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The Multnomah County commissioners, who nixed the proposal to put a new library taxing district on the May ballot, said they would give it a shot later this year if the library's operating levy passed. Well, it passed by more than a 4-to-1 margin, and so whatever message the county commission was waiting for? It has now been delivered. If they don't put the district on the November ballot, they'll be tarred and feathered.
We hear that Bill Harbaugh, the University of Oregon economics professor who stirs up all sorts of trouble with his excellent blog UO Matters, is going to receive a prize this weekend from the Oregon chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. Apparently Harbaugh is being honored for his work in forcing the state to post on the internet, for free, its official manual about its freedom of public information laws.
Ironically, the First Freedom award, which Harbaugh is about to receive, "honors a non-journalist’s championing of First Amendment rights." In our book, Harbaugh is a journalist, even though he blogs what he blogs on his own, part time, and without pay.
Amanda Fritz has already lent her Portland City Council re-election campaign $50,000 cash, and thrown in in-kind contributions north of another $60,000 worth. Now she's got nearly six months more of campaigning to do against Mary Nolan, who's got the Usual Suspects laying big checks on her right and left.
How much more is Fritz willing to scratch up out of the sofa cushions to stay on the council? Another $50,000?
Given that she's running neck-and-neck with Nolan, it's going to take some serious jack for her to prevail. In the good nurse's case, the home court advantage of incumbency obviously isn't enough.
In any event, we hope she doesn't throw too much more money at opinion polls like this one.
A curious reader writes:
Apparently Charlie gets the streetcar to run for him on election night, stop in front of his office and honk the horn. The Eastside Streetcar hasn't run but for a day or two for testing thus far. Yet it runs for Charlie on election night? Seems odd to me.
The oddities have doubtlessly just begun, friend.
There'll be a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking today about the Portland mayoral election. How could a smart, accomplished woman like Eileen Brady, with literally a million dollars to spend, lose an election to a scatterbrained, unemployable community organizer like Jefferson Smith? There'll be all sorts of criticisms of the way she campaigned, where she spent her money, what she said, how she looked.
But the real reason Brady lost is that this is Portland, and in Portland, it's all about connections. Not what you know, but who you know. And Brady simply got out-connectioned by Charlie Hales and Smith.
Hales is a long-time shill for the real estate developer cabal. That's what he did on the City Council, and that's what he did for a living after he left. As we noted last night, this photo says it all -- that's Homer Williams, whose serial rape of the Portland city treasury knows no bounds, on the platform behind smiling, victorious Charlie. Regardless of what he might say to get elected, Hales will be all about slipping money, a lot of money, behind him to his right, to Williams and guys like him.
And it's not just the developers. Most of the West Hills money was behind Hales. Vera Katz sent up the endorsement smoke signal, Mike Lindberg was campaign treasurer -- it might as well have been Neil Goldschmidt himself patting Hales on the back. The people who own Portland need somebody they can trust to keep funneling the tax dough their way, and Hales is their man. Portland's tired mainstream media -- including Willamette Week, which is no longer an alternative publication, if it ever was one -- couldn't contain their enthusiasm for him.
Smith is just the old guard of the Democratic Party machine in a 30-something-year-old's clothing. His parents run that machine, and he has developed a little auxiliary of his own among the younger set. The soccer fops and the bike clowns love his affected weirdness. Then, importantly, he got the police and firefighters' unions to support him, and then the City Hall AFSCME local, and some teacher union types as well. Fireman Randy weighed in, signalling that Lil Jeffy would protect the PERS. Smith picked up some additional votes by opposing the Interstate 5 bridge, and he managed to deflect the many questions about his personal track record, which is spotty, to say the least.
So there Brady was, with the real estate sharpies and the Goldschmidtters behind Hales, and the party machine and government employees' unions behind Smith. What did she have to overcome that?
Well, she is a strong woman, which counts for something. She had run successful businesses, and she had lots of of rich backers -- including some real estate tycoons that would doubtlessly have moved in as most favored developer-welfare recipients had she prevailed. She said a lot of smart things. But the business on which she hung her star is not a union shop, and that cost her.
And when she tried to straddle jobs and "green," it didn't exactly work. We decided not to vote for Brady when we learned she supported (a) building the insane "sustainability center," (b) forcing light rail on Vancouver, and (c) paving over bald eagle habitat for a pointless Port of Portland shipping terminal on West Hayden Island.
