Instead of consultants and caoching we need outside audits.

Then we'll need more jail space for those now getting the coaching.

Hey Bruce, how big is your lavish retirement anyway?

A few thoughts on this:

1) Outside consultants, though practically wasteful, are used as a form of CYA for organizations these days. If there's a lawsuit, management can point to all the counseling and diversity training to show that the organization discourages behavior to the contrary. This may or not be the case in reality, but that's the gig. This "diversity training" I know is something that happens throughout all city departments. From what I hear, these classes are popular changes of routine for city employees, but if they don't see it in management example, it probably doesn't get taken to heart.

2) Such meetings may just be a form of padding the work days at PDC. If these guys got their jobs through cronyism and/or are practicing cronyism at the PDC, then much of the actual analysis and debate that would be required to do the work of the PDC is unnecessary, because the outcome of development projects is largely predetermined. This helps explain the phenomenon of what some economists refer to as "non-business" meetings and trips.

3) The original post insinuates that there is a level of incompetence that necessitates this kind of consulting. I definitely agree. However, that conclusion seems to support the assumption that some amount of cronyism exists in the PDC, or how did these guys get their jobs in the first place?

Let's not forget or understate the volume of lovely publications the busy staff produces for absolutely no one to ever use fopr anything productive.

Same goes for the CoP planning department, Metro, TriMet, and the Port of Portland.

It's amazing the amount of uselss crap they produce in thick living color glossies.

Why doesn't Mr. Warner focus instead on "performance" and "accountability" and "unity"?

This isn't pc, but there are a lot of underqualified "diverse" employees at PDC. There's the *** ec.dev. guy who hasn't russled up a single biotech job. The *** affordable housing woman who can't read. The *** manager who doesn't speak English. Our taxes at work.

The idea that Warner would ever walk through the cubicles and offices at the PDC and take a gander at what is being produced on any given day is one that has likely never occured to him.

His job is to completely BS along an agency's existence in order to serve as n employment, votes and enrichment of friends center.

I can guarantee there's probably least 50 people in that building who are not providing any public benefit or service in exchange for their compensation.

And Warner knows it.

But then so does Sam Adams et al.

Tonight, through a remarkable coincidence, I was clicking through cable channels, when I stumbled into the playback of last Wednesday's PDC meeting -- and I joined the playback exactly when this report was just starting.

The consultant, Hanamura, is a genuinely impressive man. I'm sure he earned his money. But why do we need to keep hiring his firm? Maybe we just ought to make him executive director of the PDC -- or mayor of Portland, for that matter.

Commissioner Sal Kadri also caught the sentence I did about all the meetings. Somehow I get the impression that he and I think alike about some important things...

Your right, Jack, Kadri does ask some inquisitive questions. We need more, and we need more PDC Commissioners asking more probing questions.