Tom Murphy Named 2014 Tigard’s First Citizen

Tom Murphy, a Tigard resident and attorney with Scott-Hookland LLP, has been selected as the 2014 recipient of the Tigard’s First Citizen award.  This award recognizes someone who has made in-depth, long-term volunteer contributions to the Tigard community over the years. The winner is active, involved, interested, and enthusiastic about making Tigard a nice place to live and work. This individual excels in any area of unpaid endeavor of education, social services, youth work, and community improvement of public services. This award is given in the spirit of all volunteers who remain unknown. The recipient joins the ranks of those previously honored in continually striving to improve the Tigard Area. Tom is an exemplary individual with a strong sense of social responsibility and a volunteer dedicated to improving the future of Tigard for all individuals and businesses.  His contributions include membership on the City Center Advisory Commission (CCAC), board member of Community Partners for Affordable Housing (CPAH), founding committee member for the Tigard Downtown Alliance (TDA) and lead driver behind the Stop Congestion – Vote No Political Action Committee (PAC).
For 14 years, Tom Murphy has served on the board of CPAH and for the last 9 he has been a member of CPAH’s executive committee, serving as chair and then vice chair. Additionally, he helped form the agency’s first Advisory Council, and served for many years as its Housing Committee Chair.  He has rolled up his sleeves on projects ranging from landscape restoration to bylaws revisions, and attended and led countless meetings for CPAH every month for 14 years—a conservative estimate would probably be over 300 meetings. 
Tom’s capacity to connect CPAH with resources in the community, and to cultivate new relationships has been instrumental in helping CPAH thrive as an organization.  Tom understands the significant role that affordable housing plays in providing opportunities for families to build better lives. To succeed, everyone needs a place to call home! He truly wants all residents in the community to thrive and have a strong voice. His work on the CCAC has dovetailed nicely with his CPAH work—providing an opportunity to share the hopes and dreams of hundreds of families who live in the downtown Tigard area or nearby.
Tom has served more than six years on the CCAC, the citizen advisory board for urban renewal. He has guided the CCAC three terms as Chair and one term as Vice Chair.  His abilities to clarify issues, ask difficult questions and propose solutions have been vital to the commission as it works with the city to address issues and plan projects. Among the programs that the CCAC helped advance in that time period are the Façade Improvement Program and Targeted Incentive Program which provide matching grant funds for businesses to improve both the interior and exterior of their businesses, improving their aesthetic, function and customer appeal.  This has had a major impact on Downtown Tigard as evidenced by a drive through of downtown.  Working in downtown Tigard for Scott-Hookland, Tom has also developed relationships with downtown business and property owners and has helped develop closer working relationships between the CCAC and Downtown stakeholders.
This is evidenced by Tom’s role in the TDA leadership team.  Tom has brought to the TDA not only his legal skill in helping the organization develop bylaws, determine appropriate non-profit type, but a passion for revitalizing downtown and insights into CCAC programs and projects which can benefit downtown Tigard and advice to the committee on engaging with key alliance partners. 
Continuing his focus on making Tigard a better place to live, Tom was the lead driver behind the Stop Congestion –Vote No PAC opposing the recent ballot measure 34-210. He understood the need to build a team to reach out and communicate to Tigard’s citizens on the potential future impacts of this ballot measure.  His dedication and passion inspired and rallied a motivated group that rose to this challenge.
As you can see besides being a highly skilled professional in the arena of construction law, Tom is a thoughtful, articulate, witty, and inspiring leader. He devotes much of his free time to making the community he lives in a better place—giving unselfishly of his time and talent.
Please join us in congratulating Tom Murphy on this well-deserved award.  This award will be formally presented with other Tigard volunteer and business awards at Tigard’s 2014 Shining Stars Community Awards Celebration, sponsored by Platinum Title Sponsor Washington Federal and held on Friday, April 25th from 5:30-9 p.m. at Embassy Suites – Washington Square, event location host. With a theme of “Get Your Groove On”, this 1960’s themed dinner event includes dinner, silent auction, dessert dash, awards, and more. Tickets are only $35/person, dress is casual, 1960’s.  So grab some groovy gear and come join us to celebrate Tigard!
For further details about Shining Stars, please contact the Tigard Area Chamber of Commerce at 503-639-1656 or at debi@tigardchamber.org  or go to our webpage at www.tigardchamber.org
Tigard Area Chamber of Commerce (TACC)
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