In a post here on Friday afternoon, I suggested that it might be time to fight the City of Portland's real estate developer welfare system with a ballot measure repealing the city's urban renewal property taxes. It might have a chance of passing, I thought, if the perennial anti-taxers like Lars Larson got together with the outraged neighbors from all over the city (Lair Hill, Buckman, Homestead, etc., etc.) who dislike the ugly and elitist brand of development that their property taxes currently subsidize.

Based on the weekend buzz around here, it turns out that the idea may "have legs," as they say in Hollywood. But I suspect there may be some misunderstanding about exactly what I am proposing. There's so much smoke and mirrors around urban renewal generally, and around loosely guarded pork pots like the Portland Development Commission in particular, that there's a good chance my idea might be misunderstood.

So let me outline it a litle more carefully:

A goodly portion of every Portland property owner's property tax bill goes to City of Portland urban renewal projects. That includes us folks who don't live in an "urban renewal area." In fact, it says right on my property tax bill that 7.89% of my property taxes, several hundred dollars a year, goes to "Urban Renewal - Portland." That's the tax I'm talking about doing away with.

Now, I know that some folks like Lars who might also favor repealing the tax would do so out of an entirely different motivation from mine. I would definitely be willing to continue to pay the same amount of property taxes in the future as I pay now, but I'd have it be spent on police, schools, and mental health for the indigent, rather than condo towers and a sky tram to Pill Hill. Without being disrespectful, I suspect that many of Lars's followers would just as soon pocket the tax savings. So the alliances that would have to be formed to shake things up wouldn't be very easy or peaceful ones.

But sometimes you have to dance with the devil.

I'm very tired of paying 7.89% of my property taxes for the Pearl District, Convention Center, streetcar, tram, and other goofy toys that the city and the PDC keep handing us. I'm very tired of the hypocrisy that surrounds the treatment of public concerns on projects such as the 325-foot-tall view-blocking towers in South Waterfront and the Burnside Bridge Home Depot. I would gladly support a ballot measure to outlaw the use of citywide property tax dollars for the joke that urban renewal in this city has become.

Is that irresponsible? Absolutely not. Even if it was tantamount to pulling the plug on urban renewal and starting all over, the timeout would be well worth it. If the city thinks a project is worthy of mandatory contributions from taxpayers citywide, let it bring each project before the voters one at a time. I'd pay a hundred bucks a year to revitalize MLK, or build that Buckman Community Center, or spruce up some of the older retail districts. But I want to see before I agree to buy.

And if that didn't work, if we really did stop urban renewal as it's currently practiced in Portland, no one would die. But we might still have a city that reflects the values of most of us who live here.

(UPDATE, 3:45 a.m.: b!X has some better analysis of the urban renewal property tax. He suggests that the city's credit rating might be tanked if the tax were suddenly repealed. Even he confesses that he doesn't have the whole picture, but he certainly has a better grasp on it that we do at the moment. We would not want to bankrupt the city, but we would like to figure out a way to give this aspect of city government back to the voters. Let's pay off our old debts for urban renewal toys, but let's not buy any new ones without a conversation and a popular vote.

UPDATE, 9:52 p.m.: You know you're on to something when you get the politicians' attention. My friend City Commissioner Randy Leonard, whom I like but with whom I viscerally disagree about South Waterfront, began circling the wagons around urban renewal on BlueOregon this evening. Yep, I think we're on to something here.)

My fantasy basketball teams are both once again on top of their respective leagues. Special thanks to these fellows for a great week:

Sto lat, Wally!

We're down to the last moments of the week, and we still haven't gotten in our weekly mention of, and link to, Marqui. That's the "communications management" software developer who's paying us to mention and link to it once a week for three months, and so it's time to get right on that before we turn into a pumpkin. Here. Whew.

There's not too much new to report on the Marqui front this week. This is the halfway point of our initial three-month blogger shill contract; that hardly seems newsworthy. But by the end of next week, we may have something much more interesting to talk about. Yesterday Marqui announced that its "dabble mode" is up, and it's ready to let a set number of prospective customers try out its service for free. I've requested a user ID and password so that I can give it a whirl, and I'll be posting here about my experience as a "dabbler" as soon as I've racked up some mileage in that capacity.

