Tag Archives: Portland

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Portland’s Next Mayor? Who Cares?

Portland’s Next Mayor?

In all the turmoil and media attention focused on Portland’s new ranked choice voting election in November, much of the focus has been on the contest for mayor.[1]

Why?

The next mayor is going to be a eunuch. No, I don’t mean a castrated man. I mean the word metaphorically, in the sense an ineffectual or powerless person.

It’s the new 12-person City Council that will have the power to enact laws. The new mayor won’t even sit on the City Council or vote on council items (except to break a tie).  The mayor, and the new city administrator, who will be appointed by the mayor with council approval, will be in charge of carrying out City Council actions and crafting the city budget.

The mayor will also be tasked with appointing a city administrator, city attorney, and police chief, but that will also be only with the City Council’s approval. And to top it all off, the mayor won’t have veto power over council decisions. 

The mayor will serve more as a $175,463-a-year figurehead than a legislator, Tate White, a member of the city’s government transition team, told OPB earlier this year. “They’re going to be partnering with other jurisdictions, they’ll be standing at press conferences, they’re going to be the people meeting with representatives from sister cities when they come and visit, it will be far more ceremonial,” she said.

But don’t count on the new 12-person City Council, with three representatives per four new geographical districts and only one staff person for each City Council member, to be all that cooperative, efficient or effective. It might be more functional than New York City’s 51-member City Council, but likely not much. After all, a City Council member can be elected with as little as 25% + 1 votes, so their constituencies will be pretty damn small.[2] One consequence could be a Councilor able to remain in office by consistently satisfying just that smaller segment of eligible voters.

Jeff Jacoby, an award-winning columnist for the Boston Globe, calls the ranked choice voting process “democracy on the Rube Goldberg model”, where  ideas that supposedly simplify people’s lives wreak havoc instead.

[1] Mayoral candidates include three current members of Portland City Council: Rene Gonzalez, Mingus Mapps and Carmen Rubio. Others running are: Saadiq Ali, early childhood educator Shei’Meka As-Salaam, inventor James Atkinson IV, REAP youth advocate Durrell Kinsey Bey, financial advisor Nancy Congdon, Yao Jun He, advocate for the unhoused and community activist Michael O’Callaghan, artist and performer Liv Osthus, city hall veteran and green energy advocate Marshall Runkel, owner and president of TITAN Freight Systems Keith Wilson and maintenance supervisor Dustin Witherspoon. 

[2] Charter reform’s explanation of how “single transferable vote” (STV) will work: 

“Councilors of each district are elected using a proportional method of ranked choice voting known as single transferable vote. This method provides for the candidates to be elected on the basis of a threshold. The threshold is determined by the number of seats to be filled plus one, so that the threshold is the lowest number of votes a candidate must receive to win a seat such that no more candidates can win election than there are seats to be filled. In the initial round, the number of first rankings received by each candidate is the candidate’s vote count. Candidates whose vote counts are at least the threshold are declared elected. Votes that counted for elected candidates in excess of the threshold are called surplus. If fewer candidates are elected in the initial round than there are seats to be filled, the surplus percentage of all votes for the candidates who received a surplus are transferred to the next-highest ranked candidates in proportion to the total numbers of next-highest rankings they received on the ballots that counted for the elected candidate. If, after all surpluses have been counted in a round, no additional candidates have a vote count that is at least the threshold, the candidates with the lowest vote counts are successively eliminated in rounds and their votes are counted as votes for the candidates who are ranked next highest on the ballots that had been counted for the eliminated candidates, until another candidate has a vote count that is at least the threshold or until the number of candidates remaining equals the number of seats that have not yet been filled. The process of transferring surpluses of elected candidates and eliminating candidates continues until all positions are elected.”

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Don’t Let Janelle Bynum Recast Herself as a Law-and-Order Candidate

Democrat Janelle Bynum, who is running against Rep. Lori Chavez-Deremer (R-OR) in the 5th Congressional District, knows the tide has turned so she’s trying to reposition herself as a law-and-order conservative. Don’t let her do it.