But it wasn't the issues that killed Brady's candidacy. In the end, her initial traction simply wasn't enough to counter her fundamental lack of connections.
This is Portland. You either play along with the unions and the real estate dudes and the Goldschmidt people, or you stay on the outside of City Hall, looking in.
Oh man, if ever there was a perp walk that we'd like to see...
Charlie Hales -- "Nobody's better as Portland mayor than a lying sack who's going to sell us out further to the condo weasels."
Jefferson Smith -- "We want to keep doing the psycho mayor thing until we get it right."
There'll be a new round of election result numbers from Multnomah County in about that amount of time, and barring a miracle, Eileen Brady will call Jeffer-Sam Smith at that point and concede. She's already congratulated Condo Charlie.
UPDATE, 10:41 p.m.: The new numbers have her down by around 4,000 votes. She's done. Smith killed her candidacy. It will be interesting to see whom she endorses in the general, but we'd bet it will be Hales.
UPDATE, 11:14 p.m.: She has conceded, although as usual, Jeffer-Sam had a little problem giving a straight story. He told KGW minutes ago that she agreed to wait until morning to do so.
My goodness. Is that old Homer Williams up in the limelight with Charlie Hales at his victory party? It sure looks like him -- shorts and all. In any event, Homer's certainly there in spirit.
She's nearly 6 percentage points ahead of Richard Baldwin. No one will get a majority, however, and so if we understand Oregon judicial election law correctly, she'll face either Baldwin or Timothy Sercombe in November. Right now, Baldwin's got about 3800 votes more than Sercombe.
It's surprising news, but not bad news.
The John Kroger Era of Oregon government appears to be over, four years after it began.
It appears that he's hit the ceiling of his political career. It's headed for a runoff -- so far it's Ludlow against Lehan. Supposed centrist candidate Paul Savas is running third, Hunt fourth.
The Clackistani rebels may lose to Martha Schrader on the first ballot. But the third commission seat looks like a Damon-Smith runoff so far.
That county's election results are here.
Both races appear to be heading for a runoff.
Did you know that the mayor of Milwaukie is a Tri-Met employee? Well, don't worry, he'll be leaving the transit agency's employ soon -- for the Portland streetcar! We wish we were making this up.
... wait for it...
Another apartment bunker! And no doubt Portland taxpayers will chip in to make it happen.
Linchpin City! Go by streetcar!
We've been resting up all afternoon for tonight's election results. Given who the leading candidates are, and the way they've been covered by the local mainstream media, there's no likelihood that we'll be getting good news about the next four years in Portland, but we should be learning which version of bad we're going to be suffering through.
There's really no question about it. It was the Goldschmidt people.
We wrote yesterday afternoon about a report that Portland is going to have to send its food slop for composting all the way to Kent, Washington, near Seattle, because the local facilities in our region don't have permits to process yard debris that has that much food in it.
A reader points out that the stuff is already going even further away. According to this report by the Portland region's "unique" Metro government, some of it is being shipped by diesel truck to a site between Moses Lake and Yakima (four and a half hours from Portland in good traffic), and more of it is going to Stanwood, which is between Seattle and Bellingham (four hours, and the traffic's usually not too good).
Compared with trucking it to a landfill in Arlington (two and a half hours away) to decay in the ground, schlepping it nearly twice the distance so that private companies can make a buck off it somehow helps the earth. Somehow.
Do you get the feeling there's a mobster aspect to all this?
Meanwhile, on the home front, KGW reported last night that record numbers of dirty diapers are turning up in the contents of Portlanders' blue recycling bins as they get sorted at processing centers. Apparently folks simply aren't going to live with soiled diapers in their driveways for two weeks at a time. And so they've figured out how to continue to have them picked up weekly -- just toss them in with the recyclables.
Honestly, having done the disposable diaper thing for several years in the not-too-distant past, we can't say that we blame the scofflaws. It's not that they're in it to cheat somebody out of money. You simply can't get regular garbage picked up from a house every week in Portland, at any price. And having that crap, literally, hanging around for two weeks at a time is unhealthy and intolerable.
So now the city or Metro government is going to start tracking down the offending garbage customers and fining them. Of course, the customers will deny that the diapers were theirs -- we'd throw ours in our least favorite neighbor's blue bin, which always has plenty of room -- and so the city will have to clog up the courts with garbage cases.
