This latest round of shenanigans to prevent a tax vote is but a tip of the bigger mad hatter scramble to fund the city planner's champagne visions with the beer current beer income.

The cumulative cash demands from the PDC, SoWa, OHSU, roads, bridges, streetcars, light rail, schools and other basic services will make the next imminent downturn a fiscal calamity.

One which Tram Sam and duct tape Randy will certainly worsen. Potter and Sten will be gone while that covert Dan guy remains in the shadows.
Portland has a golden opportunity to clean house by purging Sam and Randy along with Potter and Sten's exit.
Hopefully they won't just be replaced with replicate commissioners such as Citizen Smith.

Besides having one vote, the Mayor also has the ability to transfer bureau responsibilities among the commissioners. Might the Mayor bring a little more persuasion with a threatened switch of the transportation bureau away from Adams? There's probably something in the rules which would make this impossible, or maybe not. I don't know. Probably just academic to think about.

Mayor Potter has been a rather odd duck but he scores on this recommendation and it is consistent with his message of public engagement.

Bob, isn't that "Lame Duck" or maybe an odd lame duck? lmao

Now we will have opportunity for public discussion of public problems and proposed solutions. (Thank you, Mayor Tom.) I trust the people of this city are smart enough to trace anticipated campaigns regarding this matter to their sources. And I hope PDOT is flexible enough to proffer Plans B, C, and D.

One unfairness I have not read about on this blog or the deadtree blogs is that the proposed water tax -- it's not a road tax because we would be required to pay it MONTHLY on our water bills -- would not assess the Washington vehicles that fill Portland streets every day.

Ever been northbound on 82nd Ave during a PM rush hour near Airport Way? It's a parking lot where eight of ten vehicles (independent onsite observation) have WA plates. Those drivers are trying to reach their homes via 205 -- a wider, longer rush-hour parking lot. I also avoid I-5 around rush hours because it is inadequate to the demand, which, in large part, is composed of WA vehicles.

But it's not just the highways. All of our city streets are overcrowded with WA vehicles, yet PDOT -- which PanderSham views as his staff rather than as a city bureau in need of oversight -- doesn't include WA vehicles in its calculation of this water tax.

I know no one who believes there is a reciprocal equality between OR vehicles in Vancouver and WA vehicles in sales tax-free Portland. The bottom line in unfairness is that we who actually live here are being asked to subsidize all those WA vehicles via our water bills. I'm not anti-WA visitors, but I'd prefer they wouldn't cause my water to be taxed.

In fact, as PDOT promotes a Portland unburdened by the vehicles of people who have invested in homes here, it is actually making our city much more convenient for WA drivers. This proposed water tax is indeed a foul solution.

In a related matter, Bob Clark makes a good point about bureau assignments. During her dozen years, our previous mayor shuffled assignments almost annually, often apparently for personal reasons. Many of the bureaus were not well-managed.

When Mayor Potter was elected -- with the blessing of Howard Dean, remember? -- some bureau heads rolled; others were mentioned as possible departures: Parks and PDOT, for example. But the housecleaning that was needed was not completed. Two referenda -- for a strong mayor (defeated) and for greater commissioner control over the bureaus (passed) -- distracted attention from actually making our outmoded form of government function for those who live here.

Sham Adams, with a dozen years under Katz and a term of his own nearly behind him, has been especially unresponsive to the voting public. He has become the primary advocate for PDOT, which has priorities separate from those of other bureaus and from those of the people PDOT allegedly should serve. If a commissioner cannot recall that his first responsibility is to the voting public, then he has become far too intimate with his bureau(s). Such a commissioner should at very least be reassigned.

Good for Tom! It was also a nice little back handed slap on Sam Adams who's been trying to push around and upstage the Mayor for three years now.