In a previous post, I wrote of how Bynum has the gall to say in her latest TV ad , “In Salem, I brought Republicans and Democrats together to re-criminalize fentanyl and other hard drugs. In Congress I’ll work with local law enforcement to get the officers and resources Oregon needs.”

She neglects to mention she supported decriminalization in Measure 110 before she opposed it. 

Specifically, she supported Measure 110, the 2020 ballot measure that decriminalized drugs.

That’s not all.

She says in her ad, “I won’t rest until our communities are safe”.  She undermined that pledge in 2017 when she voted to reduce voter-approved sentencings for ID Theft and Property Crimes in (HB 3078).  On the same day, she allowed car thieves to have short sentences and supported reduced sentencing for drug possession, cutting off court-ordered drug treatment for 2,500 addicts a year (HB 2355). 

As a Feb. 2024 report by the Oregon Criminal Justice System said, HB 3078 was enacted, primarily to reduce the number of persons incarcerated in Oregon’s prison system due to property offenses and identity theft. 

Section 5 of the bill changed sentences for Identity Theft and Theft in the First Degree for sentences imposed on or after January 1, 2018. These offenses were essentially removed from the sentencing structure created through the adoption of Measure 57 by Oregon voters in 2008 (creating statutory minimum sentences for certain property crimes). 

It worked.” “…prison usage remains at a lower trajectory than before, thanks in part to HB 3078,” the report said. 

 The Oregonian reported in 2018 the Dept. of Corrections was patting itself on the back for having 2500 less people in the system because of HB 3078. But some critics contended that meant cutting 2500 people a year on average from state sponsored treatment, and that spurred more homelessness and crime. 

Moreover, when crimes went from a felony to a misdemeanor and then in Measure 110 to a class E violation, all those with addictions were no longer precluded from gun ownership.

 On June 29, 2017, Steve Doell with Crime Victims United wrote in a guest column in The Oregonian that the bill “exemplifies the willingness of the legislature to sacrifice safety for savings.” 

In 2019, Bynum further muddied the waters when she voted to pass SB 1008, overturning much of voter-approved Measure 11, that required minimum-mandatory sentences for certain violent crimes and mandated that cases involving juveniles 15 years and older, accused of specific violent crimes, were to be to be handled in public in adult court. SB 1008 allowed a judge to see them in juvenile court in a non-public setting.

“Enough extremism” says one of Bynum’s ads. She should have thought that before she jumped on the social justice bandwagon.

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Misguided Charity: Portland’s Free Food Fridges

When will Portland learn?

There’s a movement afoot in Portland to provide free food to the homeless from front yard refrigerators. Willamette Week thinks it’s a great way “to Be a Better Neighbor”. I don’t.

It’s a misguided feel-good effort at charity by naïve social justice warriors that perpetuates their presence while not resolving the situation on the ground. And of course the homeless services complex never shrinks because the client base never diminishes.

A while ago I went to a free lunch for the homeless in an underground Portland parking garage. Tables spread out across the center of the garage displayed a bounty of meal options put together by multiple volunteers, from sandwiches and lasagna to potato chips and hot ethic dishes. Homeless people streamed in, wearily assembled in slow-moving lines, grabbed hold of what they wanted and found a spot on the concrete floor to sit and eat.

It wasn’t uplifting. It was depressing.

Nobody was there to help the struggling people get their lives back on track, to inquire about the welfare of their children, to make them aware of accessible pathways towards lasting change.

The fridges are little more than an incentive for too many of the homeless to stay in a downward spiral of addiction and helplessness. 

” The concept is simple,” says Willamette Week. ” Find a fridge, hook it up to a power source, put it in your front yard, and stock it with free food.”

There’s even an outfit, PDX Free Fridge, that will give you advice on how to start a free fridge effort and publicize it.

