The head of ONI seems content to award her own private corporation a contract and money to rail against all things White and Male. According to the auditor's office (via a public records request) there is no record of any communication or clearance between ONI and the city attorney or the human resources department or the auditor's office regarding the ONI contract to Latino Network to engage in open White Hate, promoted as diversity leadership. W(hite) and M(ale) are the new N words.

Change you gender and color to suit and then you too might get money to demonstrate your parroting skills, if Amanda and the ONI head have not yet consumed their budget upon themselves. These two have become what they merely believed White Males were, corrupt and evil.

If I as a public official can cut myself a check, and get away with it, there is no need to engage in any nuance to hide the matter. Be bold. Be transparent.

See Burt v. Blumenauer, 299 Or 55 (1985)
http://www.pdxlawg.us/casenotes/255_or_55_burt.pdf
"However, assuming governments may engage in some forms of speech, they are still prohibited from advocacy intended to perpetuate themselves in power. "

Or see:
https://bojack.org/2007/07/opportunity_knocks.html#comment-45253

Put me down as another neighborhood leader who will NOT be supporting this plea from ONI. In my opinion, they have layers of beaurocracy that need to get weeded out. When I have queried various members of ONI in the past, I have not been at all pleased the lack of response I have received. When I have asked for help and input on neighborhood issues from ONI/Northeast Coalition leadership, my e-mails and calls have been unanswered. Now they have the gall to come asking for support? On what grounds?

When I want change in my neighborhood I know to take it directly to the local neighborhood association or do it myself. At the risk of retaliation and further "cold shoulder" treatment, I will NOT be using my real name.

Over the past 10 years ONI has worked themselves into a big ball of irrelevancy by being completely out of touch with keeping up on cutting edge and effective tools in public outreach and involvement.

Case in point, the idiotic waste of paper they used for their most recent mailing.

Several years ago a group of us told them they should be focusing more on creating websites, blogs, email, and helping the neighborhood associations with these tools. We were met with blank stares and told things like, "nobody reads blogs."

In addition, ONI has continued to allow huge discrepancies in the way individual neighborhood associations conduct themselves, especially with regards to their communications and public processes that shut out residents and encourage single issue NIBMY's and neighborhood cranks to run things.

Finally, ONI has been absolutely idiotic about sitting at the table and participating in decisions with other bureaus, thus keeping themselves fairly checked out as to key decisions and issues around neighborhoods.

Screw 'em. Time for a better model.

I won't need to expound on this because it is self explanatory. Probably one of the top three issues most of our 90 plus neighborhood assns. face are land use issues. From experience when help is asked from ONI and several umbrella ONI offices representing different areas of the city, even those with on-staff planners, the request for assistance has been largely ignored. Explanation many times is that "ONI can't take a position on an issue, and by us offering assistance it is taken that way by city staff and council".

But if ONI wants to ask for money, that's okay.