If you'd like to try it out yourself, just send an e-mail message here with your request. And if you do dabble, please let me know how it went.

As we ponder how the South Waterfront development is going to look with its collection of bulky, 325-foot-tall condo towers, let's keep an eye on how tall and obstructive that really is. Here's the Mark Hatfield Courthouse, which is 318 feet tall:

Here's the Congress Center (formerly the Orebanco Building), the seventh-tallest building in Portland, at 322 feet tall:

Here's the ODS Tower (a.k.a. the Odious Tower), at 308 feet tall:

Now picture a bunch of these lined up side by side, right on the river, and you've got North Macadam. This is as creative as the city's planning bureaucrats can get. "If you don't like sprawl, you have to have these." Thank you, Vera, Neil, Erik, Randy, Dan and Sam, for this stunning vision.

This project inspires me to dream about two new citizen initiatives:

1. Boycott the South Waterfront district. Let the retailers know now that we won't ever shop there. Get some signs and bumper stickers going. That ought to slow things down a little. Maybe we could practice by boycotting the Pearl.

2. Repeal the City of Portland urban renewal property tax. Since it's being spent on junk like this, let's dry up the funds. Can you imagine what would happen if the angry neighborhoods of Portland (pardon the redundancy) and the Lars Larsonites got together and put that on the ballot? Homer Williams might have to move to Boise.

Ladies and gentlemen, this country is in deep, deep trouble.

Now even PBS is carrying water for the misguided extremists in the Bush administration.

Now a cartoon character who visits families all across the country to show the diversity of our children's lives is not allowed to show a child who lives with two mothers.

In Vermont.

Where they're in a legal civil union.

And it was o.k. when the PBS president first viewed it, but then George Bush's education secretary (perhaps those last two words belong in quotation marks) said she didn't like it.

So PBS pulled it.

"Kids, if your parents are gay, we won't even show you on television."

Dear Lord, what have we become as a country? We have young men and women in our armed services dying every day in the name of "freedom."

Is this "freedom"? If it is, then as far as I'm concerned, the soldiers should all come home now.

This is not worth dying for.

Well, the Portland City Council had its hearing yesterday on increasing the height and bulk of the hideous condo towers that will run virtually wall to wall along the South Waterfront. And gee whiz, the neighbors are going to get whacked again. Here is the council lineup, according to this morning's paper:

Potter: He's with the neighbors. Not only doesn't he think the developers should get more viewspace without a lot more discussion, he suggests the existing plan may already be too generous to them. Right on, Mayor!

Leonard: He's got a "compromise." It goes something like this: "O.k., neighbors, these developers have already got you down on the ground, bloodied and battered. They say they want to kick you 20 more times. I'm going to let them kick you only 12." On a recent Las Vegas junket, he was named politician of the year by a national developers' group. It shows.

Adams: All for the developers. He should be, Homer Williams bankrolled his campaign. Bought and paid for. "Shake up City Hall"? Sure.

Saltzman: You never hear from this guy, except when it's time to screw over a neighborhood. Then he's a solid aye vote. Mayor Potter, can you find us a good woman candidate to replace this fellow?

Sten: He's inclined to vote for the compromise, but he's going to see if he can get something more out of this for the neighborhood, blah blah blah. With the Scone gone, I was getting a little worried that we wouldn't be able to enjoy watching a city commissioner talk out of both sides of his mouth any more. I see that was a needless fear.

I don't know why I get such a kick out of this, but I do.

Hasser and Little Lost Robot are in the middle of a cross-country road trip together. They're blogging from the road.

That's not something you'd want to miss.

Here's an interesting search that led a reader to this blog. I only wish that I had what he or she was looking for.

The Multnomah County property at SE 20th and Morrison in Portland has been in the news quite a bit lately. There's a derelict county building and parking lot on the site, which used to be a burial ground for Chinese immigrants many years ago. It's on the southwest corner of the Lone Fir Cemetery, where the remains of many of Portland's more prominent founding mothers and fathers rest. The Chinese, who did all the heavy lifting, were put in their own place on the corner.