There’s a saying of uncertain providence, “Give a Man a Fish, and You Feed Him for a Day. Teach a Man To Fish, and You Feed Him for a Lifetime”. The free food tribe are giving the homeless a fish. 

It’s a classic case of when helping the homeless doesn’t really help, but reinforces a culture of helplessness. 

It reminded me of when I saw a group of fresh-faced, eager suburban teenage girls handing out sandwiches from the trunk of their car to homeless people at the Tom McCall Waterfront Park. That might have eased their  consciences, but how, exactly, did that drive change?

A woman who directed a social service agency in the Portland area that served low-income families once told me the whole free food approach was “antiquated”, a long-ago discredited tactic. 

And, of course, all of this ignores the fact your neighbors may be less than supportive of cluttering up front yards with old refrigerators that serve as magnets for the homeless under the guise of compassion. I guess that doesn’t matter when you’re on the side of goodness.

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Street of Dreams Rolls Over Neighbors

The NW Natural Street of Dreams has long been a showcase for over-the-top homes in the Portland area. Thousands of curious visitors descend on the sites to explore unique residences during the event and nearby homeowners and local media have generally enthusiastically welcome them. 

This year may be different as hordes of looky-loos descend on surprised nearby residents. 

Produced by the Home Building Association of Greater Portland, the 2024  NW Natural Street of Dreams will feature  more than 12 builders and 18  custom homes, luxury remodels, condominiums, and apartments scattered in and surrounding the Portland area, including including Portland itself, Hillsboro, Sherwood, Lake Oswego, and more. A ticket will provide entrance to all the locations to visit any time during the show hours.

The event, which will run from August 1 to August 18, 2024, will be open extended weekends only, Thursdays through Sundays, with varying hours and different open weekends.

Likely anticipating nearby homeowners and renters will be less than pleased with an invasion of their neighborhoods, the addresses for all homes on the tour are going to be a closely held secret until the eve of the event. They won’t be disclosed until emails are sent out the week before the show to all ticket holders.

Nan Binkley and Alec Holser of Lake Oswego have already sounded the alarm.

Four of the tour’s homes will be in established residential neighborhoods in Lake Oswego, they say, including one right next to their home. “We are sure our neighbors know next to nothing about this upcoming event,” they wrote in a June 19, 2024, Letter to the Editor published in the Lake Oswego Review. “Since when is it okay to let a commercial venture operate at such a large scale in small neighborhoods?” they wrote. “…it feels like the Home Builders Association is waiting until the last minute to apply for an event permit for something that will need shuttles, blocked roads and police oversight.”

Whose idea was this anyway? NW Natural and the Home Building Association of Greater Portland clearly didn’t think this through. As a result, they are likely in for a very public shellacking. 

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Is Portland’s Ranked Choice Voter Education Project Stumbling?

In its early years, the electric vehicle start-up Fisker tried to stimulate public interest by showing off a concept sports car, the EMotion, going down a desert road in a flashy 2017 marketing video. The problem, revealed by the Wall Street Journal,  – the car in the video didn’t have a motor or battery. It was propelled by people hiding inside who were pushing it forward with their feet through a hole in the floor.

To say the least, it was a deceptive start of a good idea, a worthy concept that stumbled in its execution. 

Portland’s voter education project on the city’s new ranked choice voting system to be utilized in the November 2024 election seems to be like that.

A Request for Proposals on a voter education contract “…from qualified proposers with demonstrated experience in voter and community education and outreach” went out on April 7, 2023 asking that proposals be submitted by May 3, 2023. The intent was to post an intent to award the contract to a specific bidder on June 9, 2023.

The first slip-up occurred when a winning bidder wasn’t chosen until July 2023.

The winner of the $675,000 contract was United Way of the Columbia-Willamette in collaboration with Democracy Rising, Portland United for Change (a fiscally sponsored project of the United Way) and Brink Communications of Portland. United Way of the Columbia-Willamette was the sole legal entity awarded the contract and has oversight over it.

