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Dozens of Tripwire employees lost their jobs Wednesday, three months after the Portland company’s sale to a Minnesota business.

It’s not clear just how many lost their jobs at the online security company, but newly laid-off Tripwire employees counted at least a few dozen of their colleagues among those who lost their jobs in Wednesday’s cuts, including a handful of senior managers and executives. Some said the number of job losses is considerably higher.

HelpSystems, the new owner, acknowledged the layoffs but did not say how many people lost their jobs or how many remain from the Tripwire acquisition. It said it has no plans to close Tripwire’s former Portland headquarters but added that most employees prefer to work remotely.

“We remain impressed with the strength of the business’ core offerings,” HelpSystems said in a statement. “We are confident we have the right organization in place at Tripwire to rebuild the organization for growth.”

Founded in 1997, Tripwire was among Portland’s most promising technology companies in the years after the dot-com bust.

Growth slowed during the Great Recession, though, and Tripwire abandoned plans for an initial public offering. Instead, Tripwire sold to a private equity firm in 2011, which then sold the Portland company again three years later to a St. Louis company called Belden Inc.

HelpSystems paid $350 million for Tripwire in February, about half what the business sold for in 2014. Tripwire had revenues of $107 million in 2021, according to Belden.

The Portland company had 450 employees when it sold in 2014, 250 of them in Oregon. It’s not clear how many Tripwire employed before this week’s layoffs.

In a note to employees Wednesday, new owner HelpSystems said it had completed a 75-day review of Tripwire’s operation and had decided to make several changes.

“We now have an understanding of where our teams need to be adjusted. After considering all possible options, we have concluded that some roles in the U.S. and Canada will be impacted and in other countries redundancies may existing,” the company wrote Wednesday. “We will be reaching out to all Tripwire individuals today to schedule calls and share further details.”

Newly laid-off employees described their severance package as reasonable, though not generous, and said they are heartbroken at losing their connection to colleagues and their work.

Amid the tightest labor market in generations, though, some said they had already been contacted by prospective employers. On LinkedIn, employees and managers at other companies were pitching job openings directly to some of those who had disclosed their layoffs.

1997: Gene Kim and Wyatt Starnes start Visual Computing Corp.; early products include network security software called Tripwire and a video game called Piggyland; Kim developed Tripwire while a student at Purdue University

1998: Company renamed Tripwire, launches first product, raises $2.4 million in first outside funding (video game company spun off into a separate company)

-- Mike Rogoway | [email protected] | 503-294-7699| Twitter: @rogoway |

Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler signed another emergency order Tuesday in an effort to clean up Portland. It’s the fourth in a series of emergency declarations Wheeler has issued to address homelessness and livability issues.

Wheeler announced the latest state of emergency declaration last week during his 2022 State of the City address, and it will go into effect Wednesday. The three previously issued emergency declarations by Wheeler will also be renewed this week. The mayor’s office says this newest declaration will improve the cleanup of the city because it deals with trash, graffiti, illegal dumping and abandoned cars. It focuses on clean-up work apart from occupied outdoor homeless camps.

The emergency order consolidates city programs that work on such clean-up efforts under Wheeler’s authority, allowing him to reprioritize the work and assignments of city employees. As part of the declaration, the mayor asked the city’s Bureau of Human Resources to help expedite the hiring of additional people to help meet the order’s goals. The mayor also directed the city budget office to prioritize the allocation of resources to support programs that aid in cleaning up the city. That includes supporting budget adjustments or identifying alternate funding sources for clean-up work.

The declaration also activates a new center, the Public Environment Management Office, to oversee clean-up operations. Christine Leon, who currently manages the Development Permitting and Transit Group for the Portland Bureau of Transportation, will lead the new office. Leon’s role will be to designate what the mayor’s office is calling “focused service zones” in each section of the city to focus and prioritize the coordinated efforts. She will also assign coordinators and staff to each focused service zone.

