A work session before tomorrow’s City Council meeting will explore whether all utilities along Jackson School Road should be moved underground. There are already extensive plans for improvement along the road, but those designs moved only some utility lines underground. No public comment is permitted during the work session, which is normal. Residents will have a chance to speak during the City Council meeting, during which there will also be a vote on the issue. To quote a city release about the potential change: The Council is scheduled to vote during the 7 pm meeting on whether to underground all utilities in the public right-of-way on the Jackson School Road Project, rather than the project’s current design, which calls for[…]
Author: Justin Pot
Justin Pot is the founder of Hillsboro Signal, and covers City Council. By day he writes about technology for How To Geek.
I’ve been the only journalist at Hillsboro City Council meetings for a couple of months now, so far as I can tell. Which is odd, because this is a city of 100,000 people, the economic engine of the state, and I’m just a citizen journalist. I’m a volunteer. I have no budget, no advertisers, and no desire to build a business model. I started doing this a year ago as an experiment, and it’s one I plan to continue. But I haven’t had much success generating interest, probably because I’m a better blogger than I am a promoter. The City of Hillsboro, meanwhile, is very good at getting its own point of view across. During a recent city council meeting[…]
Look out, Comcast: The City of Hillsboro is seriously contemplating offering gigabit fiber internet access to all residents for $50 a month, with no bandwidth caps. For those who aren’t tech savvy, that’s an absurd amount of speed at that price. Families that qualify for free school lunches could be charged as little as $10. It gets better: the $88 million infrastructure project required to do this could be paid for in 10 years, assuming 37 percent of residents and businesses use the service. That’s according to a report by Greg Mont, Information Services Director, and Suzzane Linneen, Finance Director, both of whom stressed that these are estimates during a a work session last week on Tuesday, March 20. Every single[…]
TriMet plans on extending the Red Line all the way to Hillsboro’s Fairgrounds, which will make getting home from the airport at night a lot easier, among other things. But what impact will more trains have on traffic in places where rail lines block the road, particularly 185th Avenue? That’s what city officials hope to look into, and on Tuesday City Council will likely authorize $450,000 of spending for a study. That price will be offset by funds from Washington County and the City of Beaverton. The focus of this study will be where MAX lines cross 185th, just north of Baseline. It’s one of the worst intersections in our city, and the MAX crossing there is “at grade,” which[…]
Intel spun McAfee off into its own company back in 2016, but the security company still has a big presence here in Hillsboro. They recently moved to a new space, as Mike Rogoway profile in the Oregonian points out: Tech companies make a game of naming their conference rooms. Some name the rooms for favorite beers, or superheroes, or nearby mountains and rivers. At McAfee’s big new office in Hillsboro, the conference rooms are named for the company’s enemies. Stuxnet, Mydoom, Nimda and CodeRed are among the most famous viruses to afflict computers. 375 people work in that office, occasionally using those cleverly named conference rooms. For some reason they have scooters for moving between them. Read the article for[…]
Chas Hudley is my independent journalism buddy here in Washington County: he runs both the Gales Creek Journal and the Banks Post. If you’re at all curious about what happens west of Hillsboro these are must-read publications. This week two opinion articles in those rural papers respond to the Fairgrounds’ main exhibit hall coming down this summer—one against, one for. Both articles are worth reading. Opposing the change was Lyle Spiesschaert, a forth generation farmer, who is concerned the county’s plans to build an event center on the fairgrounds is crowding tradition: In the recent twenty years, the county leadership has methodically and purposefully destroyed buildings, relationships, and either sold or traded land to assure an Event Center for the fairgrounds.[…]
Turn right onto Brookwood off main and you’ll see 47th Avenue veering off to the right. That’s currently the only way to get to a small neighborhood, which has emergency workers concerned. So the city is extending Hidden Creek Drive west of 53rd, creating a new way in and out of that neighboorhood. To quote a memo from Rob Dixon, Assistant City Manager: At the present time, if NE 47th Avenue is blocked due to an accident or natural disaster, residents are unable to get home, and emergency services must access this neighborhood through a locked emergency access gate located in the back of a nearby parking lot. This project will add a second public street connection to the neighborhood.[…]
The City of Hillsboro has four main tools to combat homeless, according to a report commissioned by the city and put together by ECONorthwest and presented to City Council this week. Those four choices are: Reduced parking requirements to incentivize new construction Participation in tax abatement programs to help preserve and develop new regulated affordable housing Opportunities for land donations to support new construction Use of general fund dollars as direct contributions to affordable projects – both for new construction and preservation of regulated and naturally occurring affordable housing. Each of these potential tools have pros and cons according to Senior Project Manager Chris Hartye, who outlined the tools during a work session before the March 6 city council meeting.[…]
The Fairground’s Main Exhibit Hall will be taken down, Washington County announced today on their website: The Washington County Board of Commissioners approved a plan today to close and remove the 66-year-old Main Exhibit Hall on the fairgrounds in Hillsboro due to a “severe life safety hazard” identified in a recent structural report by Scott Edwards Architecture. The structural issues included concerns about each building’s risk of losing stability during a significant earthquake, snow event, windstorm or, in the case of the Main Exhibit Hall, even holding up its own roof. The idea is for the building to be completely gone before the fair later this year, which the county website implies will still happen in Hillsboro this year. A[…]
Tri-Met is changing up its fine structure this summer, introducing a tiered structure for offenders and even offering volunteering as an alternative to paying. Ride without paying your fare under the current structure and you owe $175. Tri-Met is changing that up as of July 2018. Andrew Theen, writing for The Oregonian, summarized everything: The new fare policy creates a tiered approach and slashes the fine for first-time offenders to $75. Second offense could face a $100 fine, then $150 for a third instance and $175 for fourth time fare evaders and beyond. Another change: those who can’t pay have the option to do volunteer work instead. Theen again: Community service would be offered as an alternative, with TriMet providing[…]