Portland United for Change was tasked with leading the day-to-day management of contract activities and to support subcontractor grant recipients working to implement the education and outreach effort for harder-to-reach voters. Samantha Gladu, Coalition Director at Portland United for Change, was expected to manage the overall project.

Democracy Rising was expected to apply its expertise in voter education efforts in five states on ranked choice voting.

Brink, which described itself as “…a queer woman-owned, BIPOC and LGBTQIA2S+-led marketing and communications agency united around justice, equity and solidarity”, was expected to provide four members of a six-person Project Team working on the voter education effort. 

A second slipup occurred two months later, however, when Brink, a 12-year-old 43-employee firm, unexpectedly ceased operations. “The disruptions of the pandemic, the recent economic downturn and upheavals in the marketing industry have been very difficult for our small business,” the company said in a LinkedIn post. 

Rather than switch to another bidder, the city left it to United Way to find a replacement firm for Brink. It took until January 2024 for United Way to accomplish that by selecting Hearts & Minds Communications LLC of Portland, a company founded in 2021 which describes itself as “…a growing collective of communicators, designers and strategists united by our approach to center racial justice in our work”.

Hearts & Minds has not responded to inquiries seeking information on who on its staff would replace the Brink employees serving on the Project Team, details on their roles and qualifications and specifics on their projected hourly rates.  

Then another problem. 

Two months later, on March 13, 2024, Samantha Gladu, Coalition Director at Portland United for Change, abruptly left the organization and transitioned to another employer. She had been expected to be the day-to-day contact with the city, helping to coordinate all the meetings and directing the appropriate people to meetings regarding various elements of the project. 

As of May 16, 2024, United Way had still not replaced Gladu and it’s not clear who’s running the show. “I think we can all agree that this is a very competitive market for employees, and we are not at all surprised that Samantha was poached away from her role at United Way. United Way is recruiting for this position,” said Shoshanah Oppenheim, Charter Transition Project Manager with the city.

All this turmoil occurred while the original timeline for the entire project had  envisioned that two key phases of the project would be underway.

First, Nov. 2023 – Feb. 2024 was supposed be spent identifying and engaging local voter education partners, building out infrastructure and collateral for different campaign focuses and working with election officials on ranked choice voting implementation.

Then, during Feb. 2024 – June 2024, the project team was expected to focus on outreach to coalition partners to extend capacity, the recruitment and training of organizational and volunteer leaders on voter education, and engagement of stakeholders and media to facilitate their understanding of the new election system.

The winning bidder was expected to use this time to offer sub-grants to “…local non-profit and community-based organizations who can assist in disseminating this vital information through trusted mediums to members of populations who traditionally lacked access to inclusive voter education and are most likely to benefit from focused, supplemental outreach.”

United Way’s original bid said the voter education effort aimed “to be operating on all cylinders” in June. The way things are going, it’s doubtful that will be the case. 

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Subsidizing Progressives: Portland Needs New Blood to Solve Persistent Problems

Portland voters could learn something from feminist writer and civil rights campaigner Rita Mae Brown. She was right on when she wrote, ‘Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

The seven candidates for the restructured City Council who have qualified so far for matching funds from Portland’s Small Donor Elections Program are all self-proclaimed progressives, Willamette Week reports.

Under the Small Donor Elections Program, candidates for office must raise a certain number of contributions to qualify for city matching funds.  Mayoral candidates can earn up to $100,000 in matching funds. City Council candidates can earn up to $120,000 in matching funds.

It’s progressives who have been the most ardent advocates of tolerance for raucous, violent and and destructive demonstrations, drug liberalization, sprawling homeless encampments in public spaces, escalating gun violence, limits on criminal penalties, and crude and threatening public behavior. 