Or maybe we should set up a whole new garbage court. It could have ancillary jurisdiction over Rose Festival duct tape cases as well. Fred Armisen can be the judge.
When we try to explain this kind of stuff to friends and family out of town, we're more than a little embarrassed. It's like we all gave up a normal life to live in a bizarre cult, but instead of the Rajneesh or Jim Jones, we have Earl Blumenauer and Rex Burkholder.
Portland City Hall loves getting in residents' faces. The bureaucrats love adopting the adversarial posture toward their constituents. With a curbside program, that's a real recipe for disaster, as anyone who thinks about it critically will realize. It's like the tax system: A certain minimum level of consumer goodwill is essential. How many people can they fine? What if everybody just starts throwing everything into the blue bins?
We'd been wondering whatever happened to the Mike Burton travel fraud scandal at the Portland State Patronage Center. State and local prosecutors have now forced him to admit that despite his earlier, lying protestations, he did indeed bill PSU for personal travel in Europe under the false pretense of attending business-related conferences. And so now Burton, former power broker at Metro, is a convicted criminal, on 18 months' probation, and he's been required to pay back $4500 to the university.
Of course, he's painted as a victim, too -- an alcoholic, suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome from Vietnam, etc. The guy is 70 years old. He'll no doubt keep his PERS retirement fund, and certainly the PERS-sponsored Medicare supplement will be expected to pick up the tab for his required "treatment." If you were a bookkeeper at the local hardware store and you pinched $4500, you might not get off so easy, but if you're a bigshot politician...
Oh, well. It's always remarkable when a public official is busted for corruption in Oregon, whose residents are pollyannishly blind to human nature when it comes to their clean, green state and local government. But in this case, even more remarkable is the letter that prosecutors wrote to their bosses, expressing their alarm at how lax Portland State is when it's handing out travel reimbursements to bureaucrats like Burton. As posted by Willy Week, they wrote in part:
Of course, the face cards running PSU, which has reduced itself in recent years to little more than a real estate enterprise, can never admit that mistakes were made, or that bad judgment was exercised. Oh no, the provost has given it the scoundrel's best "The system worked" response. Great message for the hapless students.
Something similar happened last week, when an administrative law judge let two Portland school district employees off the hook in connection with last year's election abuse scandal. In that incident, first brought to light on this blog, the district illegally used taxpayer funds to promote a pending ballot measure regarding school funding. Even if the employees in question had violated state elections law, the judge was unwilling to impose a sanction because the Oregon secretary of state's office had dragged its feet in promulgating the necessary regulations needed to interpret state law. Instead, it processed the Portland case based on a manual it had previously produced, which was not strong enough authority to bring an action against anyone.
In other words, without regulations, the law prohibiting use of tax funds for politics had little or no effect at all. A regular scammers' delight, this place is. At least a few of the miscreants at the school district admitted guilt and paid their fines before it was revealed that they had nothing to worry about. They all could have gotten off on a technicality -- a blunder by our secretary of state.
We're back in Portlandia from an East Coast swing, and on the six-hour return flight last evening, we gave in to the temptation to plunk down eight bucks and watch TV on a screen on the back of the seat in front of us. We could pick from dozens of channels in the DirecTV lineup, and it turns out that pro sports fit our flight schedule perfectly.
First we watched the Sixers and the Celtics on the hardwood, switching over at halftime to the Rangers and the Devils in hockey. Then it was back to hoops for more Sixers-Celtics, and after some more hockey, it was the first game of the basketball series between the evil Lakers and the saintly Oklahoma City Thunder.
It was a satisfying menu -- at least, the basketball was. The Celtics got complacent and let the Sixers steal the game from them, which was fine with us. And the Thunder absolutely humiliated the Lakers, pretty much from start to finish but definitely in the third quarter. We relished every second of that one -- nothin' betta than showing up Metta. When we touched down in Portlandia and they pulled the plug on the video, there were only about three minutes left in the wonderful rout. The time had passed quickly.
The Devils lost to the Rangers, and we were a little bummed about that. Our original hometown of Newark doesn't need to be kicked around any more than it already is. Lately they've started having some serious security problems around their new arena, and if they don't get that cleaned up immediately, the city's few bright spots are likely to go dark once again. When the place opened, there was a heavy police presence at every event, but times have changed, and Newark is laying off cops. Not good.
