How will this impact the Lents neighborhood? I’m anxious to hear from that fellow who always tells us how the Lents neighborhood is getting the short end of the stick…….

What happens if you default? Does the city tear up the street or take the house?

I wish they'd consider my recommendation until we can do this right:

Leave the streets as is, and try and sell them as a tourist attraction. Say they're part of the Oregon Trail.

Yet bicylists will pay nothing for the $550 million CoP has budgeted for bike paths over the next decade.

No user fees, no LID, no licenses, no tax.

Besides which, I thought that Portlanders LOVE their gravel streets because they're more permeable than asphalt. And the potholes slow down the rowdies: nature's traffic calming device.

"In a 2000 report to City Council about funding for street improvements, an expert panel delved into the history of Portland infrastructure. They called the notion that property owners have always borne the cost of paving streets a “long-standing myth.”

As recently as 2000, the study found, the city was paying most or all of the costs to pave many streets, especially in poorer neighborhoods."

Sam Adams is a LIAR.

http://wweek.com/portland/article-17460-dirt_roads_dead_ends.html

It's amazing to me that over the years many cities like Portland and Beaverton try to annex the nearby unincorporated neighborhoods, all with the promise of providing services that all big cities offer - improved public safety, road improvements, better planning, etc.

In the end however, it is simply a land grab to harvest a bigger share of the property taxes, and the state and federal funding that is reserved for cities.

I don't think there are many examples of actual improvements post annexation.

There's that "embarrassed" word again. It's phony like when Jefferson Smith says he's embarrassed by his driving record. Sam loves to put on the pious, self-righteous caring bit as part of his presentation of a personality.

Did you hear him talking about how kids don't get to choose what families they're born into? The practiced emotional tone, as he addressed the fluoridation issue? He just cares so damn much, it's hard to talk about it without almost quivering.

Wait, disregarding whether you're for it or against it, how long has fluoridation been around as an issue? How long have these roads been screwed up? And how long has Jefferson Smith been driving like a lunatic? (95 mph is fast. It not Oregon Ducks fast, but it's fast.)

If Sam was really embarrassed about the roads, or really gave a damn about the fluoridation issue, he would have addressed it a long time ago. Just as Jeffy would have changed his driving habits or his meds, or something.

They're not really embarrassed. That's spin. Sam is trying to spin his image just as he leaves office, and Jeffy's trying to spin his way into office.

They're both intense phonies.

Thank you for reminding everyone who gets them (and every possible appurtenance) for free -- the favored bunch of developer weasels. Only the "little people" pay for their own streets, which they could probably afford if they weren't paying for those mega-millions subsidies for developer weasels, and the Equity Bureau that is going to do years of studies and take aeons of testimony about how to level it a hair here and there.

What is Sam Embarrassing is Sam helping to rebuild SW Moody in SoWhat twice in less than 8 years while he wants to charge a east county lot owner $72,000 for a little pavement.

The last SW Moody improvement for the 14 ft raised streetcar and bike/ped path, and just two lanes for vehicles and the streetcar, cost over $66.5 Million for the 3200 ft. length. The math shows that for a common 50 ft wide lot that would be the equivalent to $1.04 Million per lot.

And also disturbing is that over 70% of the street width is dedicated to bikes/peds-54 ft, while vehicles get 24 ft. Bikers paid nothing for their bike boulevard. That's Sam's equity.

And furthermore...

This thing with the roads is a disgrace, and I tried to nail Charlie Hales down on it when I interviewed him. I even pointed out that skateboards do not work on gravel roads, hoping that would sway him.

And I know my point that Sam and Jeffy are phony isn't exactly breaking news. I mean it's politics. Saying you're embarrassed is the last exit on the disinformation superhighway. What's left after that? "I don't care and I've never really cared"?

My favorite example of political phoniness this past week was Rudy Giuliani talking about Joe Biden. Did you catch that when he said, "This guy is like one gaffe after another, and he's a joke on late-night television."

Okay, but nobody, and I mean nobody in history, turned out the gaffes like George W. Bush. There were cottage industries that sprang up just to harvest his quotes. One turned out a calendar with a George W. gaffe a day, and at first I thought, how are they going to fill all those out? Then I realized we'd need a thousand days a year just to do the man justice.

Jokes on late night television? Bush - except right after 9/11 - was a comedy buffet. He was - now I'm getting emotional myself here - he was priceless with the gaffes. To be fair, no president in my lifetime, has ever surpassed Clinton for material. (To think I've lived through 2 of the greats of comedy.) But George W. Bush could out-gaffe anyone, in any administration in any government in the history of the world. He was that good.

So what did Rudy Giuliani say about George W. Bush? He said George was our Winston Churchill. That was Rudy's take on W. back then. He has the nerve to call Biden on gaffes when he compared Bush to Winston friggin' Churchill?

Believe me, I get it about phoniness in politics, but Jeffy and Sam are not worthy of admiration on a comedy level. A city this size deserves a better quality of phoniness than these 2 clowns are offering.

Although I can't fault them for effort.

Most if not all the neighborhoods with unpaved streets were annexed into Portland, often without their consent.

Please run!

Even a clown knows when to take off the make-up and go home.

But the devil, well that ain't no costume.

Around here, mallards like the potholes in the spring. And later, you can plant flowers in them.

Well, it is a novel concept to attempt to force residents to pay for a local infrastructure project, as if it will only benefit those residents. The city installed brand new corners on all the intersections in my neighborhood last year, and it sure made walking around my neighborhood easier...but I didn't get a bill for it. The city filled a pothole in front of my street earlier this year...but I didn't get a bill for that. I just paid my taxes, and the city allocated a portion of those taxes to the appropriate bureau. Why can't they do the same here?

They called the notion that property owners have always borne the cost of paving streets a “long-standing myth.”

The phony idea is to create this "new" way of fixing streets like doing some favor now for the homeowners from $300. a month down to $60. a month Wow! Just tack it on to the ever growing list of new ways to pay more and more.

I see it as pickpocketing where ever they can, wonder who we pay for in his staff to come up with how they can extract more money to keep the city going at least until he leaves. Can't have bankruptcy show up while Sam is there?? Who knows, since I have so little trust here, it could be a way of juggling finances and getting more funds to ship to "other" needs such as to that Milwaukie train or even for some very basic operating needs.

I say that the residential neighborhoods should be asked to pay for their streets, to the exact same amount that Streetcar and Pearl District residents have been asked to pay for their new Streetcar, streets (remember, most of that area was an old railroad yard so the streets and sidewalks are new) and parking garages (owned by the city).

Erik H.
What are you getting at?
Aren't those places mostly tax abated?