So now it looks like Portland taxpayers are going to finance the advocacy of a progressive agenda when it’s progressive foolishness that has driven Portlanders to despair in recent years.

Over half of respondents in a Dec. 2023 survey by DHM Research said Portland is moving in the wrong direction and that they are worse off now than they were two years ago. Eight in 10 said quality of life in Portland is getting worse and more said they had a negative view of future economic opportunities. Even Rep. Earl Blumenauer, a classic progressive, recognizes how bad things are.  “Portland is broken,” he said as far back as February 2022 when he announced his reelection bid. “Collectively it seems like we have challenges unlike any we have ever faced.”

Doesn’t that suggest Portlanders, instead of doubling down on progressive politicians and policies, should turn away from the destructive progressive government leadership practices of the past and embrace new political candidates with more responsible agendas? 

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A New I-5 Bridge: A Vital Transit Link or a Corridor for Crime?

The I-5 Bridge connecting Oregon and Washington

NOTE: Paul O. Edgar, a retired Business Systems Analyst, submitted a response to this post. It is reprinted at the conclusion of my post.

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Shades of the U.S.-Mexico border conflict.

Stephen F. Austin, the “father of Texas”, had strong opinions about ” invaders”. In a May 4, 1836 letter, appealing for U.S. assistance during Texas’ war of independence, Austin declared “A war of extermination is raging in Texas — a war of barbarism and of despotic principles waged by the mongrel Spanish-Indian and Negro race, against civilization and the Anglo-American race…. Indians, Mexicans, and renegades, all mixed together, and all the natural enemies of white men and civilization.”

It doesn’t look like Republican Joe Kent, who lost his 2022 race in Washington’s in Washington’s Third Congressional District against Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and is challenging her again in 2024, likes outsiders much either,, especially folks from Oregon.

In mid-January 2024, Kent proclaimed that a replacement for the deteriorating I-5 bridge and a new light rail line “… would be an expressway for Portland’s crime & homeless into Vancouver…”

“…the drug addicts and criminals in their tent colonies that are spreading their crime from Portland into Vancouver…,” are not welcome in his district, he said.

In a Feb. 29, 2024 news release, Kent repeated that allegation. “What we don’t need – and the people of my district agree on this regardless of party – is a toll road that unfairly targets Washingtonians commuting to Portland, or light rail that there is no demand for and would bring Portland’s crime problem further into Clark County.”

Kent has repeated that point of view on Facebook. ““We don’t want the problems of downtown Portland dumped right into our district in Vancouver,” he said. “If you look at the murder rate, the crime rate, that’s the last thing we want in Vancouver.”

The New York Times says the I-5 dispute “… is an example of how Republicans…are seeking to transform even the most basic of local issues into battlegrounds in the nation’s culture wars in elections this year in which control of Congress is at stake. Mr. Kent’s attacks, which rely on buzzwords of the hard right, place the bridge at the center of a national political discussion that vilifies the left and plays on fears of demographic change.”

So I guess we can expect more of this as the Kent-Perez contest heats up.

Response by Paul O. Edgar

The I-5 bridge and light rail issues are about more than crime. 

The most important issue is whether there is a need to have this very expensive TriMet Light Rail Transit (LRT) line extended into Clark County, with an additional $2 billion added into the I-5 Interstate Bridge Replacement (IBR) plan cost. 

TriMet also wants to also get reimbursed for all operating costs. Currently they are estimated to be $21.6 Million dollars per year. 

TriMet already has a huge under-funded earned health and retirement obligation that the citizens of Clark County Washington would become partners in if the I-5 bridge/Light Rail project goes through. TriMet has been working on trying to deal with those obligations, but the limit on payroll tax revenues and other State of Oregon funds already make TriMet look like a Chapter 11 bankrupt organization. 

Reading its performance reports, TriMet ridership has plunged and costs have been understated.  The West-side Commuter Rail System (WES), for example, appears to be losing $1 million dollars per month and TriMet’s LRT may well be losing $10 million dollars per month. Some of that is because of the increase in virtual offices and public concerns about drug addicts and other troubled people on the system.

