And let us not forget, that behind the Goldschmidt machine is the SHHHH - very quiet old money set that really runs things.

We should get a listing some day of who owns the city blocks downtown. There you will find the real money power.

I had high hopes for Hughes and was an early supporter of the opt-in program. I thought he was sincere in his effort to solicit a diversity of opinion. Then, after I wrote an editorial calling for the elimination of the PDC, Hughes took me to task for wanting to deny the community of its greatest economic development tool. That's when I realized that Hughes was just another collaborator like the rest of them.

Opt-in, like all other governmental "public input" processes, is closely choreographed and stacked toward the desired outcome. The elite wouldn't have it any other way.

I signed up some time ago. I enjoy sending them my thoughts about disbanding PDC and de-funding the bridge/train to nowhere. If recollection serves me, it is only in the comments section where one can get away from their push poll questions.

I knew that it was doomed when they announced that it skewed older and female. Those people care more about education, natural areas and other basics that are getting shorted by the development mafia represented so well by that new committee. Their problem is that the Opt-in thing is too successful. You can't discount the representativeness of a sample size that big, even adjusting for the skewing. No number of politicians' style 400 respondent push polls will do it.

Right now they are not using Opt-in at all, except for pushing "easier ways to get to Washington Park". Give you a wild guess what that means. Hint: the buses looping from the transit mall that have been good enough for decades doesn't involve a BST (big shiny thing).

Also, somebody should do a records request to find out what percentage of Opt-in participants want more natural areas and specifically for West Hayden Island to be a genuinely wild natural area. My bet is that you will have a very hard time prying those numbers out of them. The party line is that there are already "enough" natural areas within the Metro boundaries. Sez who? I doubt that the Opt-in respondents did.

I recently joined Opt-In and took a survey about riding Tri-Met to the Zoo and Children's Museum.

I (hopefully) made it clear that riding Max isn't an option I consider for several reasons: 1) I'd have to pay for it, whereas parking is free 2) I don't feel safe on Max and if I'm going to the zoo or children's museum, I'll have kids with me! 3) There's no convenient place to get *on* the Max to ride it to the zoo.

I'll bet they take my answers and make parking at the zoo expensive to try to force me to use Tri-Met...

NOW they want input from citizens?
Where were all these people when the citizens sent thousands of letters to the Governor to keep Nestle out of the gorge?
Where are all these people regarding the coal trucks possibly coming through our community?
Are these people clueless?
This has gone way beyond a kitchen table talk.
In my opinion, this is more like the ship sinking and now wanting us to stop in the kitchen for a nice little conversation about recipes and what we would like for our meal, while the master chefs have already decided the menu plan.

If they really want a kitchen table group, why don't they select a random panel of citizens from across the state. That will give the Governor/legislature a much better idea of people's thoughts than this group ever will. Who knows, you might get some common sense ideas as well.

I (hopefully) made it clear that riding Max isn't an option I consider for several reasons: 1) I'd have to pay for it, whereas parking is free

Uh, Dave, parking is now $4.00. You pay with your admission (to the zoo, Forestry Center or Children's Museum. But you could park, go to the Arbeoretum or Vietnam Memorial and use the parking lot and not pay...) There are not-so-sneaky ways to avoid it (like having a zoo membership "includes" parking, or if you just show them a TriMet annual or monthly pass you can claim you rode TriMet and evade the fee - they have absolutely no way to prove how you got there)...

Somebody told me that it was the unions pushing the Nestle thing on Kitz, because of "the jobs". Absurd. It will be 99% automated, and the three people it takes to run it will need to already know the automation system and will be brought in from one of their other locations. If Cascade Locks is lucky, they will hire three people to unload bottles out of trucks, who will not be union or get a family wage. The idea that any union would ally with Nestle on something this bad for the environment and preservation of our water is completely despicable.

I find it noteworthy that Metro calls their particular form of opinion gathering "Opt-In", cleverly omitting the very notion of "opt-out".

Re: Nestlé (and whatever else)...

Kitz is asleep. Remember that old Star Trek episode where the people's leader (dressed up like Der Führer) was actually a drug-dosed puppet of the bad guys?

TacoDave and ErikH: The City has quietly started the process to charge for parking, not just at the Zoo, but in the rest of Washington Park - in the area by the train station, the Rose Garden, the tennis courts, and the Japanese Garden. The idea may be to push visitor parking onto the adjoining residential streets in Kings Heights.

If you like this, check out the rest of the Policy Consensus Initiative's programs:

http://www.policyconsensus.org/about/mission.html

such as "Oregon Solutions": sustainable solutions in Oregon to community-based problems that support economic, environmental, and community objectives and are built through the collaborative efforts of businesses, government, and non-profit organizations

More buzzword bingo from PSU!

Metro has plans to eliminate the Washington Park Train Station pushed by the city because too many people were parking there in the high and mighty neighborhood to go to the zoo. Maybe the Kings Heights Neighborhood should be the next place to locate one of those 50 plus unit high density bunkers that have no parking. If they are being railroaded into other neighborhoods with bus routes or tracks, near an ex-train station site should be ideal fit.

Additionally, even though the zoo train is a cash cow for the zoo, Metro is likely to shut it down for a while (next year) because the track loop in the zoo is being eliminated to expand the elephant pen. The Portland Fire Bureau (a Randy Leonard bureau) has refused to allow the train to share the fire access road around the back side. Taking out the loop also means no more zoo lights. This is just another example of how the so-called leadership dismantles what is good about the city.