students returning to school this month, and want to add my congratulations to the staff at PPS for organizing another great Community Care Day.

Community Care Day is especially important to our community since PPS has sharply reduced funding for maintenance services in an effort to protect classroom funding.  Only six groundskeepers are responsible for cutting grass and trimming shrubs at schools during the summer, and just two are responsible for grounds maintenance during the winter.  That is down from 14 year-round groundskeepers a decade ago.  There are simply not enough employees to adequately maintain school grounds, but as PPS itself states, students benefit tremendously from schools that are clean, tidy, and ready for a new school year.

   
PPS is still tallying the total numbers from Community Care Day this year, but last year more than 3,000 volunteers improved 76 schools and sites.  Those volunteers collected almost 400,000 pounds of yard debris and about 14,000 pounds of trash, completing work that was valued at $482,000.  I'm hoping that this year's numbers were even better than last year's, and maybe I'll see you, too, at next year's Community Care Day.

 

After concluding that part of the meeting, the Environment and Natural Resources Committee will continue with its own agenda and, among other items, we will discuss some legislative ideas for February.  One of those ideas that I particularly want to draw your attention to is a proposal to restrict products containing Bisphenol A (BPA) from being sold in Oregon.  BPA is a chemical found in many plastics and in the lining of many food containers, such as soup cans, canned fruits and vegetables, and baby formulas.  BPA is found in thousands of common consumer items, and most people will find household products and food containers in their home that contain BPA.  However, BPA is an endocrine disruptor, and it has been linked to certain cancers, diabetes, obesity, infertility and other reproductive problems, early onset puberty in children, and other disorders.  Despite mounting evidence of its adverse effects on human health, BPA is nearly unregulated.  Other states have passed or introduced legislation to restrict BPA, and Oregon briefly considered a bill last session that would have banned BPA in some products.  Unfortunately, that bill did not pass during the regular session, but we most likely will see legislation on this topic for next year's special session.

For a more complete agenda for the Senate Environment and Natural Resources Committee meeting, please go to  the Legislature's website.