All this, plus burdensome bridge tolls, will mean added costs for Clark County commuters, 99% of whom will also not be able get directly to their place of work or back home on a Fixed Rail System without even more added costs. 
The cost of what Clark County residents would be the assuming of the costs associate with extending TriMet Light Rail Transit are to far great.

This is important, and you can read TriMet’s performance reports that less than 1% of the incident of travel generated in the TriMet Service are handled by TriMet. Not enough people will use TriMet Light Rail Transit and it would be very hard for people to justify the ongoing cost, including the toll costs that will go on for ever and ever. 

Maybe the answer for many Clark County residents who now travel to Portland will be to find employment and do their shopping elsewhere. 

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The Portland Timbers/DaBella Deal: Bad from the Beginning

The Portland Timbers got an out from its troubling partnership with Hillsboro-based DaBella Exteriors on Wednesday when The Oregonian disclosed that “the company’s chief executive (Donnie McMillan Jr.) is facing a lawsuit that threatens to bring to light complaints that he made unwanted advances and sexually harassed at least three female employees.”

“The Portland Timbers have terminated the club’s corporate partnership with DaBella, effective immediately, after learning yesterday of allegations of misconduct at the company included in a court filing that was made public on Feb. 23.,” the club announced in typical public relations-speak.

As if Portland didn’t already have enough reputation concerns.

The Timbers should have seen this coming.

It used to be that sports teams linked up only with highly regarded businesses that would enhance their mutual reputations, not tarnish them. Apparently, the Timbers didn’t care when they announced their multi-year jersey rights partnership with DaBella on Nov. 15, 2023.

According to the Sports Business Journal, the Timbers deal with DaBella came together after DaBella officials, including  McMillan and DaBella CMO Bastian Cowsert, and Timbers officials, including owner Merritt Paulson, CEO Heather Davis and CRO Joe Cote, met at Providence Park in July 2023.

DaBella saw the value of teaming up with a respected professional soccer team. “Brand matters in our category; the majority of our customers are putting on a roof once,” Cowsert told the Sports Business Journal. ”So having brand equity translates to a commitment in quality and customer satisfaction.” 

The Timbers must have decided to ignore the fact that DaBella’s reputation in the home improvement business is far from an admired leader with “a commitment in quality and customer satisfaction”.

If the team had done even a little research, including of some major media, it would have found questions about McMillan and a previous business, a stream of negative reviews of DaBella’s business practices, and concerns about the company’s ethical lapses.

In March 2010, when McMillan was president of a Mukilteo, WA-based window replacement company, Penguin Windows, the company reached a settlement with the Washington Attorney General’s Office over a complaint made against it by the state’s chief legal office.

That complaint alleged the company misrepresented its products, making false claims about the energy savings customers would achieve and misleading consumers into thinking that the in-home appointments they set up with Penguin were something other than sales calls.

Penguin subsequently filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in federal bankruptcy court in Seattle, WA on Feb. 25, 2011. The company, which was legally incorporated as Statewide Inc., shuttered later that year.

McMillan founded DaBella in Oregon that same year. 

The company, which has since expanded to 46 locations across 17 states, has accumulated a massive stream of negative customer reviews on a wide variety of sites since then.

Yelp

2023 :  “If I could give zero stars I would… They will not stop calling and coming to my door PUSHING their “free roof estimate” BS… They take advantage of the kindness of people who don’t want to push them away and be rude but I’ve had ENOUGH.”

2022: “This outfit is the most unprofessional, unqualified construction company in Oregon. Check their record with OCCB (Oregon Construction Contractors Board)…Their customer service is abysmal and the work that was done on our house had zero supervision while it was being completed…Do not trust this company. They are deceitful and you will end up worse off than when you started. ..Oregon homeowners should be protected from dishonest, predatory businesses like this one…just look up their contractors license (194160) and read how many complaints they continually receive. It’s horrendous and Oregon homeowners should be protected from dishonest, predatory businesses like this one.