But despite our sympathies for the Devils, we're mindful that the Rangers and Madison Square Garden go way back, and it wouldn't be terrible if they took home the Stanley Cup this year. That honor sure as heck doesn't belong in Southern California or Arizona. As Woody Allen once noted, "Santa Claus will get sunstroke."
It's a good thing we had the tube to take our mind off the fact that there wasn't a scrap of food offered to us at any point in the transcontinental flight. Not a pretzel, not a peanut. The CEO of United Airlines came on the screen and gave his little pep talk at the beginning, but hey Jeff, old buddy, you can't not feed people, even those willing to pay for the food. Between that and all the clods dragging the equivalent of covered wagons on board to avoid paying 25 clams to check a bag, the whole experience has become even more absurd than it was just a couple of years ago.
Not to mention the TSA, of course. On the way out of PDX, as we waited to be puffed and X-rayed and goosed and generally violated, a portly middle-aged guy in a uniform and a loud voice harangued us with a nonstop stream of commands and banter that he thought was funny. It's 6:30 in the morning, and this fellow was being paid to give us a lame standup routine. We couldn't help but think, "This is what single-payer health care will probably be like. Our poor kids."
An alert reader forwards us this e-mail message from Portland City Council's own Legend Dan:
Thank you for writing me regarding the Education URA proposal. Because my family owns property in the potential district, I will not be participating in this Wednesday's Council discussion and must abstain from the vote. Because hundreds of you have lent your voice in opposition to this URA with emails like the one below, I still wanted to thank you for taking the time to advocate on this, as I think it will help force a more careful, thoughtful vote from Council.
Sincerely,
Dan Saltzman
It appears, then, that the vote will be 3-1 or 4-0, depending on Nurse Amanda's post-campaign druthers. If she's in a runoff, she'll vote no. But if her race is decided, we wouldn't be shocked if she voted the customary hypocritical yes-with-conditions.
UPDATE, 5/15, 3:28 a.m.: Fritz wrote to constituents yesterday afternoon to say this:
Thank you again for contacting me with your views on the proposed Education URA. After listening to the testimony and reviewing all the information, I've concluded I cannot support the new district. While I am a strong supporter of Portland State University, I don't believe it is prudent to earmark millions of taxpayers dollars for buildings downtown, when we have so many urgent infrastructure needs all over Portland. Further, the expected return in increased property tax money benefiting the taxpayers when the district is complete is far less than other URAs.I appreciate your participation in the review of this proposal.
It's a garbage time vote, of course. The fix is in.
We're jetting back to Portland this afternoon and evening from a remote location at which we've spent the last several days. Like Portland, our destination has had some wonderful summer-like weather. And it's where the PATH Series is about to begin.
It's been fun, but it's time to get back to where we belong. Tomorrow night, we'll learn a few things about the future of our hometown of nearly 34 years. The news won't be good, but it's important to be there to hear it as it breaks.
His new Bend enterprise is working every bit as well as his many bright ideas when he was on the Portland City Council:
Elsewhere, the program has paid $750,000 to a private company headed by former Portland City Commissioner Erik Sten to craft a refinancing program for homeowners who owe more on their mortgage than their home is worth. While the program shows promise, after more than a year of work, Sten's company has refinanced 11 mortgages.
Wait 'til Jeffer-Sten Smith is mayor. You ain't seen nothin' yet.
A reader writes:
A friend-who-would-like-to-stay-employed tells me that because all the PDX green-bucket slop includes more than 5% food stuff, all the regional compost pits/processors are now in violation of permits. So he says that at a point here soon, all the trucks head up I-5 to Kent, Washington as the only facility that can take it with food.Care to bet a beer that Mayor Adams finds this fabricated "emergency" the compelling reason the city must give his buddies a pile of cash to build the biomass electricity plant on the poor side of town? The blind pilot project end-run around public review is once again driving the city off the side of a cliff, but hey, it sounds like a cool idea, right?
Wish we had a pilot project for prosecuting corruption.
UPDATE, 2:26 p.m.: In other news, guess what's going to happen to your garbage bill over the summer. The official press release is here.
