How convenient
Here we have on our hands one of the biggest debacles to face Portland's parks in decades -- the paving over of Lents Park for the Paulson minor league baseball stadium -- and the Citywide Parks Team decides to pick this month to call off its monthly meeting. "We're working on a topic related to park and urban renewal for July." Too funny, people. You can't make this stuff up.
| Posted at 6:01 PM | Permalink |
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Comments (5)
It's reminiscent of the toll booth operator in The Godfather ducking down in the booth right before Sonny Corleone gets whacked.
Posted by none | June 17, 2009 6:14 PM
And we are Corleone.
Posted by ecohuman | June 17, 2009 6:15 PM
Meeting cancellations seems to be CoP's and PDC's method of controlling the agenda and outcomes.
Recently the PDC canceled the June meeting of the North Macadam URAC meeting. There were several topics the membership felt that needed attention, especially the more recent proposal of taking over $20 Million dollars out of the URA for the Milwaukie LightRail, as proposed by Sam Adams.
What is even worse is that the City Council considered this money-grab issue this week before the NM URAC even considered the issue. PDC decided that the URAC could have a better understanding of the issues after the Council considered it. Huh?
The city's portion of the line length in NM URA is only 1/14 of the total length in the city limits. The city's obligation to the total cost is $32 Million, but over two-thirds of dollars come from the URA.
This is how Sam Adams uses urban renewal dollars to build his lightrail dreams-unequitably.
Posted by Jerry | June 17, 2009 10:55 PM
I am not part of the Citywide Parks Team and can not speak for it but I do know that Linda Robinson the Team's facilitator had been a vocal advocate AGAINST development of a stadium in Lents Park.
Moreover, she intends to be at the rally tonight to show her support for the Lents neighbors concerned about the stadium in Lents.
So, I actually think this meeting was canceled to ensure that team members could be in Lents tonight and support the Friends of Lents Park.
I also imagine that the future meeting on URA and parks will focus on the problems that are happening with the public process in this case and that Parks shouldn't be turned over to private hands.
Posted by Tony Fuentes | June 18, 2009 6:48 AM
As co-founder of City Wide Parks, along with Commissioner Amanda Fritz, the meeting schedule and agenda are set by its leadership in response to events.
Chair Linda Robinson has done an outstanding job in representing the park residents throughout the City.
By cancelling the CWP for June, it does allow for parks advocates to attend the Lents Park meeting event-which would have probably been the major topic at City Wide, anyway.
You are the one who noted the time spent by volunteers at meetings.
Give Linda credit to know which meetings count-
reese
Posted by reese | June 18, 2009 10:19 AM