You'd have to be blind to fail to see the changes Hillsdale Main Street has brought to the  Capitol Highway commercial district in the last 30 months.

 

Banners, street plantings, murals, and a reconfigured parking lot. Add to that several high-visibility community events and hundreds of eager volunteers.

 

You could be troubled that the program, which has been funded by the City and generous business and community members, is likely to run its course next June.

 

Although I have supported the program and even helped establish it, I see it as only a phase in Hillsdale's civic and commercial evolution.

 

For all it has accomplished, Main Street has never won the wider support needed to be sustaining. Particularly egregious has been the meager support from most commercial property owners, the very group with the most to gain from a successful Main Street program.

 

Part of the problem is that Main Street never seriously made its case to commercial property owners. Nor did it stand up to and answer questionable concerns about the program.

 

Another issue was that, with notable exceptions, the larger community never bought into the need for Main Street. Hey, isn't buying two scones a week at Baker & Spice, an IPA at the Pub or Sasquatch and the occasional frock at Paloma enough?

 

Besides, Main Street seemed all about promoting business. What about the rest of us for whom Hillsdale isn't a business but home?

I agree that commerce and community go together, but one seemed to be ignored to the sole benefit or the other.

But that's soon to be history. Sometime early next year, this community must decide what to do "post-Main Street."

Fortunately the transition should be fairly smooth because Main Street has operated under the aegis of the Hillsdale Community Foundation. For three years the two organizations will have been virtually one. They share the same board.

But the Foundation's mission isn't to be, in essence "The Hillsdale Main Street Foundation." Its objective is to strengthen the entire community, including its schools, its infrastructure, its social service network, the library, the Farmers Market, trails etc.

Board members should represent a broad constituency. The Foundation needs to reflect the needs of the entire community.

And in return, the community needs to support the Foundation, which is a non-profit allowing for contributions to be tax-deductible.

Beyond direct financial support, the community contributes to the Foundation by donating books to and buying books from the annual Hillsdale Used Book Sale. Then there all those volunteers, not the least of whom serve on the board.

So Main Street needs to be seen in the context of on-going community building. Like the formulation of the Hillsdale Town Center Plan in the late '90s, Main Street has been a vibrant and constructive phase. It's time to start the exciting work building on its accomplishments and planning for the next phase of what Hillsdale is to become.

Just days after my commentary in the last issue about property tax inequities in Portland, the City Club issued an extensive report on the same problem. They called the current property tax a "Frankentax."

Jim Mayer, a Hillsdale resident and former Oregonian reporter, was on the City Club committee that researched the issue. I urge you to read Jim's thoughts about the tax. He wrote about them in a guest column in the Oregonian. You can find it HERE. The column also links to the City Club report itself.

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