May 18, 2009 - Hillsdale News

Legacy:

Don Baack reflects

on tenure

as neighborhood chair

On May 6, Don Baack finished his final term as president of the Hillsdale Neighborhood Association. In his more than six years in the volunteer position, he, more than anyone else, shaped Hillsdale's reputation with the City's bureaucracy.
Don Baack at desk

In the eyes of city officials, says Baack, Hillsdale was forward-looking, outspoken, critical and, at times, intimidating.

Those personality traits apply to Baack, a retired forest products industry manager and consultant.

Now free of his official duties representing the neighborhood association, Baack, 72, recently talked about the neighborhood's accomplishments and disappointments under his leadership - and about where Hillsdale might be headed.

Baack first got involved in the neighborhood when he attended a Hillsdale Vision Group meeting at Wilson High School in the early '90s. He remembers urging the group to broaden its membership. Next he worked on developing the SW Community Plan. As an avid walker, he immediately seized on the need to develop a city-wide trails system, which became his passion and led to his founding and leading SWTrails. (The photo at the end of this story shows him leading a walk.)

Baack, who admits to thriving on challenges and change, says that his tenure as president of the neighborhood association, was marked by highs and lows. Sitting on the couch in the comfort of his formal living room, he recounts the ups and downs like familiar twists and turns in a well-traveled trail.

A major challenge early in his tenure was working with new leadership in the neighboring Southwest Hills Residential League (SWHRL) to resolve overlapping boundaries with Hillsdale. The overlap had grown into a bitter dispute between the neighborhoods under prior SWHRL leadership. The solution organized by Baack and SWHRL's new president Jim Thayer, was to hold a vote in the affected overlap areas so residents could express their desired neighborhood affiliation.

Another serious challenge was Portland Public Schools' threat to close Rieke Elementary School. The neighborhood association joined parents and the business community to keep Rieke School open. School administrators backed off after the community pledge to increase Rieke's enrollment.

Baack, whose down-to-earth childhood was spent on farms and ranch land in Nebraska, southern Oregon and rural northeast California, pushed to put trails and environmental issues on the neighborhood association's agenda.
Don and Brian Sheehan

He won backing, and in many cases muscle power, for the volunteer construction of the Raz-Baack Crossing Bridge in Stephens Creek Park. The same was true for the fight against invasive plants in Himes Park and in the forested public land along the Terwilliger corridor. "We changed one of the most degraded park areas into a show-case for change," he says proudly.

(In the above photo, Baack is working with the City's westside planner Brian Sheehan.)

He also organized a full-court press on regional transportation planners to win $2 million in federal gas tax money to upgrade the Hillsdale segment of the Red Electric Bike/Hiking Trail. Another Baack-inspired pedestrian improvement was the new crossing signal at the busy intersection in front of the Watershed.

The landmark "Hillsdale" sign and the drinking fountain beneath it also benefited from Baack's, the neighborhood association's and SWTrails' involvement and financial support.

Early in his chairmanship, Baack and others lobbied to have parking removed from the west side of Sunset Boulevard so that pedestrians weren't forced into the street by parked cars.

Baack says that he made sure that government officials brought their plans for Hillsdale to the neighborhood association early in the planning process. "We let them know that if they didn't involve us early, they were going to have trouble." At times, he recalls, "our meetings could be ferocious encounters" for the officials. "It was a great place for government accountability."

While neighborhoods have little official influence, Baack gave Hillsdale clout through communication. "With e-mail, you can get government's attention very fast," says Baack, who maintains an e-mail list for Hillsdale that numbers between 300 and 400. He estimates his citywide list has between 600 and 1,000 recipients.

Would such clout have beeen possible 20 years ago, before the Internet? "No way!" Baack says.

He remembers showing up to one meeting with city officials and having the chair of the gathering comment to him, "Oh, you're the e-mail guy!"

Local media and the association's web site, also raised public awareness of how government affected the neighborhood, he says. Baack purposely attracted city-wide press attention, complete with photos of Don and his dogs on some trail. He describes himself as the neighborhood's "outfront" person.

He believes attendance at neighborhood association meetings on the first Wednesday of the month (7 p.m. at St. Barnabas Church) has improved during his presidency even thought the meetings typically attract only two or three dozen residents.

Looking to the future, Baack wants closer coordination and involvement between the Hillsdale business community and the neighborhood. He'd like Food Front Cooperative managers to resume coming to neighborhood association meetings, as they did when they were planning for the new store. The construction of a storage building behind the store, over the objections of some leaders, may have soured the relationship, he says.

He still talks of concerts in the "amphitheater" behind Rieke School even though youth and school baseball boosters have staked out the area for the sport, maintaining that concerts and baseball are incompatible uses for the now-fenced off field. Baack calls the conflict a "grave disappointment."

At the May 6 meeting, no one stepped up to take over the presidency vacated by Baack. (See story below) For now, leadership will be shared by four board members. Baack says the ad hoc leadership could lead to a time of "reassessment," part of a natural organizational "ebb and flow."

He's not planning to disappear. He says he'd like to help "tee up" the issue of slowly granting Hillsdale local control backed by significant amounts of City money. The effort should begin by identifying City functions that the community can take over. "Otherwise, our interests get lost in bureaucratic objectives," he says.
don with hikers

Hillsdale, for instance, might manage its own parks or implement its own transportation plan. Otherwise, Hillsdale just gets lumped into citywide efforts. "The city needs to realize that the east side and the west side are very different especially when it come to pedestrian issues. It's as different as sidewalks versus trails."

The new neighborhood leadership needs to "get as many people as possible to participate. "Everyone should have a chance to kick the cat," he jokes.

"That's what I've told myself when I started. Whether I've pulled it off, I don't know," he says with a shrug of finality.