Seniors need air conditioning

The air conditioning at Multnomah Art Center has been broken since February. [The Multnomah Center is a Portland Parks & Recreation facility in SW Portland ~ AF]. I want to register for a class being offered there in August, but cannot unless the air conditioning is fixed, due to my health needs. Other people are also staying away until the air conditioning is fixed. The Multnomah Center is a designated cooling center for seniors!!!

The staff at the center has had their work order in for this repair for a very long time. I called Commissioner Saltzman’s office this week, to demand action. Matt Grumm, his parks bureau liaison, said Commissioner Saltzman’s office didn’t hear about the problem until 1.5 weeks ago. Staff in Portland Parks & Recreation have been working on it since February, but have had trouble getting parts for this antiquated system and finding contractors to work on it. They are promising that it will be fixed by the end of this week or the beginning of next week.

I told Matt Grumm that if it cannot be fixed by that deadline, they need to find the $100,000 to replace this antiquated piece of junk with something reliable. The Center needs to bring in the money from class offerings, but it’s not going to do that with a broken air conditioner.

Parks’ budget keeps getting cut to subsidize developers at South Waterfront and elsewhere.

Is there any hope we can get this one thing fixed, and that we can somehow stop our city government from giving everything away to the corporations? Would more calls to Dan Saltzman’s office demanding action be helpful? Matt Grumm’s number is 503-823-3027.