It has seemed to go on forever, but Oregon's primary election actually ends tomorrow. We doubt that there are many readers of this blog who haven't filed yet, but if you haven't voted, you have only until 8 p.m. tomorrow to get your ballot into the hands of county election officials. It's too late for the Post Office, and so you'll need to deliver your ballot by hand. If like us, you're in Multnomah County, the dropoff spots are listed here. Apparently, you can drop off at any elections office, anywhere in the state.
Are you like everybody at our house? Have you been tussling with hoarseness, a cough, and sinus trouble the last couple of weeks?
Sometimes it seems as though the bugs of Portlandia run in cycles. We had the same symptoms at this time of year (or a little later in May) 22 years ago. We went to an urgent care center, where a newly minted doctor told us that he'd prescribe a pill, but he was all but certain that it would do no good. We started taking the pill and felt better in less than 48 hours.
It would be nice to get this one behind us, but it feels as though it's going to hang on for a while longer. Not debilitating, but nettlesome and draining.
Maybe it's because the school board can't, either.
It's a dang shame, but Portland's fine hockey team dropped Game 7 of its playoff series on the road to the Edmonton Oil Kings. Ya hate to see that. Congratulations to the young men of the Rose City for getting as far as they got, but also condolences on getting the door slammed in their faces.
Here's some juicy gossip from a source somewhat close to the situation: David Sarasohn, who has been acting editorial page editor of the O since shortly after Bob Caldwell died (Rick Attig came back for a week or so), was reportedly told Friday he's not getting the gig long term.
Word is that arch-conservative Steve Buckstein has been offered the post. If true, that would be remarkable. If the report weren't coming from a solid source, we'd say there's no way.
That's the rumor.
There's still time for the Big 3 mayoral candidates to tell him and his father that they won't get a penny of public money.
Get Mom up to dance a little:
Our favorite senator has a good idea, as usual. Should have been done three years ago.
Portland's hockey team evened its series with the Edmonton Oil Kings at 3 games apiece this evening. Now they're on a charter flight, on the same plane as their opponents, from Oregon to Edmonton, where they'll play the deciding game tomorrow at 5:00 p.m. West Coast time. With a brutal schedule like that, the home team will have at least a slight advantage. Portland's going to need everything it's got to take the cup. It did win Game 2 up there on May 4. Go Winterhawks!
In a seven-game playoff series, Game 6 is never pretty. One team is out to close out the other, and the latter has to win two straight to prevail in the series. It's not quite as exciting as Game 7, because there isn't equal pressure on the two sides. But it's do or die for the trailing team, which has already shown, twice, that it can beat this particular foe. Everybody's got their game faces on. They've been going at it with the same opponent for too many games straight. People are playing through injury. Things get chippy.
We caught some of last night's pro hoops contest between the L.A. Clippers and the Memphis Grizzlies on the tube, and it had all the grit and grime of a Game 6. The Clippers led the series 3-2, but their main guys were pretty banged up, and the referees seemed biased against them. L.A. lost by two points at home, and so now they have to win Game 7 on the road. They were pretty unhappy campers as they shuffled off the court.
We also watched the beginning of the Lakers-Nuggets Game 6 the other night before falling asleep. That other Los Angeles team was in the Mile High City with a 3-2 lead in the series, but its star, Kobe Bryant, was sick to his stomach, and the game wasn't close. And so back to California the caravan comes for a deciding game this evening at Jack Nicholson's house.
We've grown to love George Karl, the head coach for Denver, over the course of the series. They have mikes on the coaches these days, and Karl's exhortations to his team during timeouts have been nothing short of brilliant. "Nobody has to do anything special," he said to his charges at an early point in Game 6. "Just play solid basketball." And he was absolutely, 100%, spot on. Avoiding the temptation to get fancy was a key to the team's success that night.
And Karl's got Andre Miller on the court at the right times. Miller is a brilliant floor captain and an excellent solo performer, especially in the clutch. He's an even better baller in Denver than he was in Portland, and he was pretty darn good when he was here.
Speaking of Game 6, the Portland Winterhawks come home down 3-2 against the Edmonton Oil Kings. It's do or die for the Hawks at 6:00 today at the Rose Garden, where they lost in overtime earlier this week. They also lost in Canada the other night, and so they've got to go from a two-game losing streak to a two-game winning streak to become league champions. The Oil Kings smell blood, and so it isn't going to pretty.
