The credibility of the story began falling apart when analysts took a second look at the phrase, "Portland Mayor Sam Adams announced this..."
Frankly, I'm still suspicious of Beau Breedlove's birth certificate.
Then later in the day, city hall began backing off claims that Karlock had used his own body to shield the nuclear power industry.
You know, I'm glad he's still around. Jim Karlock is a character - and that's the ultimate Portland compliment. We're fixated on the phonies in this town, while it's people like Jim Karlock who are a lot more interesting.

Maybe I'm just facing the inevitable: If he's made it to "the mountainous debt regions of South Waterfront", we'll never find him.

It's always despicable to see the planner's class try and cast JK and others like John Charles/CPI as not to be trusted because they are supposedly "ideologically driven". And therefore all they provide is inaccurate or ginned up.

The PDC, Metro et al that Jim criticizes is a club of fanatic activists who long ago dispensed with any need for integrity.

While they have perpetrated enormous waste and delivered chaos Jim has chronicled all of it.

No one else has come close to compiling what Karlock has.

And unlike the unethical establishment that despises him Jim has not distorted anything.

It's good to see a full spectrum of folks recognize Karlock's contributions.

In a break with Christian-Judeo traditions, the mayor's office had reported that Karlock's body was smeared in cob, and buried deep in in a bio swale in an effort to prevent the canonization of the strident tax activist.
When pressed for the location of the body, the Portland Water Bureau stated that it was "somewhere off the banks of the Willamette River on a mispelled street."

Would somebody please explain the purpose of the 8'x 2' balcony/patios as pictured above?

Are they leaving room for elevated light rail?

"8'x2' balcony/patios", they are cheap ways to make the tenants think they have a useful deck. It's like leaving all heat ducks exposed, it's avant-garde...but cheap. It all justifies the $400 per sq/ft sale prices.

What a relief! I though maybe the planning bureau had captured him and forced some of their Kool Aid up his nose.

I think that pic is of the Center Commons.

Look how the establishment con job describes it:

http://www.riderta.com/tod/best_practices/

scroll down to the
trimet/metro/portland and

Portland Case Study: Center Commons
Development costs for the Center Commons TOD totaled $30 million. Funding sources included low-income housing tax credits, State of Oregon tax-exempt bonds, a PDC loan, a Fannie Mae loan, general partner equity, and an FTA TOD grant. Additionally, the project received a 10-year property-tax exemption.

Then,
After feeling all warm about that fantasy read this reality by John Charles who actually went out and talked to people there --- and wonder what will happen when that 10 year tax abatement expires this year.
http://cascadepolicy.org/pdf/env/P_1019.htm

John Charles has it mostly right. TOD is largely driven by the desire for the D, not the T. In many ways, this kind of planning and spending is like the stories about default swaps on Wall Street, where there's another famous acronym: IBGYBG.

I'll Be Gone, You'll Be Gone. If municipalities ever had a slogan for long-range planning, that'd be it. Because really, planning as a profession is famous for having a stunning lack of memory.

Here's an example: The recent published stories about "dwindling diversity" around areas like Alberta. What writers and others do is conveniently draw subjective lines in history: Alberta as an area was first built up by *German immigrants*. As the area declined, African American workers moved in. As the area declined again, it became more white. And so on. In this example, "diversity" is as specious a goal as "TOD" or a "UGB"; it ignores the real problem, which is the underlying system that causes the heaving, brutal economic changes in the first place.

I don't know what to believe now. First he's dead, then maybe alive. They might be able to kill him, but never his spirit. If he has indeed been martyred, a thousand more will rise up in his place. They can never kill us all.

Thanks,
Cass

The Negatives of six tax/funding benefits of the Center Commons is a good example of what my Pearl friends are realizing in trying to sell their condo at the restored Chown Pella. It's been on the market for over 2 years trying to beat the 1997 Restoration 15 year property tax abatements being rescinded.

They started out at $350,000, now down to $250,000 and probably going lower. Potential buyers now see the reality of soon paying the abated property taxes of over $5000 per year and HOA fees going up as the building ages. Buildings throughout The Pearl are losing value as they lose all these abatements. It doesn't look good for many buildings in The Pearl, nor for the City. Tax Appeal time. What the City gains in added property taxes will likely be subtracted by lowered property values.

Maybe that's why Sam flunked Economics.

Mim, rest in peace, of course knew all that I just posted. He's been posting these facts for years about The Pearl. Bless his Soul.

Lee,
Making matters even worse is the despicable, continuous and tax funded campaign by various agencies to depict what they are doing as best practices, working wonderfully, providing higher livability and a model to duplicate.
Things have gotten so bad their centerpieces have become multi-Billion dollar boondoggles like Milwaukie Light Rail that gets advanced with the most dishonest campaigns Oregon has ever seen.
These people have re-invented integrity to allow any conduct or methods it takes to get their way.
The level of local government conniving is reaching biblical proportions.

