If your idea of a terrific job would be a walk in the park, you likely would envy Jordan Porter.
These days, Porter is entering the warm-season prime time as Tigard’s first and only park ranger in recent memory, having completed a pilot tour in the position in December.
In the seasonal role, Porter drives a pickup truck labeled Park Ranger – fittingly, a Ford Ranger – and wears a uniform to assert an official but friendly presence, explaining park rules, pre-empting mischief, and giving parkgoers a greater sense of safety and security.
“I’m the guy who comes in and asks nicely,” Porter says.
Porter, 33, prizes his role, treasures Tigard’s 32 diverse parks and marvels at their quietude amid an urban center. “That’s phenomenal to have so close to home,” he says.
Nevertheless, as he knows from working in prior temporary ranger roles with the cities of Portland and Tualatin, his work is not always free of stress.
Porter recounts one encounter in which male youths were hanging out at a Cook Park shelter, blasting music so loud that much of the park could hear.
“I went up and tried to be my friendly park-ranger self,” Porter says, and to solicit the group’s willing cooperation. But when the interaction escalated, and Porter began to fear for his safety, he withdrew from the scene and called Tigard police, who came to douse the noise.
Porter possesses no power of enforcement of his own, other than persuasion.
In another instance, a man refused to leash his dogs in Dirksen Park, he says. Porter says he tried to cajole the man into obeying the park rules against off-leash dogs by suggesting he try any of the city’s four dog parks. But the man wasn’t having it. Eventually, Porter withdrew to defuse the escalation.
“It wasn’t a situation that was particularly unsafe,” Porter explains.
Each difficult interaction prompts Porter to reflect on his response and consider refinement, making him a little smarter for the next tension on the job, Porter says. “It’s a constant growth opportunity for me,” he says.
Most interactions are benign. Many are even enjoyable, such as his conversation with a little boy who wanted to draw on Porter’s limited knowledge about park plants.
Even without enforcement authority, Porter acts as a kind of boots-on-the-ground liaison, sometimes reporting activity in the parks to police and otherwise collecting data on his observations of violations and maintenance concerns for park maintenance and management.
Porter’s main goal is to win voluntary public compliance with park rules prohibiting smoking, off-leash dogs, graffiti, littering, camping, and fishing outside designated sites.
Among Porter’s interactions involving suspected rule infractions in the pilot year, 138 related to camping, 133 to graffiti, 74 to minor maintenance, 40 to major maintenance, 37 to smoking, 24 to fishing in undesignated areas and seven to evidence of fires, Gruen reports.
“As our system grows, it’s more and more important to have somebody with that official presence out there,” Rick Gruen, manager of Tigard’s parks and recreation department, told Tigard City Council in a March 17 presentation about the ranger program’s pilot year.
The idea is to curb misbehavior before it happens, Gruen says.
Most jurisdictions of Tigard’s size maintain ranger positions, he says. Gruen expects the Tigard role will endure. Gruen hopes the position will one day become full-time. That said, Gruen says a budget crunch for the city’s park and recreation function looms in 2028.
Meantime, Porter covers the city’s 16 miles of designated trails and an additional estimated 4 miles of unsanctioned trails, to watch for issues related to camping and upkeep.
He also appears in city social media videos on topics such as the dog-leash rule, an issue on which Porter tallied 125 interactions during his pilot tenure. For the dog-leash video, a city crew, including Porter, borrowed a parkgoer’s Samoyed named Frosty to win the animal video fame.
Gruen said Porter was “a character out there – in a good way.”
During each of his shifts from Wednesday through Saturday, Porter hits maybe eight to 10 parks, making himself increasingly familiar to the public, he says.
“I do get recognized, and I get people saying, “‘Hey, Ranger Jordon.’ Unfortunately, there’s still only one of me. So, we have more work to do.”
Over time, Porter may shoulder a broader scope both in educational programming and enforcement authority, Gruen says. “Each year that Ranger Jordan is willing to come back, we can add more responsibilities,” Gruen says.
Gruen says the need will never subside.
“It’s great to have parks,” he says. “It’s even better to have well-maintained parks. And on top of that, it’s greater to have clean and safe parks, which is supported by our ranger position.”