It's Game 6. It's never pretty.
Here's a Friday afternoon surprise that we'll wait for next week to address fully: The last two Portland public schools officials charged in the election abuse scandal from a year ago have been let off the hook because the Oregon secretary of state's office botched the rules in the area.
The bad news comes just a few weeks after Brown, who has a Republican opponent in the fall election, engaged in some egregious pretzel logic in connection with the scheduling of this year's labor commissioner election. That had already put her under some heavy criticism.
Despite the weekend, the weather, Mother's Day, and the election, we will have a thorough discussion about the latest misstep. But you gotta admit, the media couldn't have done a nicer job of trying to bury the story.
The flow of toxic editorials from Portland's daily newspaper is usually pretty awful, but this one's egregious. "This project should move forward, but it must remain transparent at every step." Give us a break. And the blatant illegalities should simply be "balanced" away.
We try hard not to root for the demise of print journalism, but some days it's hard.
From reader comments, we deduce that we've been purposefully taken off the list for election mailers by the local political campaign folks. Either that, or our address has been. Because readers report that they've recently received campaign flyers by mail from mayoral candidate Charlie Hales and City Council hopeful Mary Nolan, and we didn't get any of those. Could it really be that the posting of those flyers on this website has led the political operatives to pull our name from the list? In any event, in future elections we'll have to start collecting reports of the election porn from readers starting earlier on in the process.
Chase Bank has suddenly announced that it lost $2 billion since March by gambling in the derivatives market. The president of that bank, Jamie Dimon, broke the news the other day in a press conference. Dimon, who made $23 million last year, is the ultimate schmoozer and a one-time best pal of the supposed change agent currently occupying the White House.
The Obama administration had substantial leverage that it could have used to impose a sensible regulatory framework. Citigroup and Bank of America could not have survived without public largess, and AIG was a ward of the government. The administration could have attached stiff conditions to the next capital infusion, while threatening to withhold it. It could have demanded serious rules on derivatives. It could have required that too-big-to-fail institutions be broken into smaller pieces. It could have pushed for updated incentive structures at banks, with rules threatening executives with surrendering their compensation when their companies took undue risks and failed.But the Obama administration didn't do any of these things. It just handed over the money, while buying into the same perverse logic that had allowed the financial crisis to gather force: The guys on Wall Street must always be made happy, or terrible consequences result.
If Obama loses in November, he will have no one to blame but himself. He already does the bankers' bidding -- maybe next year they'll give him a job. Dealing with the Romney Supreme Court will be the kids' problem.
It just gets sicker, and sicker, and sicker.
You won't believe who they've got writing for them now. Oh, well. It will look good on his resume at the Portland State Patronage Center.
Our post of the other day about the destruction of a nice little private park in the Mount Tabor neighborhood brought a response from a resident of the Argay neighborhood (also known as Argay Terrace) in outer northeast Portland. Apparently something similar has happened or is about to happen there. Some vacant land on 141st Drive, across from Argay Park, has been divided into three lots, and three "skinny houses" are on the way.
The land, which has never had buildings on it and people always considered part of the park, was once owned by Multnomah County. But the county sold it to a private owner about 20 years ago. When the neighbors heard of the new owner's development plans, they opposed the division into separate lots. But their appeal to the City Hall bureaucrats has gone nowhere, and the bulldozers could arrive any time now.
At one time, the reader writes, the city reportedly would not approve even a single house on the property, because it was too narrow. All that has changed, of course, with the planners' aggressive "infill" philosophy, which is wrecking the character of the city's old neighborhoods to the benefit of the real estate developers who control local government. Despite our hype, livability concerns are no match for real estate money in Portland.
So suck it up, Argay Terrace! It's for the millions of people who are going to be moving here any minute.
By the time we really began paying attention to Portland city politics about a decade ago, Charles Jordan was starting to be referred to in the past tense. He spent 10 years on the City Council, starting in the Goldschmidt years, and another 14 as the director of the city's parks.
We do recall some folks saying that he was given the parks job, in 1989, on the condition that he not run for mayor. Apparently there had been some dispute about hiring him between then-Mayor Bud Clark and then-Commissioner Mike Lindberg.
Anyway, Jordan, now 74 years old, is being honored by having a community center renamed after him. This might be as good a time as any to fill in the gaps about him in our Portland history. Readers who were paying attention then, please help us out.
