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Escuela Viva Community School, a preschool in the Buckman neighborhood, has threatened legal action against Multnomah County unless it pauses plans to put a drug deflection center one block away.
In a letter to a committee convened by the county to implement drug deflection, an attorney for Escuela Viva says the county’s plan to open the center by Sept. 1 is rushed and the deadline is artificial.
The Legislature repealed parts of Measure 110 and recriminalized illegal drugs with House Bill 4002 in March. Seeking to avert a new battle in the war on drugs, it urged Oregon counties to deflect people arrested with user amounts from jail and toward treatment.
Multnomah County Chair Jessica Vega Pederson has been leading a closed-door group of mental health professionals, public defenders, and law enforcement officers to craft a deflection plan built around a dedicated building. The county has maintained that the center must open by Sept. 1 and has leased a warehouse on Southeast Sandy Boulevard that it plans to retrofit for deflection.
“Escuela Viva strives to be a welcoming neighbor, but it is disturbed that the deflection center proposal completely disregards the safety of Escuela Viva children and staff, and it is dismayed that you have raced toward the artificial Sept.1 deadline behind closed doors, without the transparency Oregon law requires,” the letter from Perkins Coie lawyer David Watnick, obtained by WW, says.
Escuela Viva opened in 2004 and has been in its current location on Southeast Pine Street since 2010. It has participated in Multnomah County’s Preschool for All program since 2022.
“As you know, HB 4002 makes it fully optional for counties to adopt deflection programs and provides no deadline for such programs,” Escuela Viva’s letter says. “And the statute says nothing at all about physical deflection centers. Your race to open the deflection center by Sept. 1, after just weeks of planning and at millions of dollars of taxpayer expense, is improper and likely illegal, and threatens egregious harm to Escuela Viva and its community.”
In meetings, county staff and representatives from Tuerk House, the Baltimore nonprofit tapped to run the deflection center, have not told Escuela Viva how they plan to keep children and parents safe from people picked up for possession and dropped off at the deflection center, the letter says.
“Escuela Viva has not been presented with any external security plan to ensure the safety of the blocks surrounding the center,” the letter says. “Worse, proposed Center operator Tuerk House confirmed that its security guards will not provide service outside of the building, and county staff will not commit to any law enforcement presence around the center.”
“Your plan proposes to bring desperate individuals addicted to fentanyl, heroin, and methamphetamine to the deflection center, confiscate their drugs, then allow them to walk out of the center at any time—without mandatory transportation away from the Center,” the letter says. “This plan will invite a flood of drug dealing into the neighborhood, and drug use, violent crime, and obstructive sidewalk camping will follow. Since the 900 Southeast Sandy site was disclosed in late June, we have already seen an increase in open fentanyl consumption nearby.”
Escuela Viva says the county “intentionally concealed” the plan for the center until late June, just two months before the center was set to open.
“Rather than let community weigh in on a controversial plan with an artificial deadline, the leadership team kept the public in the dark,” the letter says, a violation of Oregon’s Public Meetings Law.
Multnomah County’s press office didn’t immediately return an email seeking comment.