Like seemingly all space within the city limits, the lot was being looked at pretty hard recently by developers, who envisioned yet another ugly, bulky, out-of-place, but lucrative condo complex. The county, hard up for money, seemed about ready to go for that idea, and yet another round of Buckman Neighbors vs. West Hills Unelected Powers was about to begin.

But for years, people who are especially attuned to other-worldly phenomena said they were convinced that when the existing building had been built in the late 1940s, although the construction crews said they had exhumed and moved all the bodies, in fact they had missed some. And when the county had archeologists check last week, lo and behold, there is at least one poor soul whose earthly remains have rested under the parking lot for many decades.

So now the site has historical significance, and the Condo People have to go find some other corner to cash in on. But the county's task of getting rid of the property has gotten much more complicated and expensive. There's hope that money can be found somewhere to create an on-site public memorial to the Chinese ancestors who were, and apparently still are, buried there. Let's hope so. Those folks deserve our gratitide for their contributions to our city and region, and look, now they may have even saved the beleaguered neighborhood from one more ugly building.

All this reminds me of the one time that I visited that county building on official business. It was around 15 years ago, when a friend of mine had asked me to handle an appeal of her property tax assessment. The county had appraised her condo at $10,000 more than she sold it for right around the assessment date, and she thought that wasn't fair. It wasn't. So off I go, naive young-ish lawyer, to plead her case. The case was to be heard at 20th and Morrison.

I parked on top of the Chinese immigrants, about whom nobody was talking in those days, and got ready for my big spiel.

I walked in to the appeals board hearing room, where as I recall I found three or four very grouchy, white-haired people sitting behind the head table. I was informed I would be allowed to speak for one minute. That's right -- one. As in 60 seconds. So I did.

My friend had just sold the condo for $10,000 less than the assessed value. "Did she sell to a relative?" a gruff old codger on the panel snapped. No, I replied. "Why did she move? Was she forced to sell?" No, she got a job in Seattle and moved up there. She had the condo on the market for quite a while before a buyer showed up. "Huh. Thank you. We'll mail her our decision." The guy left off "Now get the hell out," but there was no need to actually say those words. I got the message.

My friend mostly won her property tax appeal, but as I recall, they re-assessed at a thousand bucks higher than what she sold for. I guess they showed us, eh? Jerks.

There's nothing but bad karma all around that building. Having the greedy developers hovering around with dollar signs in their eyes over the last year or so has only made it worse. The sooner it is taken down, and a suitable memorial park constructed, the better for all concerned.

There's a front-page article in The O today (at least up here in Portland editions) about how Portland Development Commission director Don Mazziotti is under fire and may be on his way out of his $167K-plus job. It was an unusually blunt article by that paper's standards -- the reporters were somehow able to rightly insert the "G" word into the lead paragraph -- but it still came up a bit short.

According to the article, Mazziotti's fine on the substance, but he's got problems with management style, demeanor, and public process. Developer John Russell is in there calling him a "godsend," but outgoing PDC chair Matt Hennessee concedes that Mazziotti lacks a certain "charm." One of the hundreds (if not thousands) of outraged neighbors who have dealt with the PDC over Mazziotti's three years is quoted; her complaint is about the closed-minded "gestalt" that the agency displays when dealing with neighborhoods.

But the article takes as a given that the PDC has produced great products under Mazziotti's apparently heavy hand:

In the past few months, Mazziotti's agency has brought forward a series of headline-grabbing projects, including the five-block Burnside Bridgehead development, a proposal to develop an 800-room hotel near the Oregon Convention Center and a project to kick-start development on a long-neglected section of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.

By delivering projects, Mazziotti has pleased business, which hates to see projects stalled by bureaucratic process or neighborhood interference. In 2003, Mazziotti told the Business Journal that "there is just far too much focus on process and planning and insufficient appreciation for the role of the private economy."

"Delivering"? As far as the MLK deal, the Burnside Bridge project, and the hotel, all that's been delivered so far are promises.