We're moving into the last weekend of the agonizingly long process known as an Oregon vote-by-mail election, and it's an interesting time. Two of the Portland City Council races are too close to call, but in the state attorney general race, Ellen Rosenblum is apparently going to crush Dwight Holton.
If Holton loses big, we won't be surprised. He's the law-and-order candidate in a Democratic primary in Oregon. You talk about bringing a knife to a gunfight; he might have had a better chance as a Republican. Rosenblum's got most of the establishment behind her, and the potheads, too, and that appears to be the winning combination.
Whoever wins that primary race will probably take office over the summer, as the incumbent, John Kroger, is set to begin the term of his medical retirement as president of Reed College on July 1.
One thing we're disappointed in is the paucity of election porn mailers that have arrived at our place, even though we haven't voted yet. Was it just us, or were there a lot fewer of them this time around? We heard from Rod Underhill and the library -- that was it.
We wonder if our practice of displaying the campaigns' direct mail and critiquing them on this blog has gotten us removed from the applicable mailing lists. Not that that would be a bad thing necessarily, but if Portland-area readers get election porn that we didn't, part of us feels a little deprived.
Ah, Portland's "angry school supporters" are going to march today. That phrase has gotten to be redundant any more, hasn't it?
The rhetoric will no doubt include swipes at those who voted against recent tax increase proposals for schools. Some of the opposition to those taxes was mean-spirited and anti-union, but many of us who voted no did so after growing tired of watching local government burn millions on streetcars and other developer welfare while letting the schools rot.
We wish the marchers a safe and productive event, but if they think that a lot more tax revenue is needed to solve their problems, our advice to them from last year, here, still stands.
The march is set to start at the Rose Quarter and end at Pioneer Courthouse Square. We hope the angry people walk over the Broadway Bridge, and look at the shiny streetcar tracks that have been laid there. It's the best symbol we can find of the root cause of their problems.
Here's a disturbing (but not surprising) reader comment that came in a little earlier:
Meh, Nolan will win, so I will vote for her
People! This is not a prediction contest. You're supposed to vote for the person you actually want in the office.
If you need to say your candidate won, don't tell anyone who you voted for until after the election. Then lie as necessary. But don't vote for someone because you think he or she is going to win. If that's what you're going to do, please don't vote.
When the citizen rebellion in Clackamas County placed on the ballot a measure that would require future "urban renewal" shenanigans to be out to a public vote, the county commissioners put another measure on the same ballot as a decoy, to try to confuse voters. It was a dastardly thing to do -- one of the worst performances by local government that we've seen in our 34 years in Portlandia -- and fortunately, it failed.
In September, Clackamas voters will also be asked to require a public vote before the county pays $25 million to Tri-Met for the $1.5 billion (liars' budget) Mystery Train to Milwaukie. There's a good chance they'll say yes, and that could very well kill the county's contribution to the project.
Now, the folks in Washington County are working on similar initiatives, and at least in the City of Tigard, reports are coming in that the City Council is threatening its own decoy measure if the signature drive for an initiative is successful. One of the Tigard rebels writes:
In a conversation on Saturday May 5th about Tigard’s initiative to require a vote on light rail expenditures, with Clackamas County activist Lauri Hein, Tigard City Councilwoman Gretchen Buehner said, "You will never get the signatures needed to put it on the ballot." Buehner added, "If you do manage to get it on the ballot, I will make sure there is a companion measure to stop you." Hein replied, "The Commissioners tried that in Clackamas County and we still beat them."
Another decoy measure? For shame.
Meanwhile, the Pamplin newspapers seem to be doing their best to frustrate the signature gathering. Little wonder, since Steve Clark, former publisher of the Portland Tribune, a Pamplin property, is still on the Tri-Met board, despite having taken a job in Corvallis nearly a year ago.
Anyway, the ongoing regional battle over rail projects, which are largely a cover for taxpayer subsidization of apartment complex construction, promises to get mighty ugly in the months ahead.
The excesses of the football team at UC Nike get more astounding by the month. Now it's revealed that the school spent $123,851 on transportation for 56 bigwigs to go to the Rose Bowl. That's $2,211 a person. And it doesn't count food and lodging, which was another $1,705 per VIP.
