Think Out Loud

Last month, President Trump announced that the federal government had obtained a 10% stake in Intel, Oregon’s largest private employer. Nvidia, one of Intel’s biggest competitors, announced last week that it would invest $5 billion in Intel. The company also got a $2 billion investment from SoftBank. Mike Wilkerson, director of Economic Research at ECOnorthwest, joins us to talk about what all this means for Intel and for Oregon.  

As recently reported in The Columbian, a housing hotline provided by Council for the Homeless in Clark County gets on average 130 to 180 calls a day. A small team with lived experiences that include homelessness and housing insecurity answer callers’ requests for help seven days a week. They share resources such as shelters with available space for the night or the  locations of warming or cooling centers activated during extreme weather events. Some callers may also be facing eviction or homelessness for the first time or are trying to escape situations of domestic violence.    According to supervisor Guy Hardy, the demand for the hotline’s services remains high amid the recent decline in federal housing assistance. President Trump’s budget request for the fiscal year starting on Oct. 1 slashes the Housing and Urban Development agency’s budget  by more than 40%. In addition to cuts to rental assistance, it seeks to replace money allocated for housing vouchers with state block grants and impose two-year limits for people in public housing.    Hardy and Sunny Wonder, chief operating officer at Council for the Homeless, join us to talk about the housing hotline and what its calls reveal about the housing and homelessness crisis in Clark County and the region.   

Portland City Councilor Mitch Green is introducing a proposal that would make it easier for sidewalk food vendors to operate in the city. The ordinance would remove city requirements that prevent vendors from operating outside similar businesses, such as restaurants, and without getting consent from adjacent property owners to operate on the sidewalk.   Green says easing the regulations could give small businesses a boost, but restaurant advocates say sidewalk vendors could hurt businesses that are still struggling to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. OPB’s Portland city government reporter Alex Zielinski joins us to talk about the proposed ordinance and more.  

Nine years ago, Union County voters overwhelmingly voted to pass Measure 31-89, which limited county commissioners to two terms, or eight years, in office. A whopping 68% of voters supported the change, which came from Union County Citizens for Good Government. Now, more than eight years after the measure took effect, Union County Commissioners will no longer be limited by term limits. In January, the county commissioners unanimously voted to have the measure brought to the courtroom, requesting the circuit court to examine the constitutionality of the measure. Earlier this month, County Clerk Lisa Feik shared that the court ruled in favor of the commissioners, ending term limits. Union County Commissioner Paul Anderes joins us to share why he and his fellow commissioners voted to bring this measure to the courts. We’ll also hear from Jim Mollerstrom, the former organizer for Union County Citizens for Good Government, to share why he was pushing for this initially and his thoughts on the change.

During the pandemic, schools from elementary to college took classes online by necessity. But 5 years later, a number of college students are still taking at least some of their classes remotely, even when they have an in-person choice. Online learning can take many forms, and include both synchronous and asynchronous formats. Some Oregon universities offer some degrees entirely online. At community colleges around the country, more than 40% of classes are offered online.   We talk with students and professors at two different Oregon universities about why online classes are still popular and the role they play in the overall educational system. Audrey Carlson attends Portland State University, and Kayla Ramirez is student body president at Oregon State University. Sebastian Heiduschke is a professor of German at OSU, and Bill Knight represents the faculty union at PSU, where he is a professor of English.  

The Pacific Northwest had a thriving punk rock scene in the 90s with bands like The Wipers, Dead Moon and Bikini Kill. One of the pioneering bands of that time is Team Dresch, which had its roots in the queercore movement. This year the band has been on a 30 year anniversary tour. Band members Donna Dresch, Kaia Wilson, Jody Bleyle and Marcéo Martinez join us to play some songs and talk about their legacy.

More than 100 Oregon students with both vision and hearing impairments are anticipating a decline in services in schools, as the federal government has suddenly cut a five-year grant for the Oregon DeafBlind Project. The program serves DeafBlind Oregonians from birth up until the age of 21 at no cost to families or school districts. The goal of the program is to provide training to local teachers and school staff to support students with DeafBlindness. Lisa McConachie is the director of the project. She joins us to share more on what these cuts will mean for students.  

As first reported by Oregon ArtsWatch, a new education pavilion is opening on Sep. 20 at Tryon Creek State Natural Area located in Southwest Portland, near Lake Oswego. The new education center allows the nonprofit Friends of Tryon Creek to hold community events and educational programming year-round for students to gather for classes, day camps and field trips inside the roughly 660-acre day-use area.   Friends of Tryon Creek is also leading the fundraising and construction of the $2.6 million education pavilion, which was built on the forest floor and features a design based on traditional plankhouses used by Indigenous Northwest tribes as communal gathering spaces for ceremonies, potlatches and other events. Four Indigenous Northwest artists have also been commissioned to create artwork that will be put on permanent display inside the pavilion. Six western red cedar lodgepoles were sustainably harvested from local forests and used for the new construction, along with bluestone that was used for the interior hallway to represent Columbia River basalt preserved in the landscape.    Friends of Tryon Creek executive director Gabe Sheoships is Cayuse and Walla Walla and a citizen of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation. Artist Shirod Younker is Coos, Miluk, Umpqua and a citizen of the Coquille Indian Tribe. They join us to share how they hope the new education pavilion will help students and visitors appreciate the pre-colonial history of Tryon Creek and the surrounding region.  

Earlier this month, the governors of Oregon, Washington and California announced they are forming a partnership called the West Coast Health Alliance. The goal of this new partnership is aimed at preserving access to vaccines and will also develop its own immunization guidelines. This comes after the the Trump administration fired the new director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and several scientists resigned from the agency. Now the group is sharing its guidelines recommending that everyone over 6 months of age should have access to the COVID-19 vaccine and that the vaccine should be accessible to “all who choose protection.” Dean Sidelinger is the state epidemiologist for the Oregon Health Authority and joins us to share more on this new partnership and their recommendations.

Oregon’s Tribal Early Learning Hub has faced a number of challenges since its creation. But this summer, state lawmakers passed HB 2815, which would invest more in early learning for Oregon's nine federally recognized tribes. As the school year begins, we hear from Jory Spencer, the early childhood service program manager for the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation. We also hear from Jennifer Reid, education director for Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians. They both join us to share more about their programs and what these new investments mean for them.