And indeed, there are a few of us out here in Curmudgeonland who think all three of those projects have serious substantive flaws, which we've blogged about here before. The Convention Center expansion was an enormous mistake -- throwing good money after bad when the original center flopped. Having the taxpayers build the hotel would just complicate matters. No one in Mazziotti's PDC is willing to face the fact that Portland just isn't going to be a great convention city, ever.

The MLK deal is years late, and the original hopes and expectations have been dashed. Keeping a couple of dozen call center jobs was the most recent, lowered ambition, and I seem to remember reading somewhere that even that's falling apart.

And as for the Burnside Bridge, it's just another condo tower block, likely to be handed to the same old, same old developers who get all the PDC pork. And dammit, the PDC has decided, the inner east side is going to get a Home Depot somewhere soon, whether they like it or not. Why is that? How dare you ask, punk. It's all part of the dark, ominous talk that emerges from the PDC. Mind your own business. Don't cross us.

If you look at where most PDC dollars are spent, you'll see that it is not about helping all the many corners of Portland that need a shot in the arm. It's mostly about downtown, the Pearl, OHSU, the airport, and the Convention Center. Oh sure, the occasional bone is thrown on Alberta Street or somewhere out in Randy Leonard City. I guess they're doing stuff out in Gateway. They may plunk down some millions around light rail (built by You-Know-Who's clients, of course). But the real bucks are spent close in, where the West Hills folks have all their money invested.

And it's not just that the neighbors don't get process. Look at the OHSU aerial tram scam, for example. There's been lots of process. It's the substantive decision that has made so many long-time city residents so angry.

Then there's the matter of the Portland Family of Funds, the pesky little PDC "investment bank" adventure which the City Club has suggested may be illegal, or at least very bad government policy. Public money and public risk-taking are apparently enriching a hand-chosen few there. The Oregonian ackowledges that "continuing scrutiny" of PFF "could hurt Mazziotti." That's putting it mildly.

In sum, there's more not to like about this agency right now than just process and style.

According to the article, Mazziotti was originally hired on a 3-2 vote, and although the O story neglected to point it out, two of his main board allies will be gone come July. I wouldn't be surprised if we were looking at a new PDC director by year-end. As a former resident of the Lair Hill neighborhood, I wouldn't be sad about it, either.

We were happy when we got our new membership cards from the Oregon Zoo in the mail yesterday.

We weren't so happy, though, when we saw the postmarks on the envelope: "Kent WA" and "Presort Seattle WA."

Hey, zoo! Metro! What's up with that?!

Appropos of my post of last week regarding the South Waterfront development, I received this notice in my e-mail this morning:

Good-bye Mt. Hood

A television presentation of Portland's South Waterfront Project

What will it really mean to Portland taxpayers, the local neighborhoods, the environment, traffic, the economy and livability?

Wednesday, January 26th at 8:00PM

Tualatin Valley Television, Live-Link, cable channel 11

The "Education and Politics" broadcast will include many photos, drawings and a thorough discussion of the entire South Waterfront Project.

Special guest, long time Portland democrat and citizen activist Jerry Ward.

Jerry's experiences with the City of Portland, Portland Development Commission, neighborhood groups and Urban Renewal Advisory Committee for South Waterfront make this show a must see.

The show will be a live-link, call-in show on Wednesday with numerous re-broadcasts during the following month.

Please tune in and call in with a short comment or question.

Steve Schopp
"Education and Politics" host
503-781-5430

Channel 11 is public access on cable where I live (Northeast Portland), but I don't know if this program will air throughout the area, or only down in the "Tualatin Valley" (wherever that is).

Teacherrefpoet tells the story of a technical foul in basketball, from the standpoint of the official. Good stuff.

We would be remiss if we neglected to mention here that the Oregon attorney general's office released a report yesterday clearing Diana Goldschmidt of any charges of illegal conduct arising from her Oct. 29, 2003 vote, as a member of the Oregon Investment Council, to invest OIC funds in Texas Pacific. The day after that vote, her husband, the now-disgraced former governor, Neil Goldschmidt, was offered a position as a key director of the Texas Pacific company that would attempt to buy Portland General Electric.

