Meanwhile, local recklessness is alive and well as Lake Oswego is moving ahead with forming an urban renewal district to pay for projects in Lake Grove. Primarily a Boones Ferry Road upgrade.
And a new, bigger library may be funded through their downtown urban renewal district.
http://www.lakeoswegoreview.com/news/story_2nd.php?story_id=133788088631269000
Both are poster child misuses of UR- Tax Increment Financing.

Beaverton , Hillsboro, Canby and others are recklessly moving forward with fatally flawed TIF schemes.

Perhaps this Oregon created TIF graph will become a prominent weapon for abolishing all TIF nationwide.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_increment_financing

The success of the Clackamas County Citizen Initiative Petition Measure 3-386 winning by 70% is now known to be preventing what was to be widespread abuse of UR/TIF by the county. This victory will ultimately mean the prevention of 100s of millions, or even billions from being misappropriated by shady development agency bureaucrats and politicians. Decades of debt and misspending on schemes voters would never support is being avoided.

I wrote before, as I visited a friend in Lake Oswego, she wanted me to see their wonderful library. I was so impressed with the library, see no need for a new one. If according to Portland "ways" there may be a new library with many housing units on floors above. I imagine you can kiss the nice location and landscape good bye. Who owns the library property? Who may have eyes on it for condos?

I don't know that we will ever or when we can get out of the decades of debt and misspending. Not likely with vested interests promoting career politicians to continue with the agenda.

I was pleased to see the Clackamas uprising and thank all those who have worked so hard to stop the abuse. Would like to see the same momentum in Portland.
In my opinion, many people have given up, when things have gone on as they have, perhaps understandable.

Nothing against a library, but building a bigger one when eBooks are starting to catch on is not making a lot of sense.

Jack,

There is a more detailed article on the same subject in today's Wall Street Journal. Some of the numbers coming out of CA are eye popping. San Jose redevelopment board has $4B in debt and only $60M worth of property on the books.

Just shows you that while Portland City Hall is full of stupid people, it doesn't have the monopoly on stupid behavior.

It appears that politicians everywhere have been using UR scams as a way to hand out money to friends and family.