Jack:

Are you saying that "citizen input", is really a waste of time?

And like the sign I carried in a protest of a few years ago where I first met you said: "PORTLAND, THE CITY THAT WORKS YOU OVER" is really what to expect.

You know those cute little buildings that look like castles by the Mt. Tabor reservoirs? They are castles, and the united people living near the park are manning the walls, in case some visionary politician comes too close.

HEY!!!

Just one minute!

So...The Parks Bureau has time and money (especially money for contractor mediators) to do an "update" on Mt. Tabor Park, which completed an entire master planning process in 1999?

While we, here in Richmond, a parks-deficient neighborhood, has been waiting nearly twenty years for ANY kind of assistance from the Parks Bureau. They've twice promised our little project would be included in a Park Improvement bond measure, only to be stiffed twice. Then, the year before last, when we complained about the total lack of support and assistance from the Bureau for planning and fundraising, they told us that our little park space would be guaranteed planning assistance (to replan something we'd already done 15 years earlier). When the time came that they'd promised, they told us there was a freeze on all park planning monies. It sure doesn't seem like there is a freeze on monies to waste on replanning Mt. Tabor.

The administrators of the Portland Parks Bureau are LIARS!!! LIARS, LIARS, LIARS!!!

I've repeatedly pointed this out to the commissioner in charge and recommended that the administrative staff needed to be dismissed for dissimulation, misrepresentation, misappropriation of public funds, and fraud. There has been no response from Big Pipe (Commissioner Dan Saltzman), and he allows this crap to continue unabated, so I can only assume that he is complicit in the lies. Mr. Saltzman does NOT give a hoot about Portland's children, he's merely a poseur.

Speaking of parks, since we are in debit up to our eyeballs with the granola, bike, trolley crowd.

Why not sell the bulk of Forest park to the greedy developers for a cazillion dollars? We could pay off the 8.2.billion dollars that we owe and make a sound budgetary contribution that includes parks and maintenance money.

Remember kids, less government is the best government!

Let us get the government out of any business that is not government business. For instance ballparks, hotels, bike rental business.

Lets us privatize the nonessential services and start seeing instant savings and instant better service.

"he's merely a poseur", or an avid reader of "The Prince" by Machiavelli.
But is that not true of the mayor and all of the city council. Together all are a cabal of shills for the corporate structure.

Look, all you people who bitch so much about everything.

All of you have benefitted tremendously from all the money spent revitalizing the central city, even if only in a loose and intrinsic way.
You should be feeling grateful.

Take a drive downtown once in a while and enamor over the posh makeovers.
Then while you drive back to your crummy neighborhoods enjoy sort of a trickle down feeling of it being for you too.

Then take out your checkbook and pay your property tax bill. Or your rent, in which your landlord passes his property taxes on to you.

That part is definitely for you.

I moved out of that Portland slum dive back in August. I used to live in Beaverton (almost 8 years) then relocated to the Lloyd District, yes, falling for their "live close to your work" con. In the very short time I was there, they raised my rent well over 20% and also eliminated the residential streetside parking program, forcing me to park in a parkade. What a ripoff I thought. They call it a "livable" city. I guess letting your children play in concrete and crapping out your 500 square foot "luxurious Pearl condo" directly into the Willamette Concrete Lined river is their definition of "livable". I call it an urban prison that you have to PAY to live in. Well I moved back down to Salem where I grew up and am SO glad I don't have to deal with expensive and slum like living conditions any more. If 49 passes they'll have even MORE power to cram people into every nook and cranny while extorting them for the most money possible. They should just rename Oregon "USSR" and Portland "Moscow".

"If 49 passes they'll have even MORE power to cram people into every nook and cranny while extorting them for the most money possible."

This is what I find confounding. That is, that the same people who recognize the dysfunction, con jobs, BS and huge cost of the planner's high density/Urban renewal, public-pays-for-it development
will turn right around and buy into everything planners officials say about M37 and M49.

I mean you have to be kidding folks.

They can't tell the truth about ANY of their plans so why do you beleive them when they cast M37 as some broad brush abolition of all land use regulations and the paving over of Oregon?

It's stunning really. While they steal you money and give it to their favorite developers for half baked plans that don't work you're giving them credibility they NEVER earned.
And while M37 represents very little impact or threat to any of Oregon's landscape and land use regulations it is the unchecked advancement of the status quo Oregonians should be fearing.

While many proponents of M49 may think Oregon can only be protected without M37
they are duped if they think our communities are now being protected.
Quite the contrary, the planner's assualt on our communities drives forward. Overcrowding our neighborhoods, robbing basic services budgets, neglecting infrastructure, clogging our streets and depletiing supplies of affordable housing.
All the while claiming M37 will be doing what they champion.
Wake up folks. These central planning gurus, their politicians and favorite urban developers are not preserving Oregon.

They are changing it.
Wake up.