The report concludes, after an extensive investigation by the a.g.'s office (apparently with the help of University of Oregon law professor Ted McAniff), that no evidence exists that Mrs. G. knew even of the imminent Texas Pacific offer for PGE, much less her husband's role in it, when she cast her vote on the OIC board that fateful day. The Goldschmidts' story, which was corroborated by the investigation, is that Mr. G. first heard of the Texas Pacific bid later on the day of the OIC vote, and that he told his spouse about it at that time. Although people in the Oregon Treasury Department had known of the potential Texas Pacific bid since weeks earlier, and although Texas Pacific executives had been talking about making Mr. G. a partner in the PGE deal as early as September 4, the evidence shows that it was kept a secret from the Goldschmidts until later the same day that the OIC vote went down. They both said they were surprised.

At that point, Neil ran from the book depository into a movie theater, where he shot a police officer before being arrested. Two days later, he was murdered by Jack Ruby.... o.k., only kidding about that last part.

In any event, the state investigation is over, and the Goldschmidts are in the clear about the OIC vote. As you might expect, this was all over the front page of the O today. When people get cleared, they're right on it.

It's also interesting to me how the Oregon Department of Justice presented its findings on this case to the world. It wrote up a detailed, 13-page report, placed it on the internet, and made the story the lead headline on the departmental web page. That's certainly not what it does down there with most criminal investigations that come up with nothing. They're getting maximum mileage out of this particular exoneration.

The timing and handling of this development signals to me more than anything that the Texas Pacific deal is going to be approved by the PUC soon. I'm laying 2-to-1 odds now in its favor. Then I guess the City of Portland will join the power-to-the-people folks in filing some court appeals, and likely even try to condemn PGE, all of which is going to cost us Portland taxpayers more millions. (I'm sure we're already well over a million dollars in city funds spent on this adventure.) The thing will be tied up in court for years.

I don't know which is worse: if the city blows all that money and effort and loses to the robber barons... or if it wins.

Maybe that's the real crime.

Tucked inside today's Oregonian is the very welcome news that Portland Mayor Tom Potter is clearing out the brush at the Portland Development Commission. Commission chair Matt Hennessee and commissioner Janice Wilson aren't going to be back when their terms expire in July. Those were two of the main Goldschmidt lieutenants at the PDC. They said yesterday they "won't ask to be reappointed." That usually means they wouldn't be.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor!

Well, another week has come and gone in the Marqui paid blogger program. As you probably know, this software company pays a few dozen bloggers (including me) to mention and link to them once a week. We can say whatever we want.

The big news this week is that we all got our first checks. I must confess, I had an evil twinkle in my eye as I took that baby down to the bank. That night, the Mrs. and I guzzled us a bottle of Moet & Chandon White Star. As Mark Knopfler once said, "That ain't workin' / That's the way you do it." No custom kitchen deliveries here.

Meanwhile, the naysaying continues on various sites. It's unethical, we're violating journalistic norms, we'll all burn in hell, etc. Thank you for your input.

As for actual Marqui-product-related content, as usual I haven't got much to say. This week's suggested fodder was a nice profile of another one of Marqui's customers, Omnex Controls, which uses Marqui to keep its web site up. Omnex is a Vancouver, B.C.-based concern that makes remote control equipment for industrial machinery and for construction and off-highway equipment. Robot City, baby. It was taking too long to get their web site updated, and so they bought the Marqui package of services. Now the process is streamlined, and they're happy. Amen.

The Omnex site has some interesting stuff on it. For example, did you know that right now representatives from Omnex are down in Las Vegas at the "World of Concrete" show? Just thinking about some Canadian robot tech guys at a cement convention in Sin City brings a smile to my face. If I ever write short stories, that's got to be the plot for one of them.

I missed all the TV coverage of the inauguration and protests. But I sure am glad I got to see this -- one of the great moments in journalism. I hope the guy's bandwidth holds out. For those of you familiar with the "fair and balanced" approach of the Fox News Network, it's must-see TV. (Via Basie.)