I am sure that even Portland politicians pay attention to polls. Me thinks the pendulum is starting to swing the other way. Reasons for my hypothesis, Sam Adams declined to run again, the Clackastani rebellion, and this very blog influencing local politics. I don’t see this as liberal versus conservative battle, but more of a get real versus dream on agenda. People of all political strikes still want their cars; they want to be left alone and are tired of being squeezed by tax loving, uber PC bureaucrats and hypocritical politicians.

My predictions are that Nick Fish will go back to private practice instead of running again and being humiliated, Dan Saltzman will just clip his coupons from his trust fund and Earl the Pearl Blumenauer will get defeated against a Republican because of the Clackamas County vote. And yeah, most likely I am dreaming too, but hope springs eternal.

To really get things right, he needs to quit taking road money for streetcars.
Better yet, rip out streetcar tracks.

Thanks
JK

Perhaps Hales found out how deep the financial mess is that SamRand and the council who were go alongs left for him.

Staffing at the PDC has fallen since the 2010-11 fiscal year, when the agency had about 155 full-time equivalent employees. But the PDC -- which collects the bulk of its money from urban renewal districts -- laid off 17 employees in March 2011 and currently budgeted about 134 employees.

I had no idea the PDC had such a large staff. How many of those jobs are top management jobs and what are their salaries? What are the average salaries of staff?
I am sorry if people lose jobs, but many of the rest of the citizens cannot afford to keep paying, especially the enormous salaries/benefits some of these government jobs pay.

It shouldn't be a very expensive buyout, they guy isn't worth much.

PDC Director Quinton may have to be leaving too. He admitted six months ago that most of PDC's urban renewal districts were going broke. SoWhat's TIF revenues are 45% less than their own budget office projected. Many of the now 16 other URA's are under the same duress.

When he was SoWhat's administrator he said Matt Browns PDOT projections of 40% of all trips in SoWhat by transit would be achieved. His car-hating mantra may be stigmatizing his future.

I hope that Mayor Hales can see through some of this hyperbole. Maybe with ex-commissioner Mike Lindberg's advisement he can make a few more changes.

If Hales really had guts, he'd slice the PDC down to nothing or shut it down entirely. But then, what would Malsin do for a living?

To really get things right, he needs to quit taking road money for streetcars.
Better yet, rip out streetcar tracks.

The nice thing with streetcar tracks is that you don't need to rip them out - just pave over them.

TriMet and CoP spent a LOT of money ripping out the old 1910 era streetcar tracks to make way for MAX on 5th and 6th Avenues - where they had peacefully existed for decades simply paved over. Thanks to the much heavier MAX line, utilities had to be relocated deeper - and the old relic streetcar tracks had to be cut up and disposed of in a landfill.

The Sam-Rand agenda of wasteful spending on a pet projects and misaligned fantasies needs to be round filed. The old Sammyboy guard of cronies needs to be replaced. Hales should make the same offer to Quinton he made to Tom Miller: show him the exit door. Weird just isn’t working.

PD,
I agree with your sentiment, but unfortunately the voters created the PDC. We would need an initiative referendum to get it on the ballot to get rid of it.

I wrote a column about getting rid of it and the local electeds were howling like stuck pigs. An apt analogy, since most of them are feeding at the PDC trough.