I've lived here more than a decade since my early 20s, I'm not real old and have seen Portland as an awesome arts/music/underground/fun place/scene with a usually somewhat chaotic, but still functional governing class.

But when the children who do not understand how a successful and healthy society works are put completely in charge, things fall apart. The discrepancy is shocking and every single problem area addressed by them - homelessness, schools, employment, transportation, business ... is far, far worse than I have ever seen with no end in sight.

'The secret to a long life is knowing when it's time to go' - M. Shocked.

Phrases such as "profitable corporations", "private sector jobs", "trade surplus", "manufacturing industry" and "P/E ratio" didn't make the cut.

If you can't dazzle them with brilliance then baffle them with bullsh*t.

The email announcing the the "wordle" has a whole paragraph leading with this sentence:

One of the key themes emerging from the Portland Plan process is the importance of equity in our decision-making about the future.

But, look at the "wordle" and you won't find the word equity anywhere. (Well, my bifocal-needin' eyes can't find the word in the wordle.)

Oh, and if you're looking for the word sustainability, squint real hard, look to the left, and its in teeny tiny yellow print.

I don't know whether to laugh or cry about the fact that the biggest priorities (i.e., schools and education) in the "wordle" are completely outside of the City's purview.

Play word association logic.

Look at "taxes" (immediately followed by "good"). Then there's "businesses" (immediately followed by "high" and "cost").

"Bike" is followed by "arts" and "jobs". (As if).

Note that "cars" has no word partner. And for that matter nor does "kids".

Bikes. Tiny. Real tiny.

Do you suppose Sam came up with his own wordie?
BIG: Underage interns. Bioswales. All-expense-paid Sister City trips.
SMALL: Integrity. Trust. Leadership.

No, they have to bury the "E" word. Otherwise they'd have to explain why East Portland only gets 3% of the street maintenance budget when they have way more streets and contribute way more than that percentage of revenue. They'd have to answer why The Pearl (tm) gets Disney World levels of service and the rest of us get to rake our drains.

Worst of all, they'd have to make a plan to achieve equity, with measures and benchmarks and account for their (lack of) progress.

Wordle. You couldn't make this stuff up. The Onion would reject it as too contrived.

First thing to catch my eye was "High People Need Work" that will make it popular in Portland.

The children in Mayor Creepy's planning department have blown countless hours and who knows how many millions to come up with... wait for it... a "wordle"!

While the whole wordle thing is rather silly, you're being a little melodramatic, considering it takes all of 30 seconds to make one. For example, here is one for this blog that I made after reading this post

I know nothing about how they made this, but there are widgets that can be downloaded to make these clouds with a couple of clicks.

considering it takes all of 30 seconds to make one

Yeah, after you blow hundreds of person hours collecting the comments and entering them into a database.

As to the weather - stick to the pros, and go to Mark Nelson's channel 12 weather blog.

Have we been unsustainably mailed a flyer with the wordle yet?

Looks like a CoP earthquake-(un)preparedness exercise. You can't tell from that angle, but that *wordull* comprises just the downstroke of the exclamation point in the largest proportionate component phrase: PSYCH!

Change, Reduce, Streets
and
Need Work.

About says it.

Note that after the word "schools" which the city doesn't administer, the second biggest words are "businesses" and "neighborhoods."

The word "businesses" dwarfs the words "bike" or "sustainability" or "green" or all the other buzz words on there.

Tough to know what people mean by "neighborhoods". I tend to use it in terms of "protect the neighborhoods" i.e. don't build apartment bunkers next to my house.

"Businesses Support Community Taxes" and "Jobs Live Less Downtown" may bear some relationship to each other.

Notice that the word "cost" is one of the smallest. Makes sense here in Portland.

What a waste. Did anyone in Planning hit the word "waste" in the program? I'd like to know if it would be as large as "cost".

I just noticed this order of words:
"GET BETTER PAY....PUBLIC". They left out the words ..."TAX THE"...PUBLIC.

That is what Portland's Public Employees are about-"Get Better Pay? Tax The Public."

Those "wordles" are really that hard to do - On WordPress you can generate them automatically.

What is so fascinating is how fast the planner types will ignore the word frequency of things like business, schools and neighborhoods (outside of downtown, I assume). I didn't see very big words like:
- Sustainability
- High density housing
- Streetcars
- Diversity
- A strong downtown
- A soccer stadium
and a small mention of that other modality - Bikes.

When will these people get a clue about what matters today?

Sorry, meant:
Those "wordles" are NOT really that hard to do

Look! It says affordable.
That means the city can afford all the creepy the stuff.