A bright moment (Jack Bog's Blog)

Rip van Saltzman's 12-year nap on the Portland City Council was interrupted last week when the West Hills prince stirred briefly and noted that the city's sewer bill receipts are being raided for all sorts of junk that should either be paid for from other sources or not paid for at all:

"Portland’s sewer ratepayers should not be expected to shoulder a larger and larger share of citywide services that do not directly correspond with the BES’s core mission," Saltzman wrote in a memo to the mayor, fellow city commissioners and city budget managers. The programs collectively cost the agency $220,200.
They include: $75,000 for Endangered Species Act work on Portland waterways, (a cost formerly paid by the Portland Development Commission); $65,000 to control invasive species at Portland parks; $69,000 to enforce dog rules in city parks and natural areas; and $11,200 for sampling and analysis services at Cully Park, related to annual state certification of the Killingsworth Landfill.

When you add this to all the extraneous shinola being purchased with water bill receipts -- neon signs, rental properties, demonstration construction projects, tour buses, Twitter armies, street toilets -- it's depressing. The regular people of Portland are being nickeled and dimed all the way to Tigard.

But let it be duly recorded: Saltzman noticed. And he wrote a nice memo.

Comments (5)

And now back to sleep until 2014, when the "For the Children" signs are dusted off and The Legend waltzes into his umpteenth term in office.

Posted by Garage Wine | February 22, 2011 10:06 AM

He's waking up in time to run for mayor.

Posted by dg | February 22, 2011 10:06 AM

Within three days, Leonard will respond that he's "dumbfounded" by his colleague's point of view, and that he "must be crazy", and that he definitely "just doesn't understand" how the budgeting works.

Meanwhile, Adams has already recycled the memo by handing it to Kaufman to put in the trash. He's busy Tweeting.

Fritz will carefully stack it in the "study carefully later" pile on her neatly arranged desk, then return to doing not much at all.

Fish will check to see whether or not he can use the memo for leverage when he runs for Mayor in the future, then make an earnest, furrow-browed statement, then recycle it.

Posted by the other white meat | February 22, 2011 10:21 AM

Incompetence - a requirement for council?

Posted by clinamen | February 22, 2011 10:50 AM

Depressing.

Posted by Snards | February 22, 2011 11:05 AM

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Tuesday, February 22, 2011

A bright moment

Comments (5)

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