Nicholas Stuyvesant Fish: Sept. 30, 1958 – Jan. 2, 2020
Nick Fish was a lifelong public servant. He took office as Portland City Commissioner in 2008, and he served more than a decade in the role.
In his time on City Council, Nick was a champion for affordable housing, parks, older adults, small businesses, the arts, and cleaning up the Willamette River.
Among his many accomplishments, Nick helped create the Portland Housing Bureau, which consolidated all the City’s housing functions. He also helped create and preserve hundreds of units of affordable housing and led the charge to create 2,000 new units of supportive housing to help the city's most vulnerable community members.
In Nick’s role as Utilities Commissioner, he restored public trust in the City’s utility bureaus and expanded the low-income discount program. And as Parks Commissioner, he helped open new parks and create new programs, including the popular Summer Free For All, and he led the creation of 1,000 new community garden plots.
Nick earned numerous awards for his passionate service to the public good, notably the 2011 Fighting Spirit Award from Basic Rights Oregon, the 2016 Friends of MET from the Muslim Educational Trust, and, most recently, the 2019 Public Official of the Year Award from the Daily Journal of Commerce.
In 2017, Nick was diagnosed with a rare form of abdominal cancer. He continued to work while undergoing chemotherapy treatment at OHSU’s Knight Cancer Institute. He passed away peacefully surrounded by his family on Jan. 2, 2020. He is survived by his wife, Patricia, and his two children.