Montavilla Neighborhood Assoc backs our petition.

Thank you David Linn, Montavilla Neighborhood Assoc & all who were able to attend tonight's Montavilla Neighborhood Assoc. Meeting. We are all very concerned members of this community and we all want to address the issue of crime in our neighborhood.

There is a lot of positive energy of people wanting to make our neighborhoods safer, but we also urge our elected officials to look to other cities on how they deal with the crime of prostitution. We are not the first to unfortunately deal with it and we can take key learnings from other cities, on how we enforce the johns - this should be at the heart of it, fees imposed on johns to help fund outreach for these victims/ women, etc - we have link on our blog on what other cities are doing.

We truly believe that the PFZ needs to be reinstated under an emergency status based on (if we are to dial into down to just 3 key simple reasons):
1. The research that the Mayor cited when lifting the ordinance did not even mention prostitution in the entire 18 pg doc it was lumped with the issues surrounding DFZ's enforcement.
2. According to the NRT - calls regarding prostitution have quadrupled since last year this time.
3. We the citizens around 82nd Avenue are having our safety compromised each + every day (read our blog to hear comments from your neighbors - how women are being threatened, children are being solicited in broad daylight).

Tonight's discussion was a great, great start. We, Montavilla In Action will pursue the petition reinstating the PFZ since this is at the heart of the safety issue. We will outreach to other Neighborhood Associations & Biz Assocs. to expand the dialogue and unite efforts - since all of Portland should have a zero tolerance on the blatant abuse of these women on our streets. We as a city need to react quicker - look at how quickly crime - the pimps took over this area since the ordinance was dropped last September!!! The city needs to start realizing patterns so we are just not pushing this around or letting it reach such a critical level again. If the johns knew there was going to be tougher laws would that help as a deterrent? John schools, higher impound fees, posting johns online, what if they have to do work crew - pick up the used condoms in our school yards, or in the parking lot of Walgreens, literally clean up 82nd? What if all of the Local Biz's signed Trespass Agreements put signs in their windows, united in this - would this help, etc - these are all bigger discussions and I urge proposed next steps - when is the next Montavilla Prostitution Summit Mtg? I urge all of us to try to make the time and focus on the areas/ solutions that we are most passionate about.

In the meantime all those that are collecting signatures thank you so much.