"Sold heavily as funding art and music education in the schools."

Remember when the lottery was going to be 99.999999% for the schools?

Don't worry, Homer/G-E will have a lifetime annuity with each of these special taxes.

We received a call from these pollsters while preparing dinner Friday night. When they asked about Portland Council imposing the tax without a vote, our response was in the severe negative/rude territory. Same type of response when the current Mayor's name was brought into the mix. New local tax ahoy!!!

By the time the pollsters finish with their research and manipulation, everyone they polled will be 100% for all the new taxes. And Sam will have achieved sainthood!

So that's who that was. I cut them off at the "I'm not trying to sell you anything..."

The tax and spend philosophy is a corner stone for people who think there will always be a golden egg in the gooses nest.

"if capped at $35 per person"...the adminstrative costs of invoking a new city income tax would exceed $35 per person just based on the hassle we had to each go through in filing the three year Multnomah income tax back in the 00s. What a waste.

Know what? The arts group coming up with this money grab idea is funded by the city of Portland. Another example of government funding "community organizer" groups which in turn come up with various proposals to hose working stiffs from low to high.

Word is the Soda tax proposal is dead for now.

On other tax front, Portland Public Schools advisory committee on the next bond/tax float is recommending even a bigger bond than last time. Interestingly, though, one of the members of this advisory committee is Bobbee Reagan (an actual School Board member)who is recommending the next bond be about 80% of the last bond. This advisory committee has members on it who stand to gain financially from the construction and architectural design work...so they are more than enthusiastic about rebuilding schools. This committee meets for the last time this next Tuesday (April 24) at Rigler. The School Board is scheduled to consider this committee's recommendation on Monday May 14th. I plan to present public testimony at both meetings advocating for the lesser amount (Bobbee Reagan's proposal). If I had my druthers I'd break up PPS into three districts, and make them have to compete with each other. PPS as one big district is a mismanaged basket case just as Portland city hall. But sometimes you settle for the second or lesser best solution.

Oh, yeah, I also testified to this PPS committee that city hall's proposed new urban renewal area could mean moving the Lincoln High School campus from its present friendly confines near the Goose Hollow neighborhood to a more gritty existing Northwest industrial/commerical site. Nobody from PPS denied this potential move resulting from Adams' latest urban renewal scam. (And this from the supposed "educational" mayor. This label is as bad as the renaming of NBA bad boy Ron Artess to Meta World Peace...yeah, more like Mental Piece.)

Steve,

If I recall correctly the lottery was originally (back in the late 70's) targeted for business development (or something like that). Thought they didn't want a 'variable' funding source like the lottery for schools.

Sorry mid-eighties.

PERS reform would more than pay for arts in the schools. But the public employee unions will fight that tooth and nail.

A PPS professional vegetator and a Reynolds professional vegetator recently collaborated to produce the following:

http://socialistworker.org/2012/03/28/ready-to-fight-in-east-county

Now, excuse me while I wade into the weeds for a moment - in Oregon, we spend in excess of $11,000 per student, per year (well beyond the national average) to turn promising young kids into vegetables.

In PPS, roughly 1/3 of high school students drop out. Many do not graduate in a four-year timespan. Of those who do graduate and move on to college, many require remedial courses in math and literacy before they can even begin a college curriculum.

Whatever our tax dollars may be purchasing, it certainly doesn't appear to be education.

Meanwhile PPS "defers" maintenance on facilities; taking that money and diverting it into PERS and Cadillac health care for vegetators and administration.

Then they come crying to taxpayers, asking us to pass the largest bond measure in local history, because their buildings are falling apart and it is, after all, For The Children™.

Here's an idea: our fearless "leaders" are spending somewhere around $1.5 billion to build a seven-mile light rail line (operating costs not included). For that amount of money, we could purchase 36 state-of-the-art double-decker buses with reclining crushed velour seats, built-in head-rest television, and Wi-Fi. We could park 20 of them to be used as back-up. We could staff drivers and maintenance personnel, and we could run those 16 buses at 15-minute intervals 24/7.

And rides would be free. With free coffee and donuts.

And we could do it for 150 years. And we'd still have enough money left over to provide every incoming high-school freshman a brand-new iPad. Every year. For 150 years.

But it wouldn't be "shiny".

Shut down the URA/TIF scam machine and there will be plenty of $$ for this kind of thing. I think I am done saying yes to special assessments. It is just indirectly saying yes to the TIF rakeoffs by the real estate sharpies. Enough.

How did they fix the law to allow URAs without a vote of the people? We used to have to vote these things in. Whose fingerprints are on that theft of democratic process? Where is the initiative petition to bring it back.

Dennis Kucinich is looking for a place to run. Write him in for everything. Send a message.

PPS is polling on their bond measure already. The phone poll seems to be testing different versions of the ballot text to see how voters react.

I would gladly give $35 to this cause. The bond measure that failed would have cost me several hundred dollars. I think they could have asked for half that amount, and it would have passed easily. They are wise to temper their demands on peoples' wallet.

I've never lived anywhere where there's as constant a push to raise taxes as in Portland. Homeowners really suffer - ever declining values and yearly property tax increases, including constant bond measures. Wage earners hurt too with one of the highest income tax rates in the US (and a constant push by some to raise it). But at least there's no sales tax when Portlanders spend their ever declining disposable income.

Among the many justifications for bad ideas and foolish policies "We have to protect/help the kids!" is one of the worst. Who could possibly be against THE KIDS!? No idea is too bad for a quick hearing and a yes vote when THE KIDS will, in theory, benefit.

Completely unsurprising - start a city income tax at a very low level, and then ramp it up from there.

With people like Steve Novick coming into power, I assumed that a city income tax would be one of the first items on the agenda.

Frank - that's the strategy they use - up to the national level.

Ask for a wildly overreaching outrageous sum of money.

Then back off and ask for half and the voters say 'OK well, that's not so bad then.'

Aw, come on guys,
They need the money to reshape how we live. Our wise rulers have taken millions from schools to use to:
1. herd us into expensive condo bunkers (to save farmland for growing potted plants).
2. Provide travel options like bike lanes, skateboard ramps, MAX cattle cars and 12foot wide sidewalks.
3. Help us find food, alternatives to the evil low cost supermarkets.
4. Building barricades (such as speed bumps, bubble curbs, mixing pedestrians and cars) on many roads.
5. Reduce CO2 by kicking out family wage paying industry.
6. Lobby the state for permission to be free of reasonable minimum speed limits, with a probable goal to make all roads 15 mph so that cars will be no faster than bikes. (I kid you not this crackpot scheme is being seriously proposed.)
7. Make Portland look like Europe in the “cargo cult thinking” that we will then act like good, obedient, Europeans who they falsely believe use transit instead of cars.

With few exceptions, all of our current electoids deserve to be tossed out for failure to do their job of keeping the roads paved, the water running and the criminals off of the street. They are too busy following the latest crackpot trend towards some intellectual’s vision of utopia.

Thanks
JK

I feel for all you folks still living in Portland. At least here in the Reno area the local leadeship admits we're broke and makes serious attempts to live within their tax revenues. And even our "horrible" high schools manage to graduate 70% of the kids attending; despite a population that tends to move more often than in Oregon.

Portland is going to prove that a city can tax its way to sustainability. Or bankruptcy. Whichever comes first.