“This is just common sense,” Wheeler said in a written statement. “It puts one centralized command structure over 20 city programs and 8 bureaus, that are currently managed by five different city council members.”

This state of emergency stays in effect through 5:00 p.m. on May 25 unless it’s extended.

Wheeler’s three prior emergency orders, enacted in February and March, aimed at addressing homeless issues in the city.

The first prohibited camping along high-speed corridors and prioritized the work of city crews to post and remove camps in these areas. The second declaration accelerated the process of establishing temporary, outdoor shelters called Safe Rest Villages throughout Portland. And the third activated a Street Services Coordination Center, which connects local agencies and service providers to a singular point of contact to get more houseless Portlanders placed into safe shelter.

After their May 7 game at the North Carolina Courage was moved back to Aug. 24, the Portland Thorns return to the pitch on Friday for a rivalry matchup against OL Reign.

Portland (1-0-0, 3 points) beat the Kansas City Current 3-0 in its season opener and aims to maintain its early-season momentum against the Reign (0-1-1, 1 point).

The Oregonian/OregonLive has Three Points to watch for Portland vs. OL Reign:

1. BECKY BACK?

Thorns coach Rhian Wilkinson said Wednesday that star defender Becky Sauerbrunn is back training in full with the team and could make her debut Friday. Though her minutes would likely be minimal should she get the go-ahead, adding Sauerbrunn back into the fold adds another high-quality player on the back line for a Portland team that has defended well this season.

Beyond the clean sheet against Kansas City, the Thorns showed themselves to be one of the better defensive sides in NWSL throughout the six-game Challenge Cup group stage. Add someone like Sauerbrunn into the mix, and it’s once again a case of an embarrassment of riches for Wilkinson.

2. THORNS: FULLY LOADED

With forward Sophia Smith and defender Hina Sugita back to full strength following bouts with COVID, a Portland attack that registered 19 shots against Kansas City (with most of them being on goal) gets even more dangerous. Smith, Christine Sinclair, Janine Beckie and Morgan Weaver up top with players like Sugita and Natalia Kuikka in the midfield? That’s lethal.

Barring any unannounced injuries, this is the Thorns at their near peak, save for a still recovering Sauerbrunn and sidelined Crystal Dunn (pregnancy). On the attack, it could be a fireworks show Friday, although OL Reign has defended Portland better than anybody else the Thorns have played thus far.

3. REIGN? AGAIN?

This will be the fourth time the Reign and Thorns have played each other this season. The first was in preseason, a 0-0 draw, and the second and third were in the Challenge Cup group stage. Portland and OL Reign drew 1-1 in Seattle and the Thorns squandered an otherwise strong performance to fall 1-0 when the teams last played in Portland.

Four matchups with a rival in a little over two months is a lot to process emotionally, but the Thorns will likely be up for this one as it provides an opportunity to assert themselves over their rival in the most important of their games against each other so far. This one counts for the NWSL standings, and with the Thorns and Reign expected to be near the top of the league table, every point counts in the long run.

Portland vs. OL Reign kicks off at 7:30 p.m. Friday at Providence Park (TV on CBS Sports Network).

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Portland’s water engineers have completed a treatment facility they hope will take care of the city’s lead problem once and for all.

The drinking water from the Bull Run Watershed, a protected area near Mount Hood where Portland gets its water supply, is naturally corrosive. That’s long been a problem for Portlanders with lead in their household plumbing, who are at risk of having the toxic metal leach from the pipes into their tap water.

The Portland Water Bureau built the Improved Corrosion Control Treatment facility to make the water supply less corrosive and protect these Portlanders from exposure to the lead in their pipes. The most at-risk homes are those built or plumbed between 1970 and 1985, an era when copper pipes with lead solder were common. The water bureau estimates there are roughly 15,000 homes from this era. The facility officially went online April 21.