How do you spend $2,211 to go from Eugene to Pasadena and back? Private jet? Sedan chair?
The regular students are wondering if some of that money couldn't have been spent, on... you know, academics. Ha! Ha!
1. I'm not in a spending mood on the Blazers.
2. I'm not selling the Blazers.
And apparently he's also going to ignore the fact that his organization is getting a reputation for destroying players physically.
"We will follow a judicious and sustainable path going forward." Good luck with that, bud.
Legend Dan, Dean the Dream, and the rest of the crew at the Portland sewer bureau have decided to back off all their rough, tough handling of homeowners whose sewer lines are out of compliance with city rules. Now it appears that the owners of the offending pipes will get off the hook for a mere $5,000, whereas previously the threat was to put them through much heavier expense.
Now, normally when City Hall lightens up, we think it's a good thing. But a reader reminds us that 20 years ago, when the state DEQ and then-city councilman Earl the Pearl were forcing sewers on the poor saps in what was then known as mid-county, they weren't nearly as nice. The reader points out:
During the Mid-County Sewer Project, people who were forced to upgrade and connect constantly said, "If these were some close-in properties owned by people with college degrees and connections, you would find a way to make this deal better." Over and over, city staff said, "Not true. This is the best deal we can do under the city charter and DEQ regulations." Many long faces were pulled by city staff before the City Council, the Mid-County Sewer Commission, the county commission and the Environmental Quality Commission on this question.Now, here comes a bunch of close-in properties owned by people with college degrees and connections, and guess what, they are finding ways to make the deal substantially better.
I think they are shooting to run this through while the news noise is all about the primary election, and hope nobody notices.
The reader's got a point. Twenty years ago, what is $5,000 today would have been only $3,050 pre-inflation. A lot of folks out in mid-county got socked for way more than that when they were required to disconnect their cesspools and hook up to Portland's delightful sewer system.
The new magic buzzword in Portland government these days is "equity." Where is the equity in that?
You have to wash them. Preferably with germ-killing chemicals, which then go into the sewer system. Don't think about it -- just do what they tell you.
On the heels of yesterday's stinging rebuke, the Trib has another unfavorable opinion survey for Portland's city government:
In a February poll, 58 percent of respondents said they thought Portland was moving in the "right direction." But by late April, when the new poll was taken, the percent has slipped nine points to 47 percent.At the same time, the number of respondents who said Portland was on the "wrong track" increased nine points from 30 percent to 39 percent.
Forget the gang violence and crumbling schools. Chop down the trees and go by streetcar!
Here's a funny Google image search result we just got. The search was suggested by one of the Clackistani rebels:
The first two pictures are of Dave Hunt and Charlotte Lehan, both currently running for county commission chair. Both are big pushers of MAX trains and apartment bunkers, to which the rebels are shouting no.
The City of Portland's new IOUs for $69.8 million of "urban renewal" play money in the Convention Center area sold yesterday. The interest rates range from 3.623% for an eight-year loan to 4.323% for a 13-year loan. Our discussion of where the money has been, and will be, blown is here.
The interest charge on the first year of the bonds is, by our calculations, about $2.8 million. That's just the interest. But hey, we'll be planning the eco-district and the industry clusters -- whatever they are.
And the latest borrowing spree has just begun. Here's another $23.1 million in red ink that the city is loading on -- bonds that will be sold next week to finance the police training facility and donut center out by the airport. Unlike the "urban renewal" bonds, these will have the "full faith and credit" of the city behind them. And they'll represent only a 10-year loan. That will mean lower interest rates, but it should be noted that the Moody's rating for this debt is Aa1 -- one cut below a top rating.
It doesn't stop there. The city's planning to borrow a whopping $162 million in July, for more "urban renewal" malarkey and construction pork for the water bureau. And there'll be sewer bonds, too, in August. By the time the Sam Rands leave office, the city's bonded debt will be approaching the $4 billion range. Stunning when you think about it. But the City Council never does -- so why should you?
Here's a report that tons of radioactive water are leaking out of the triple-meltdown site at Fukushima into the Pacific Ocean. Well, of course. They've been dousing the blown-out reactors continuously for nearly 14 months now. The buildings are pretty much gone. The basements are full. Where else would people think the water is going?
Meanwhile, up in Washington State, officials are starting to test returning salmon for radiation. It's about time.
