Still need your help!!

Subject: Our Neighborhood Businesses Are Calling For Help —  A BottleDrop Here Could Be the Breaking Point

Hi Petition Supporters,

A quick update — and an urgent request for your help this Labor Day weekend.

Our neighborhood small business association sent their own letter to Mayor Wilson and City Council, saying exactly what we've been saying: this cash redemption site doesn't belong at SE Powell and Milwaukie. It's powerful. [Read their letter here: https://share.google/WUoESaYFbQkGTnJGk — feel free to share it with other local businesses and/or use it as a template for your own email to city council. 

To be clear about who needs to hear from you: OBRC is the company that profits from Oregon's bottle deposit system, and it isn't adequately covering the costs and impacts this site would create for our community or for the City. Meanwhile, our District 3 elected officials have stayed largely silent while alarms bells about the project's viability and safety have only grown louder. 

Many of Portland's independent, small businesses are already under duress from a host of challenges — higher costs, theft, break-ins, decreased foot traffic. Concentrating a cash-based redemption operation here doesn't just add another challenge on top of that. For some of these businesses, it could be the breaking point.

Yet OBRC and the City are plowing forward anyway, despite:

Environmental contamination on the site that still hasn't been resolved after months
A 60% cut to the budget for operations and safety measures
A dangerous, problematic intersection that OBRC continues to ignore
This Labor Day weekend, take one action: email our three District 3 City Councilors and ask them to weigh in.

Novick — Councilor.Novick@portlandoregon.gov
Morillo — Councilor.Morillo@portlandoregon.gov
Koyama Lane — Councilor.Koyamalane@portlandoregon.gov
All three are up for re-election — this is exactly the moment they need to hear from you.

Ask them directly: will you push OBRC to fund and manage impacts responsibly, and support a 12 month pause to relocate to find a more suitable, safe, accessible industrial site as Senate Bill 992 encouraged but has been ignored?

And help us reach 1,400 signatures by Monday — please share the petition (add petition link) with 1 or 2 people today.

This isn't just a SE — OBRC has not been a good neighbor in other neighborhoods in Portland and across the state.If you know neighbors outside District 3, encourage them to reach their own councilors and state elected officials as well. 

Thank you for standing with us and adding your voice to our growing chorus demanding more accountability and responsiveness to improve Portland's livability. 

The Inner Powell Alliance