Donation buttons!

We just added PayPal Donate buttons to our website!

Help us meet our expenses by clicking on these buttons and spending freely.  Your donations will help us pay rent, keep our volunteers happy, replace consumables and buy more of the tools you want most.  You do not need a PayPal account to donate.  We get about 97% of whatever you give, and it's safe to use!

Tell your friends ... and hmm, perhaps even your parents!

Seismic retrofit - the city wants our help.

Last year SEPTL and St David's Church hosted a City of Portland seismic strengthening workshop.  The city is now asking for our feedback.  The links below are well worth reading even if you missed the workshop.  Here is what the city has sent us:

Having grown into major city long before scientists discovered its unique seismic vulnerabilities, Portland is now expected to experience a potentially devastating earthquake of magnitude 9.0 or greater. Work is underway to identify those vulnerabilities and make Portland a more earthquake-resilient city. This work -now embodied in the Portland Bureau of Emergency Management’s new Earthquake Response Appendix - will help lessen the severity of an earthquake’s impact on residents.

The Earthquake Response Appendix is a supplement to the City’s Basic Emergency Operations Plan and a framework for Portland's ever-evolving approach to earthquake response. Soon, this document will reach Portland City Council for consideration. In the meantime, PBEM is asking the public to thoroughly examine the appendix and provide feedback.

To learn more about the threats facing Portland’s energy, water, sewer, transportation, communication and building infrastructures; to understand the roles elected leaders, city officials, emergency responders, the private sector and community-based organizations play in the context of earthquake response; and to understand the partnerships established among public and private agencies to help support this response, please read the appendix.

To provide insight and comments about the document, please fill out the feedback form.

Kitchen Tool Library Opening Soon

Calling all food lovers! SE Portland residents are forming a kitchen tool lending library, Kitchen Share SE.

On Wednesday February 8th, from 6-8 pm, come to an Eat and Greet at Pyro Pizza and Potato Champion food carts, located at 12th and Hawthorne. The food carts will donate 20 percent of the proceeds from your dinner to help open Kitchen Share SE.

Going beyond the neighborly cup of sugar, Kitchen Share SE will be a place where community members can borrow tools and share in the joy of processing, preserving, and serving food. We hope to offer dehydrators, cider presses, canning equipment, ice-cream makers, food processors, bread makers, and more. We plan to grow into a community supported kitchen where we can share our culinary skills, nourish our bodies with healthy local food, and collaborate on projects.

This is a community directed initiative and we would love for you to share your input and get involved!  Join us for our next planning meeting, on Sunday February 5th at 6:30pm, at the People’s Food Co-op.

To learn more, contact Kitchen Share SE at kitchensharese@gmail.com, or 503-208-4706, and visit kitchenshare.org.

New tools!

Over the next few weeks I'll be posting some of the new tools we've purchased recently thanks to your very welcome donations and (ambivalence shows here) overdue fees.

From these sources of cash we pay our rent, pay for our website hosting, pay for supplies, and if any is left, we buy tools that you've told us you need!

These first two tools that have proven extremely popular.

Hitachi 10" compound Mitre Saw:

Greenworks 1700 PSI 1.4 GPM Electric Pressure Washer:

Thank you so much for your generous donations!  They really do make a difference.

Meeting: The future of our Tool Library - part 2

Come all friends of the Southeast Portland Tool Library (SEPTL) to a general meeting in which we will be discussing the future of the SEPTL.

The first meeting on this topic, in December, was unproductive as so few were able to attend with the holiday season approaching.  This is an enormously important topic for us to discuss with all those have an interest in the future of the Tool Library, so we are hoping you will help us by coming on this new date.

We need volunteers and we need money to help maintain and repair SEPTL tools.  Ideas that have been proposed are charging a small sliding scale membership fee 10 to 20 dollars; creating a Co-op out of the SEPTL, which again would result in some sort of membership fee; creating a committee to search and help create and host grant writing efforts, fund raisers and the like.

Come all with your ideas.  We will be in the Grace Room at St. David's unless we have to move to a location where we have more space.

When: Thurs, January 12, 2012
Time: 7 - 9 pm
Where: St. David's Episcopal Church, 2800 SE Harrison Ave

We closed early due to a lack of volunteers

We closed early last week due to a lack of volunteers. A hard truth.

It was the first time we've actually had to close our doors, but we've come close plenty of other times.

We need more of our members to become volunteers.  Simple as that.

Please, right now, offer to become a volunteer.  Our Tool Library is a community resource run entirely by people like you, and we are asking for your help.  Thanks.

Meeting: The future of our Tool Library

Come all friends of the Southeast Portland Tool Library (SEPTL) to a general meeting in which we will be discussing the future of the SEPTL.

We need volunteers and we need money to help maintain and repair SEPTL tools.  Ideas that have been proposed are charging a small sliding scale membership fee 10 to 20 dollars; creating a Co-op out of the SEPTL, which again would result in some sort of membership fee; creating a committee to search and help create and host grant writing efforts, fund raisers and the like.

Come all with your ideas.  We will be in the Grace Room at St. David's unless we have to move to a location where we have more space.

When: Thurs, Dec 8, 2011
Time: 7 - 9 pm
Where: St. David's Episcopal Church, 2800 SE Harrison Ave