Dear Transportation Sue (Jack Bog's Blog)

Ms. Sue Keil
Director
City of Portland Office of Transportation

Ms. Keil:

I know how busy you are trying to get a pay increase for yourself out of Sam the Tram, but I am hoping that you can take a few moments away from that important mission to have a word with one of your employees. It's the guy who was driving the large pickup truck from your department, no. 014211 - PW, in Northeast Portland just after noon this past Saturday. (I tried to get the license plate number of the truck, but I could not see one on the back of the vehicle.)

The fellow must have been on some sort of emergency mission, because he was driving fast. And when I tried to cross NE 15th heading east along the south side of Broadway -- with the walk signal, which I had waited for, clearly in my favor -- the truck, making a left turn, came barreling into the crosswalk and almost hit me.

This isn't the first time that a large truck from your bureau has caused safety issues for me, either as a motorist or as a pedestrian. I hope that someone under your command will change this particular staffer's driving habits, because he may kill or seriously injure someone one of these days. And the huge judgment that the city will have to pay to the victim or the victim's family will leave that much less in the municipal coffers for you to get your big raise out of.

Thanks you for your attention to this matter.

Sincerely,
Jack Bogdanski
NE Portland

UPDATE, 2:20 p.m.: Ms. Keil responds:

Mr. Bogdanski, thank you for your detailed report on the event you experienced Saturday. We do expect our employees to obey the law and drive safely. I certainly will follow-up on the information you have provided and take appropriate action. Should you wish to talk about any of the other situations you mentioned, please call me at *** .

Comments (12)

Are you thinking what I'm thinking?

That was no accident!

Posted by none | April 14, 2008 9:50 AM

Sounds like you are on VeraSam's Hit List!

Posted by pdxjim | April 14, 2008 2:35 PM

Jack - I hate to say "I told you so", but - well, I TOLD YOU SO. This lady has no legitimate qualifications for heading the Transportation Bureau. She is a political appointee, who knows how to tow the line and do what Trammy says, no questions asked.

Posted by Frank | April 14, 2008 6:34 PM

Nice to see you're not roadkill Jack, we
wouldn't have anything to read.

Posted by HMLA267 | April 14, 2008 10:18 PM

Sue Keil is a pro-business, pro-jobs conservative Republican. When Potter appointed her to take over PDOT she spent the first six months busting up the good ol' boys club in the maintenance bureau, eradicating the shovel-leaners and taking care of a huge backlog of sexual harassment complaints. The bureau was totally out of control and she cleaned it up.

Sue advocates for road building and congestion relief. She believes in fiscal accountability. She has been recognized for many years as the best manager on any high level city staff.

The only problem Sue has is that, unfortunately, she works for Sam.

Posted by watcher | April 15, 2008 1:57 PM

"She believes in fiscal accountability." That's a laugh. I witnessed her work on a committee a few years back - same old local govt/business as usual/public-employee union coddling b.s. Get real.

"She has been recognized for many years as the best manager on any high level city staff." This may indeed be true, but take it from somebody who has witnessed the ineptness of senior bureau staff firsthand - this is no compliment.

Posted by Frank | April 15, 2008 5:18 PM

Frank, you are full of crap. Name the place and the time... and I will meet you thee.

Posted by Dave Lister | April 15, 2008 7:50 PM

Actually, "Frank" I'll go you one better. I'll bet you are one of those pissant, shovel leaning loafers that Sue canned when she took over PDOT. You are a cowardly bastard posting under an assumed name, or a first name shared by a bazillion people. I am Dave Lister. I'm in the book. You want to throw it down with me, you chicken sh** bastard, bring it on.

More likely you were one of the many mid management ass**le in PDOT soliciting sexual favors from his underlings. You probably got canned, and rightly so, you cowardly little putz.

Takes a big man to post on a blog as "Frank". I'll bet your mommy's proud of you.

Posted by Dave Lister | April 15, 2008 8:01 PM

Lister - I did indeed serve on a committee with this lady - she's a run-of-the mill poltically-appointed unqualified defender of the City status quo. That's how she got into management at the City, and that's how she has risen to the top. She couldn't survive running anything approaching the size of the transportation bureau in the real world - the world outside of the city that works.

This display of your childish playground-bully tactics will make readers of this blog glad that you lost your bid to become another pig at the City trough, and slinked off to the suburbs to lick your wounds. Good riddance.

Posted by Frank | April 15, 2008 8:53 PM

Gentlemen, please. Stop "going all Palazzo" on us.

Posted by Jack Bog | April 15, 2008 9:32 PM

I have not posted anything here in quite some time. I find anonymous posters like "Frank" not just annoying but gutless. I asked this particular "Frank" to post with real name instead of sometimes suggesting he might be me. Since I have been contacted at work about this particular string, I feel compelled to respond (despite my immediate focus on my upcoming prostate cancer surgery.)

So...I'm not that "Frank". I have never posted anything in other than my own, full name. That may have been stupid, but that's just who I am and how I operate. Ironically, while I certainly have issues with PDOT, I've known Sue Keil since we played softball together on a City Hall team --she was Mayor Ivancie's exec-- and she's been around this long, and has worked for so many administrations, precisely because she's one of the City's best and truly exceptional managers.

Posted by Frank Dufay | April 17, 2008 8:34 AM

Dufay - Thanks for slithering out from under your rock to validate my point - this person is just another political appointee, like many other "managers" at the city that works. To say she's one of "the best" at a city staffed mostly by "managers" who couldn't find their a** with both hands is really not a compelling argument in her defense.

Posted by Frank | April 18, 2008 6:20 AM

About

Search

Clippings

Archives

Links

E-mail, Feeds, 'n' Stuff

Monday, April 14, 2008

Dear Transportation Sue

Comments (12)

Sponsors

In Vino Veritas

The Occasional Book

Road Work