In past decades, about 20 employees filled the downtown headquarters of Portland’s pioneering neighborhood association program.
Now it is just Adam Lyons.
“I am the program right now,” Lyons told the NW Examiner.
Lyons has a cubicle in a sprawling—though mostly empty—floor in the Portland Building, about 30 square feet reflecting the diminished status of neighborhoods in City Hall.
His title, under a contract that ends in June, is interim district and neighborhood liaison.
If the program is to grow, it may first need to redefine its mission.
The former chief executive of the Office of Community & Civic Life, Amanda Garcia-Snell, was ushered out this spring under a nondisclosure agreement, making the circumstances around her departure a mystery. It may have had something to do with Garcia-Snell’s attempt to unilaterally redirect the program without engaging the 95 Portland neighborhood associations or considering their historic role in the system.
City Administrator Raymond Lee hinted at such during a discussion at the Portland City Club in June.
“There was a disconnect between our neighborhood associations and the direction of our leadership within that department,” Lee said. “I don’t know if we provided the guidance and the support … to ensure that it was meeting the standard that people have of our community engagement and civic life programs.”
Lee referred to a high turnover rate in program leadership over the past decade, long before he came to Portland last year.
“This tells me this issue is much bigger than just an individual. Is it the structure of how we’re functioning as an organization? If not, we’re just insane, because we keep repeating the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results,” he said.
Absent any clear marching orders, Lyons is listening and learning. He recently was able to add a part-time assistant. His supervisor, Laura Oppenheimer, the interim chief engagement officer for the city, is working with City Council members in applying new city charter code language that puts the office squarely under the authority of the city administrator.
Before Lyons can focus on rebuilding trust in the program, he has some chores to take care of. He recently learned that emails to Civic Life requesting information went into a blackhole for six months, and he’s gradually getting back to a long list of spurned citizens.
“I didn’t know how much administrative work there is to this program,” he said.
Lyons’ main thrust is reaching out to associations and coalitions, and assessing where the program might find a niche.
“They asked me to go through a reset process because I have a background in neighborhoods and I have relationships,” he told District 4 Coalition board members last month.
Lyons was executive director of the Northeast Coalition of Neighborhoods from 2016-2020, a period in which City Hall was openly hostile toward neighborhood associations, disparaging them as opponents of diversity and inclusion.
City councilors Chloe Eudaly and then Jo Ann Hardesty oversaw the neighborhood office for successive four-year terms not known for neighborliness. Eudaly even took the word neighborhood out what had been the Office of Neighborhood Involvement.
“I love Northeast Portland, and when I became a director there, I loved that job. Then all of a sudden, the neighborhood war stuff happened. … It was just really depressing,” Lyons said. “I had to spend from 2018 to 2020 dealing with an angry or combative city infrastructure.
“The thing that I thought was so detrimental about the approach was that we had amazing neighborhoods and did amazing things.”
He then moved on to campaign for Mingus Mapps, who was fired from his Civic Life job and then defeated Eudaly’s reelection bid. Lyons then joined Mapps’ council staff.
Lyons said the anti-neighborhood attitude has largely disappeared.
“I never would have imagined that there was this much positive energy because of how bad it was before,” he said. “I hear the City Council members speaking highly of neighborhoods … The bureaus are really interested in getting much more engaged, and the neighborhoods seem pretty jazzed.”
But before peace and comity predominate, there is still the matter of city charter amendments adopted by the outgoing council in 2024 putting the Office of Community & Civic Life under the control of the city administrator.
District 4 Coalition President Todd Zarnitz discovered the unpublicized and undiscussed transfer of the program that Garcia-Snell relied on to bypass neighborhoods. Other district coalitions joined District 4 in protesting Garcia-Snell’s dictate, leading Lee to pause her initiatives.
But until the charter is amended or clarified, Zarnitz said this is no time to relax, fearing the administrator could “clamp down” on neighborhood associations if they interfere with city goals.
“If we’re under the thumb of the city administrator, that makes it nonfunctional,” he said.
Claire Carder, who represents the Maplewood Neighborhood Association on the District 4 Coalition, shares the concern.
“The way they changed it was underhanded,” said Carder, who believes the City Council needs to be involved in decisions about the program’s direction.
Another representative to the coalition expressed her skepticism on a private discussion blog.
“Why is this [Lyon’s] job temporary?” the representative asked. “If the city won’t even put someone in charge who is going to stick around, it sounds like Civic Life doesn’t have a future. … This feels all too familiar; that the city is trying to dismantle the neighborhood system yet again.”
With such undercurrents percolating, Lyons has little job security.
City Council is tentatively scheduled to hold a work session on Sept. 29 regarding policy direction for OCCL programs and citywide community engagement practices.
Lyons knows Northwest
Adam Lyons is no stranger to the Northwest District and Goose Hollow.
In the 1970s and ’80s, his parents operated Urban Gardens at 2714 NW Thurman St., which is now a bike shop.
“My dad was friends with Bud Clark, and my parents’ courtship happened at the Goose [Hollow Inn],” he said, “My entire childhood … was around civic activism.”
His parents were also close to Mike Ryerson, a longtime Northwest District resident who published The Neighbor newspaper and later worked 20 years for the NW Examiner.
Although Lyons grew up near Lloyd Center, “I spent a ton of time in Northwest,” he said.
I kid you not, but during peak woke, the Office of Neighborhood engagement sent out a tweet telling Portlanders to avoid cultural appropriation in their choice of Halloween costumes.