Cascade Policy link:

...a senior citizen who has been there since May. She expressed frustration that "there is no air conditioning in the senior wing and they won't let us install our own window units." She also noted that the porches are "too small to do anything but stand," and that parking is a problem. She summed up her impressions by saying that "the general [TOD] concept seems like a nice idea, but everything is too cramped."

This is not about livability, has never been about livability and as long as this mantra of density continues will not be about livability.
Follow the money trail.

Yes, clinamen, uncontrolled density is the greatest threat to livability oppressing Portland residents today.

I am so glad most of this crap is not going on here in Reno. The City is basically broke; and they have the audacity (and common sense) to go after the management of the local transit agency; which had a two or three million dollar cost over-run in the new downtown bus terminal.
Can you EVER remember any public agency in Portland having legal action made against them for being over budget?

Mayor Katz had this comment about planning:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTMWHYFe448

Thanks
JK

Ha HA fooled them. Let them try to figure out where my new hideout is:

Thanks
JK

And it's density every resident of Portland is funding, whether they like it or not. You gotta love a system that forces people to pay for the demise of their own livability.

Look at this way...
When you go into foreclosure, some property investment firm will snap it up. Then the glossy brochures will come out, and someone else swallows the bait!

Thanks to Karlock, we have a record of who pushed these plans.

From you tube link above -

Mayor Katz:
"Let me just tell you that when this Council finally approves a community plan, we have almost 99% agreement with the community."

Charlie Hales:
"Often light rail or streecars push the community in a development direction that we want to go and buses don't seem to add much momentum to that change."

I suppose those citizens who opposed the agenda are the 1%!!

...or are the 1% those who were selected to be on various committees to represent the rest of us??

Am weary of this sad situation for residents in this city.

Stop voting for those who run and ruin our livability!

Long Live the Fighters of Jim Muad'dib!

I live on NE Hoyt, a block from the Center Commons, and can report that little has changed in the nearly 10 years since John Charles detailed the project's pie-in-the-sky assumptions about transit use and parking needs. With inadequate parking built into the project, our narrow street is a parking lot for Commons residents and visitors (in addition to MAX riders). I can live with it during the day, but with cars coming and going at all hours of the night, accompanied often by powerful sound systems blaring and people shouting and carousing, it sucks.

Jim Ab Karlocka'dib, can you post the Council hearing where Mayor Katz, staff and others claims only two or three 325 ft buildings will be built in SoWhat?

That the build-out will be like a "sieve", where we can see through all the development to our mountains, river, Ross Island, Westhills, and the sun will shine all over the area?;

That the glass towers will make it all transparent?

Or PBOT's Matt Brown claiming that there will be 40% transit ridership in SoWhat?;

Or there will be 10,000 biotech jobs in SoWhat?

I find fault in claims that visiting the past accomplishes little. I guess we should do away with History in our schools and universities.

I think there should be an honorary title thrown on the front of Jim's name to denote leadership in the community.

How about Sheik Karlocki?

Jim, If it gets too dangerous for you in the inner city of high density, and mountainous debt, come on out to the treed burbs. You will sleep well in the nice quiet countryside.
We have an excellent security system, we can rig up some cameras, my neighbors all have guns and would probably give us some if we asked, and the deer fence should keep out the armed planners. Those folks are kinda like river otters, they are blind on land, and when they run into something they just give up and go the other direction.
Stay safe.

Is it the city vision to have mixed-use high density
thereby wrecking the surrounding neighborhoods?

I guess we should do away with History in our schools and universities.

Wonder how much history we have done away with already?

I talked to staff of Senator Smith several years ago and complained about the executive powers, etc. . . was told that there was nothing Congress could do. . .
I asked him where he got his education, did he not know that we have three equal branches of power??

I think the city vision is to convert the neighborhoods into the maximum possible number of marketable housing units by any means barely legal, including masquerading it as a scheme to 'save the planet'. (Which cleverly attract scads of supporters, especially among youth, which throughout history have been easy targets because in general they're easily motivated and manipulated by ideology.)

That's why its a big swindle and may be one of the biggest in the history of the nation.

Another name for it is 'transfer of wealth'.

First of all, I wonder if Ojima bin Karlocki was in on all of this :) His comments seem to indicate a lack of upset, and Mr. Bog, thanks for the humor the past couple of days.

And, a comment on the Center Commons development. Remember back when, that was a former DMV site that had become parking for those of us catching the Max at NE 60th. So, not only is there perhaps insufficient parking for the condos (though they all have garages) and the apartments, there were also 50?80? cars now looking for parking on the streets. Additionally, there are two newish complexes on 60th north of the Banfield/Max line - one has no off-side parking, and the other one has garages for only four of the six units, and those garages are single car garages I believe. So, I guess we're supposed to spend an hour or more walking to the Max, or taking the disappearing bus lines.