“We all feel this really will put this behind us so to speak. It’ll really make it so that lead and drinking water in the vast majority of homes in our system will not be an issue,” said Scott Bradway, the bureau’s lead hazard reduction program manager. “This treatment will be a huge improvement for our system.”

The facility will treat the water with soda ash and carbon dioxide. Bradway added that he doesn’t expect Portlanders will notice a change in taste in their drinking water.

With a total project cost of $20.4 million, the water bureau has come in around their estimated budget of $20 million. The bureau received a low-cost, long-term loan to help finance the project through the federal Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act.

The facility’s completion comes five months after the Oregon Health Authority required the water bureau come up with an action plan to reduce lead in drinking water following alarming tests. In November, the city sampled 104 homes with known lead components in their plumbing and found 10% had lead levels higher than 21 parts per billion — the highest lead levels the city had seen in two decades.

The results far exceeded the Environmental Protection Agency’s “action level” of 15 parts per billion (ppb). If more than 10% of test samples come back with lead levels higher than 15 ppb, the Environmental Protection Agency requires the utility to try to reduce the amount of lead in the water. City leaders said they would distribute free water filters and speed up the timeline for Corrosion Control Treatment facility. They aim to be at their proposed targets — alkalinity of 25 milligrams per liter and a pH of 8.5 — by the end of the summer.

The water bureau offers free lead-in-water testing to all residential customers and childcare providers. People can contact the LeadLine at leadline.org or 503-988-4000 to receive a free lead-in-water test. The water bureau is giving free water filters to anyone who has a lead level test at 10 ppb or higher.

The City of Portland is distributing $500,000 in digital gift cards in an effort to shore up businesses in downtown Portland and a Southeast Portland marketplace.

The city is partnering with Portland-based Kuto, a payment processing startup, to distribute the $50 digital gift cards. But to get gift cards, you’ll need to jump through some hoops.

First, you’ll need to download Kuto’s free app from Google Play or the Apple Store and add your bank account information to get started. The gift cards are only being issued during certain events at various business districts. The next opportunity in downtown is Wednesday May 11th, at Columbia Square, 111 SW Columbia, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. People who are in that location can claim a gift card to spend at 100 participating retailers and restaurants.

City officials say the goal is to drive a stronger recovery of small businesses in the area that took a big hit due to the lack of office workers and tourism downtown. The initiative was organized by the city, Worksystems, Prosper Portland, Business for a Better Portland, Portland State University, Bricks Need Mortar, Downtown Clean and Safe, and Kuto. The money comes from local and federal COVID-19 relief programs, including funds approved by the Portland City Council in last month’s spring budget adjustment.

The program launched on Wednesday at Pioneer Courthouse Square, but at least 4,000 downtown gift cards are still available on a first come, first served basis, according to Kiyo Kubo, CEO and co-founder of Kuto.

Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler said the presence of downtown workers is “critical to the revitalization of the city” and that “these dollars and customer relationships will make a difference to shops and restaurants that have been hardest hit during the pandemic.”

While the program’s first round will give $50 gift cards to 5,000 people who live or work in downtown Portland, a second effort will launch Saturday at the Portland Mercado as part of the Makers de Mayo event. Kuto app users can claim $50 in digital gift cards to spend at retailers and restaurants at the Mercado and Foster-Powell neighborhood.

Those who claim the $50 credits have two weeks to use the money before it expires, Kubo said. Unused funds will be returned to the program to be given out at future events.

The Mercado is a Latin American public marketplace developed by the nonprofit Hacienda Community Development Corp., on city-owned property and with financial support from the city. It opened in 2015.

In total, the city aims to distribute 10,000 Kuto gift cards. The remaining funds after the downtown and Portland Mercado events will be used in similar efforts to support other Portland business districts, city officials said.

“I think it’s a really wonderful program because the city is giving citizens $500,000 and the only way they can spend it is at local businesses,” Kubo said. “So, all of that money just flows directly to these businesses as $500,000 in income.”

-- Kristine de Leon, [email protected], 503-221-8506

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