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Dear members,

You share a powerful belief that Portland civic leaders can work more effectively and collaboratively to advance big ideas for the future of the city. Together, we’ve committed to an experiment — to test that belief by incubating a new space for collaboration, alignment, and action.

We’ve heard your priorities for what you believe this new space can contribute in Portland:

  • Connect leaders to align energy and strategies: 85%

  • Convene discussions to support solution-finding: 76%

  • Foster trust among civic leaders: 73%

  • Identify policy paths to support shared projects: 59%

  • Align resources for shared projects: 57%

In May, we kicked off twelve months of meetings, projects, and events. Our focus throughout will be the future of the central city and the changing form of government. Thank you for joining us!

As a reminder, here’s what we’re asking of you as founding members: 

  • Participate actively in this new community in 2024-25. The North Star team will coordinate a lively mix of learning opportunities, strategy and vision sessions, workshops, and no-agenda social time. No one’s taking attendance, but we hope this will become one of your most consequential civic activities. 

  • Show up as a participant, but provide feedback as a co-creator.

  • When opportunities arise to move toward action (and you know they will), participate as you are able. 

Let’s do great things together for Portland!

  • Chair: Caitlin Baggott

    Goal: Supercharge community visioning about the future of the central city —  where the river connects Portland’s economic engine with neighborhoods, arts, culture, and industry — by asking city candidates to share their visions, and engaging the community in events.

    • Chair: Charlie Hales

    • Goal: Develop recommendations related to the risks and opportunities of Portland’s commercial real estate financial stress, for government, philanthropy, business and community leaders

    • Chair: Susheela Jayapal

    • Goal: To be developed with team, starting in February 2025.

    • Chair: Amy Randel

    • Goal: At the member meeting in November 2024, we heard timely analysis of the risks of our present political moment, with a specific focus on the potential for the City of Portland to be targeted. Let's bring together our collective knowledge and expertise around protecting vulnerable groups, fascism and authoritarianism, countering extremism, and local resilience to map out and prepare for likely scenarios. 

  • Have an idea that would benefit from loosely structured team engagement? The North Star team can offer support with scoping your team's effort, an invitation to members to join, and meeting space at the Public Will Building.

    Email us with your idea!

Current Skunkworks Projects

A ‘skunkworks’ is a relatively small and loosely structured group who research and develop a project, often with great autonomy, primarily for the sake of radical, pragmatic innovation.

  • Meeting Notes 1/9/25 (Coming!)

    2025 Resources Document (Draft)

    Mapping Response Efforts

    You may need to request access. We'll try to respond within 24 hours.

  • Meeting Notes: Updated 12/5/24 You may need to request access. We'll try to respond within 24 hours.

  • We met twice in April with a focus on developing a loose "SWOT" analysis of Portland's approach to supporting big projects (like the OMSi District and Albina Vision Trust) with Public-Private-Community Partnerships.

    Meeting Notes
    You may need to request access. We'll try to respond within 24 hours.

  • We met once this summer to review new research about where Oregonians get their news, who they trust for civic information, and how civic trust and polarization are connected to the media industries struggles.

    Meeting Notes
    You may need to request access. We'll try to respond within 24 hours.

  • We met once this summer (in two sessions) to discuss OVBC's new community survey. Both discussions focused on the need to bolster community-centered communication about OVBC's findings, given the limited capacity that the media has to cover issues in a nuanced way.

    No meeting notes. Contact Amaury Vogel if you would like to write an opinion piece about the research.

Working Notes

We compile “action oriented” meeting notes after each meeting. We invite members to weigh in, connect the dots with other efforts in Portland, and explore next steps — even if you’re not part of the Skunkworks group!