“We know you don’t often receive requests like this from your City agencies. But Sunday Parkways isn’t business as usual.”
— From an email sent out to rally financial support for Sunday Parkways.
The City of Portland is looking to follow up the smashing success of their 2008 Sunday Parkways event — but they’re still about $27,000 short.
Looking to bridge that funding gap, the Transportation Options division (within the Bureau of Transportation) sent out an email last week asking for individuals to help them reach their $200,000 budget goal.
From the email:
“Looking at significant shortfalls in City budgets, Portland Transportation Options called, emailed, wrote letters, and met with dozens of community partners to try to make Sunday Parkways a reality for 2009. As we face job cuts and reduced services, we had to find creative ways to fund this healthy, community building project.
We need to raise the remaining dollars from you – people who live and work in Portland neighborhoods. Folks who loved Sunday Parkways last year OR want to bring the magic of bike riding, strolling, rolling or skipping along the street in a car-free environment.
Now, we know you don’t often receive requests like this from your City agencies. But Sunday Parkways isn’t business as usual.”
manager for Sunday Parkways.
(Photo © J. Maus)
Sunday Parkways Program Manager Linda Ginenthal says they’ve raised just about $122,000 in sponsorships so far and that the City of Portland is throwing in another $50,000 that will cover traffic operations, barricades, etc… That leaves $27,000 they hope to raise with this individual appeal.
They’ve set up an online donation account (thanks to ORBike).
Ginenthal told me last week that they’ve got to work hard to raise the funds. She acknowledged that “this is a tough economic climate to raise money,” but she remains confident that Portlanders will step up to “keep the momentum going” for Sunday Parkways.
If they don’t raise the money, they’ll be forced into cost-cutting measures such as increasing the distance between porta-potties along the route, reducing the number of mailings and postcards prior to the event, and scaling back on activities along the route.
The three Sunday Parkways events planned for this summer will be in North (6/21), Northeast (7/19) and Southeast Portland (8/16). More info on how to volunteer and donate is at PortlandOnline.com.