Shhhh! Don't give them any ideas!

The scholarships won't be much help when the students cannot get to campus because the roads are so full of potholes they are not passable.

Pandora's box has been opened and funding these pet projects with utility revenue will continue to drive people out of their homes and out of Portland. Stop this mission creep madness!

Sam has really been smitted by The Good Idea Fairy.

Even Sten had more sense than this.

Interesting, how many times do residence have to pay for their services before they are paid for. SE Portland is stocking their potholes now, with trout, "For The Children"(Or should we say “For The Children to pay for”). They paid their SDC's when their homes were built, pay their taxes every year and utilities every month with the extra charges, (and yet another 12% sewer price increase) and still haven't received those basics that they paid for. How about we give them a free ride on the Tram! Which should make it square, oh wait, is it even deemed safe after the fire?

Even though the recall failed...I'll bet a voter initiative to force water and sewer dollars to spent only on water and sewer projects only would get enough signatures.

Its not like they would wear the helmets anyway. Which would make it an even better idea for the city.

When I read stuff like this. I'm truly happy we moved out of Portland and will be closing on the sale of our home this coming week.
Portland WAS a great city to live in and run a business in when I first arrived in 1988. Sadly, sometime in the late 1990s it was ruined by a**holes like Katz, Adams, Sten, Leonard and all their corrupt developer deals and non-essential projects and programs.

Mike Courtney --

It isn't just SE Portland. In residential Southwest, outside the downtown core and the SoWhat farce, SW portland has the worst infrastructure in the city. Major parts of residential SW Portland were annexed into the City in the 60s and 70s with the promise of full urban services.

Residential SW Portland has been paying the same kinds of taxes, fees and charges as SE, and doing it for 40 -50 years, and has minimal infrastructure.

As an example, for arterial streets (think 82nd, 122nd, etc) SW Portland has more than 50 miles of arterials without curbs, gutters, sidewalks, safe walking areas, or safe places to wait for the buses that never come. Note, that is arterials, not neighborhood residential streets or even neighborhood collectors.

Those deficient arterials comprise 49% of the deficient arterials in the entire city.

Right, a tad shy of half the unsafe arterials in the city are in residential SW Portland.

And we've only been waiting 50 years.

Welcome to the club and get in line.

There are other sewer fund raids that are less noticed. Portland re built a high pressure sewer line along Multnomah Boulevard about 5 years ago. The high pressure line failed for some interesting Chicago style reasons. Portland is yet again rebuilding the line.

The City Council authorized a payment of $ 275,000 from sewer funds to the Tualatin Hills Parks and Rec District, in Washingtomn County, which is not served by Portland Sewers, for inconvenience that will be suffered by the Parks and Recs facility at SE Oleson and SW Multnonah / SE Garden Home.

There will, of course, be no remediation or compensation for the folks in the Ashceek, Multnomah and Hayhurst neighborhoods who are going to yet again be subjected to a years long construction project, and who will aloso suffer having traffic diverted off the barely adequate Multnomah Boulevardd to the inadequate and dangerous Garden Home Road and the inadequate Vermont Street.

But the Council can use BES funds to pay a political entity outside the city for inconvenience suffered by its patrons.

Where are The Oregonian, WW, the Merc? Oh, yeah, its saltzman and they are all in love.

Where are Mary Volm and Jessee Cornett?

Dave A. comment: . . Portland WAS a great city to live in and run a business in when I first arrived in 1988. Sadly, sometime in the late 1990s it was ruined by a**holes like Katz, Adams, Sten, Leonard and all their corrupt developer deals and non-essential projects and programs.

Don't forget Charlie Hales. As Parks Commissioner Johnswood Park was sold for housing. He also was the force behind light rail. The combo of he and Katz "planning" the redo of our city caused much destruction for those of us who loved our City of Roses.

Add others to the list Francesconi, Gretchen Kafoury, and other names you folks might want to remember to make sure we do remember as some may be coming back into the arena.

Saltzman was in council too, but could not be counted on for public interest. Doesn't that pretty much sum up the whole council now? Pay closer attention if you think they are on our side.

Nonny Mouse
Valuable documentation of failure, thank you. We need to document these issues and develop remediation of them. These are contractual failures of our city against it’s citizens. The most disturbing part is that there is more than enough revenue to begin a swift reversal of these abuses, but the funds are swiftly dispatched to grow more government and monuments to their excesses. As a community we need to rise up and take on the challenge of a completely reformed City of Portland.
Establish a clear and comprehensive Mission Statement (Charter) for our city that would sound a “Mission Creep Alarm” and hold our media accountable for carrying it. If our citizens see our mission as a bicycle nirvana and a massive non-profit Mecca for the professionally homeless, so be it. I will kiss the RAC goodbye and move to a new job. If Portlanders really choose another clone, some have considered a class action suit against our rogue City and county.
A reformed city with a representative council could place a moratorium on monuments and begin a rebuilding of our community with: A contractual agreement with city officials; community banking and micro loans; Enterprise Zones with business incubation centers, reapportionment of representation; and above all a CLEAR prioritization of city resources (this could begin with a cataloging of the failures such as you mentioned). I don’t think we can afford not to.