Yes, before Center Commons was built it was the old DMV site, used daily as an informal park-n-ride for MAX. There were typically 50 or more cars parked there by 9:00 a.m. Once PDC determined that Center Commons would get built, one of the bureaucrats put surveys under the windshield wipers of parked cars for a few days to find out where these people came from and what they would do after the free parking was gone. As part of my research on that project, I looked through all the actual answers submitted to PDC. Virtually everyone told PDC that they drove between 2 and 10 miles to get there, and that if the parking was taken away they would either stop using MAX, or invade the nearby residential neighborhood and park on local streets. None of them said, "OK, I'll just leave my car at home and walk to MAX."

So PDC knew what was going to happen through the densification process, and then deliberately under-built parking on Center Commons as well which then spilled even more parking problems into adjacent neighborhoods.

This is what Portland planners refer to as "improving livability."

And BTW, I'm confident JK is not hiding out there because he's too young to live in the senior wing, not poor enough to live in the subsidized apartment wing, and his car is way too big to fit into any of the "mini-me" parking spaces.

John Charles

Boy this sure is agood thread. Hat tip to our host.

The theories are based on visions and illusions of a cohesive walkable, bikeable, transit utopia with social and environmental justice.

In application and implementation it is the needless haphazard cramming of crap into neighborhoods and communities without any cohesive workable anything.

It's chaos by delusional fanatics, functioning in a theoretical reality who are accomplishing improvements only to what they have previously imagined.

Look at WES.

The load of nonsense that preceded that whopper has never even been realized by the proponents as having been completely
ginned up.

I remember one story in the Oregonian article about the anticipated WES trip by a gal who would ride her bike to WES, hop on board, stop and do some shopping at Washington Square, continue to other errands and then return home later having never needed her car. It was a wonderful fable.

I actually contacted the journalist and asked her where in the world she got such a silly story. She had no answer and took offense at my inquiry.

Despite the earlier false claims that were so blatant they called it a Washington Square stop, the stupid thing doesn't even go to the Mall.

That among other asinine problems with that fable and WES it serves as a demonstration of the fantasy, or con job, never meeting reality.

Yet those who perpetrated it never face ANY consequences.

Jim Karlock's growing collection of documented offenses is almost certainly unequalled in any other city in the country.

No one has gathered together the totality of what Jim has.

I actually contacted the journalist and asked her where in the world she got such a silly story. She had no answer and took offense at my inquiry.
She probably just made it up.

thanks
jk

For those who may be interested:

You can meet both Jim Karlock, John Charles and many others who have been fighting these local boondoggles so often discussed here at bojack.

Tomorrow night at the monthly meeting of the Executive Club, which is the counter to the City Club.

Executive Club Meeting
6:00 pm • Wed, May 4th • Airport Shilo
Speaker topic:
The high price of “green” power

It may be mostly "tighty righties" as Jack likes to call us, but we're not so tight.

"The Keeper of the Record"..."Shall Rise Again". Ojima Bin Karlocki lives to infinity.

...and on the third day he arose again from the dead!

"It's always despicable to see the planner's class try and cast JK and others like John Charles/CPI as not to be trusted because they are supposedly "ideologically driven". And therefore all they provide is inaccurate or ginned up."

Even when the issue of being "ideologically driven" is ignored, it's been proven time and time again that what they say is indeed often "inaccurate or ginned up".

I don't have a problem if they want to offer criticism, and think criticism is healthy, but it needs to be honest and truthful, and not only look at one part of the picture.

some body Even when the issue of being "ideologically driven" is ignored, it's been proven time and time again that what they say is indeed often "inaccurate or ginned up".
JK: Lets see some examples mr.(or ms.) hiding behind a false name.

While you’re at it , why not refresh our memories on the stream of truth coming out of the Portland planning/transit/urban renewal cabal.

some body I don't have a problem if they want to offer criticism, and think criticism is healthy, but it needs to be honest and truthful, and not only look at one part of the picture.
JK: IT is honest an truthful. Why do you claim otherwise?

Are you afraid that people will catch on to your waste of taxpayer money on projects that enrich you and your buddies?

Why don’t you try to defend the $100 million, or so, in property tax money taken from schools, fire, social services and police and given mainly to developers through urban renewal districts? (And yes building streets and parks around Homer William’s land is giving it to developers.)

Thanks
JK

some body,
Karlock and CPI criticism is entirely criticism is healthy, honest and truthful.

And I recognize your ploy about
"only looking at one part of the picture" as the typical and often used method to avoid the substance of their criticism and divert away from your having to address exactly what they are saying and presenting.

I've seen it done over and over again to evade the central and most germane points in their criticism.

Your unethical game involves 4 repeated stunts:

Call the critics ideologically driven;
Claim they are dishonest and make up things;
Evade their points by diverting away and changing the discussion;
and accuse them of doing exactly what you and planning cabal have been doing all along.

Rinse and repeat.

And if it happens over at your controlled blogs you then block people from calling BS on your ploys.

Uh
Karlock and CPI criticism is entirely healthy, honest and truthful.