JULY 26, 2017
Portland and Seattle Volume XXXIX, No. 41
PHOTO COURTESY OF TRIMET
CHALLENGING PEOPLE TO SHAPE A BETTER FUTURE NOW
25
CENTS
News .............................. 3,8-10 A & E .....................................6-7
Opinion ...................................2 New NAACP President ...10
Calendars ........................... 4-5 Bids/Classifieds ....................11
NEW
CHIEF
TriMet to
Introduce SHARES
Low-Income
Fare
NEW
VISION
T
Portland commuters board TriMet bus.
New state funds will also
expand bus services
See TRIMET on page 3
“African Prince,” featured in Frison’s exhibit.
Local Mural
Artist Exhibits
page 7
Black Seniors Walk
Down Memory Lane in
Portland
page 9
Mike Myers, Portland’s
New Fire Chief, Pilots
New Program for
Managing Emergencies
By Christen McCurdy
Of The Skanner News
W
hen Mike Myers left the
Las Vegas Fire Department
2013, where he’d served as
chief since 2011, he found
he was nowhere near ready for re-
tirement.
Myers, now 50, moved to Chicago,
then to Montgomery, Florida, but
found himself restless and decided to
re-enter the job market.
“It was just boring,” he said of re-
tirement.
First he moved to St. Charles, Mis-
souri, outside St. Louis, and took a
job in that city’s fire department.
Then Portland Fire and Rescue an-
Portland Fire and Rescue Chief Mike Myers has announced a pilot project he hopes will help the
department better identify and address public health issues.
calls the fire department responds
to are urgent, but not in a category
that would require a paramedic’s re-
sponse — including non-emergency
medical calls. Numbers released by
Portland Fire & Rescue in response
to a request for more detaiedl list
“rescue and EMS,” which made up the
largest category in fiscal year 2016-17
numbered 52,341 out of 85,866 total
calls. At 61 percent)it is the largest
total category, but doesn’t break the
calls into emergency or non-emer-
gency categories.
But categories that clearly don’t
qualify as emergencies made up a
large share of the remaining 39 per-
cent of calls. These include “good in-
nounced it was searching for a new
chief, and he jumped at the chance.
Myers and his wife — with whom,
for several years, he ran a travel blog
that featured photos of the couple
kissing at destinations around the
world — had been eager to relocate to
the Northwest.
“We didn’t want to go just any-
where,” Myers said.
Myers is evaluating Portland’s fire
department top to bottom, looking at
hiring practices, training and emer-
gency response.
He’s also proposing a way to re-
spond to non-emergency calls he
says hasn’t been tried anywhere else
in the United States.
Myers said about 80 percent of
See CHIEF on page 3
Portland NAACP Makes Bid to Host
National Conference in 2020
Travel Portland estimates the conference would
add $6.7 million to local economy
By Christen McCurdy
Of The Skanner News
R
epresentatives of the NAACP
Portland Branch and Travel
Portland made a bid Tuesday to
host the organization’s national
conference in 2020.
Branch president Jo Ann Hardes-
ty, along with representatives from
Travel Portland and Metro, traveled
to Baltimore this week for the 108th
annual NAACP conference, where
national organizers accepted bids
for the 2019 and 2020 conferences.
A Friday press release announc-
ing the local branch’s plan to bid ac-
knowledged Portland, which Census
figures say is Whitest major Amer-
ican city, may be a counterintuitive
choice for the event. Recent confer-
ence hosts include Cincinnati, Phil-
adelphia, Las Vegas and Houston —
See NAACP on page 3
PHOTO FROM THE SKANNER ARCHIVE
riMet has announced it will be
adopting a low-income fare pro-
gram — a plan which has been
bouncing between the transit
agency and local advocates.
The program, said TriMet, has been
made possible through the passing
of Oregon’s transportation package
which, at $5.3 billion, funnels invest-
ments into transit across the state.
Alongside a low-income fare, TriMet
will also expand bus service.
“We couldn’t, as a region, move for-
ward until a funding mechanism was
PHOTO BY BERNIE FOSTER
By Melanie Sevcenko
Of The Skanner News
The NAACP Portland Branch put in a bid this
week to host the organization’s national
convention in 2020. Portland hosted the 69th
National Convention in 1978 at Memorial
Coliseum. Pictured here speaking at that event
is Benjamin Hooks, who served as executive
director of the NAACP from 1977 to 1992.