Senior Center (Nancy Ream Enabnit)
Once again the Center hosted the AARP Tax Aide program. Long-time volunteers, Joanne Anderson and Virginia Frasier, assisted 110 people complete state and federal tax forms. This year it was an entirely paperless process.
Last year at this time the new drinking fountain/water bottle filler was installed in the center dining room. One year later the counter indicates the equivalent of 6300 water bottles filled–that’s 525 per month.
Parks
The bid for construction of Bornstedt Park was awarded to Paul Brothers of Boring. They have developed parks all over, including the Boring Station Trailhead. Paul Bros is especially happy to be working so close to home.
Preliminary results are in for the 585 park surveys returned. The findings will be presented to Council at a future workshop.
Recreation (Sarah Richardson)
A great deal of staff time was spent in coordination of the May 18th Bark for the Park. Local sponsorship and support has been overwhelming.
The Summer Recreation & Leisure Guide was assembled and edited. It is the final paper version. Classes are available for all ages and range from camps to computers to canoeing to antiques to crochet to yoga. Popular return offerings include horsemanship, hiking and transit trips.
Transit (Julie Stephens)
Total ridership this month was 20,871, a decrease of 6.8% from the same period last year. The SAM-Estacada route showed an increase of 14.4%; SAM-Gresham decreased 8.6%; STAR use decreased by 7.8% this month. ED use was up about 14%.
We took seven participants to Transit Day at the Capitol on April 10th. The group included staff, members of the Transit Advisory Committee, transit constituents, business owners and a SACC representative. We had very good meetings with Representative Mark Johnson, Senator Chuck Thomsen, Representative Bill Kennemer and a special treat when Secretary of State, Kate Brown, came to see a member of our group, Laurie Chilcote.
Transit staff presented the fare policy recommendation put forth from the Transit Advisory Committee at the Council workshop this month. After a comprehensive discussion and public comment, Council gave staff direction to further develop the policy based on the principles presented. Staff will bring a resolution to Council on June 3, 2013.
We received two bids in response to the 2013 RFP for Transit Operations. MV Transportation and RoJoy were the bidders. RoJoy is a new company formed by Joyce LeDoux, the current Operations Supervisor for OHAS. OHAS opted not to bid on the contract as their direction has moved away from transportation. The selection committee ranked RoJoy as the top bidder, so staff will work toward finalizing a contract with her.
Julie Stephens was invited to fill the Oregon Delegate seat for the Community Transportation Association of America. The seat was vacated by Elaine Wells of Ride Connection (CTAA) when she was nominated to the Board of Directors. Andi Howell and Julie will attend the annual CTAA conference in Albuquerque in June.
Julie and Andi developed Transit Tax Instruction Guidelines for Real Estate Agents. It was mailed to all realtors in Sandy. We offered to speak with each of the four real estate offices in Sandy. NW Prudential invited us to a meeting with all their agents; the questions were tough, but the information was well-received.