Well, now...I like streetcars as much as most anybody, but sinking this kind of public capital into a highly expensive and exceedingly limited versitility project (which will lose money and require additional subsidy, guaranteed) when we can't even keep up on maintaining what currently exists...

That strikes me as the height of fiduciary irresponsibility.

Nothing new...same as it ever was.

Sue Kiel has apparantly not seen the long term debt clock (located to the immediate left of these comments).

This is lunacy! Particularly in light of the court ruling you highlighted below. That ruling will force the city to spend something in the upper hundreds of millions, possibly a billion to comply with the epa rule. Note that prior project estimates were done before recent double & triple digit inflation in construction materials like steel, copper, concrete, etc. Those inflationary increases will also cause the $1.4 billion big-pipe cost to rise dramatically - (Sam is keeping that fact under his hat so as not to undermine his plea for transportation dollars) Add to this all the unknown city share of undertermined cleanup costs for the portland harbor - hundreds of millions? billions? who knows? Then consider the fact that we've been underfunding capital replacement and maintenance on not only roads, but also sewer and water pipes and facilities. We're talking big dollars worth of obligations that are not even on the books yet, and these morons are dreaming of new toys to spend our money on - trams, streetcars, condo towers. Get real, people! We are headed for RUIN!

Looks like VeraSam is working on the "sustainability" of the long term debt. Why just "sustain" it when one can GROW it!!

Let's examine all of the pertinent words: Bankrupt,fiduciary irresponsibility,Sue Kiel, lunacy,VeraSam.
Now roll that into Portland City Council and you have the making of unctuous hubris on a scale not seen before.
Words missing Rope, hanging, revolt, lynch, voters, and recall. The latter works for me.

We have a bunch of DELUSIONAL leaders in our City.

Dear Tom, Sam, Randy, and Eric,
How about improving the road system, expand BUS SERVICE, decrease time between buses, then put them all together. VOILA, mass transit for 1/10th the cost.

Then, get to work paying off the huge debt you and your predecessors are running up.

Sincerely,
Concerned Citizen

"Times-a-comin". Please review the whole statewide voter responses to tax/fee increases in this last election. Notice the large majority of increased expediture defeats. Even Eugene turned down $40M urban renewal. The voters have said "enough". Now it is time for Portland complainers to enact initiatives, attend all these Sam open houses, request public records to verify "misuse" of tax dollars, and in some cases file formal complaints, legal actions against those that are responsible. Also, we need candidates who support such and there will be followers if their message is plain and simple, either democrat or republican.

If you think the Interstate Avenue name change is a done deal you haven’t seen anything yet. Sam and the Streetcar choir believe the growth of the Pearl district is a direct result of the Streetcar (If memory serves I believe the urban renewal work and dollars started flowing well before the Streetcar came around). So, if it worked so well there just imagine what it can do for the “industrial” central Eastside. It may displace jobs you say, who cares look at all the condos and service sector (low paying) jobs it will create. Who knows, with Freightliner leaving maybe it should run down to Swan Island. Woo Hoo indeed, this thing is barreling down the track (well, it doesn’t really barrel in actuality but you know what I mean).

I was driving by the OHSU building in SoWa this evening after dark. I could see inside, some bunsen burners, test tubes white mice and three research techincians busy doing biotech research.
I figured they must be the first three of the expected 10,000 biotech jobs so I pulled in to see what was up.

As it turns out only two were paid researchers. The 3rd was a volunteer brought in to break the dealock the other two had over what to work on.
They were busy working on a cure for Delusions of Granduer and I was told their number one volunteer subject for experimentation is Vera Katz. The researchers are confident they are on the brink of discovery and imagine the cure being very useful in the city.
They are also very confident a different strain can be developed to cure egomania.
They attempted to get Sam Adams as the subject for that study but he, so far, he has said he is too good for the study.

November 13: Downtown
Lincoln High School Cafeteria

Wouldn't it be better to enjoy the great outdoors and have the presentations outside and people could sit in the bleachers?

Oh...the bleechers are closed because they're unsafe?

Never mind.

I'm pretty sure it's Jefferson with the closed bleachers.

Yeah...it was my understanding that if you went to the Lincoln bleachers, you could score something illicit.