02/27/2023
The City that works, isn't working well
Eleven North Portland Neighborhood Associations and about 19 non-profit orgs are supported under the North Portland Neighborhood Services (NPNS) umbrella. This organization is housed in the Historic Kenton Firehouse. NPNS is part of Portland's Office of Community and Civic Life (OCCL) which is part of Comm Dan Ryan's portfolio.
In recent years the OCCL has been in turmoil as it passed through two single-term city commissioners, and had its Director, fired. Now with Comm Dan Ryan, the office still struggles
to competently perform its assigned functions. A recent example is when OCCL allowed required liability insurance, covering neighborhood association and non-profit organization
board members, to expire. What had been a routine event turned into a disaster. Without city required and city funded liability insurance, several organizations ceased operations to protect
their volunteer board members from potential liability exposure.
That is one of the reasons that NPTL closed for several weeks in October of 2022.
Efforts to renew the insurance coverage resembles a Keystone Cops skit. Lists of insured parties are repeatedly submitted with key member organizations missing. Errors are pointed out, corrected organizational lists are provided to OCCL, and then their mistakes are repeated. Competent supervision within that organization is lacking. Our organizations are repeatedly
assured that insurance coverage has been reinstated, but OCCL is unable to send documentation proving that is true. In fact, OCCL Management sends documentation not related to the insurance in question and provides insurance documents that do not list all of the covered organizations. Let's face it, if a claim is filed and your organization is not listed as "an insured" then you have NO COVERAGE! Not being on the list is a real big omission!
We need you to email Commissioner Ryan right away at: [email protected]
to ask him to push the staff at the Office of Community and Civic Life to respond to us about insurance, and to budget for those two full time staff at the North Portland Neighborhood Office.