Pissedconsumer.com

Recent comments: “Do not let these people in your house!”, “Do not use this company”, “This is not a company I would trust. If they don’t respect you enough to return phone calls, give you a timeline, they won’t respect you enough to follow through and do a good job”, “Hire Dabella at your own risk. I recommend avoiding them completely.”, “Don’t bother with DaBella, they are a terrible company”. 

Consumer Affairs

“Assume it’s 2x as bad as it sounds! Sales people LIED to me on timing. Told 6-8 weeks, took 16 weeks…they just dish the work out to local contractors, whoever is cheap! They send some ** contractors who didn’t have their own materials or tools needed who ripped off thousands of dollars of custom historical trim.”

Better Business Bureau

“DaBella agreed to knock $5,000 off initial price of $ $27,694 for new roof. When I received my first statement the $5300 was not deducted off my bill. I then again called ***** and he said he would talk to the finance department to take care of the deduction. I called him 5 more times within the next three weeks with no response or when he did answer phone he said he was working on it. Finally after three weeks he said there was nothing he could do because the job was done and loan was pushed through.”

When the Timbers/DaBella deal was announced, McMillan said the Timbers are “…an organization that shares our core values”.

That’s regrettable. 

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Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek’s Housing Production Advisory Council: What Were They Thinking?

Gov. Kotek has apparently decided not to immediately pursue multiple money-raising proposals put forward by her Housing Production Advisory Council to address the affordable housing crisis in Oregon. But you have to wonder, who are these people and what in God’s name were they thinking? How could they have been so oblivious, so tone-deaf to, the public mood?

Oregonians are in no mood for massive tax hikes, particularly to pay for more wasteful programs run by a parasitic government determined to hoover up hard-earned private income .

The proposals in the Council’s ill-advised 20-page draft report, HPAC Policy Recommendations, all of which would have continued until sunsetting in 2032, include: 

  1. Increase all personal income tax brackets by ½ percentage point
  2. Establish a special $1 per $1,000 real property tax assessment outside of Measure 5.
  3. Implement a 0.5% retail sales tax
  4. Implement a 0.5% payroll tax
  5. Double the current state fuel tax
  6. Targeted Measure 50 Reform:
  7. Increase annual Maximum Assessed Value change from 3% to 5%.
  8. Authorize voters to increase the permanent levy of their local
    jurisdiction.
  9. Exempt cities and counties from compression.
  10. Adopt Land Value Tax
  11. Eliminate Mortgage Interest Deduction for Second Homes (i.e., abolish income tax deduction for interest paid on second homes).
  12. Enact temporary property tax exemption for new housing at 120% AMI or below.
  13. Reduce or Eliminate Tax Expenditures (i.e., tax exemptions) not related to housing.

Total projected ANNUAL new revenue from just the first five proposals would be $2.4 billion. If enacted in 2024, and maintained until sunsetting in 2032, they would would fill state coffers by grabbing almost an astonishing additional $27 billion from taxpayers. Measure 50 reform surely would grab millions more. 

Who came up with this stuff?

The report notes that four lawmakers sat as members on Kotek’s Council:

  • Senator Dick Anderson (R – Lincoln City)
  • Senator Kayse Jama (D – Portland)
  • Representative Vikki Breese-Iverson (R – Prineville)
  • Representative Maxine Dexter (D – Portland)

I can understand the two liberal Democrats, given their party’s predilection for government spending.

Jama represents Oregon’s 24th Senate District, which includes parts of Multnomah and Clackamas Counties. He co-founded the Center for Intercultural Organizing, now Unite Oregon, and served as the director until 2021. He was appointed unanimously by the Clackamas and Multnomah County Boards of Commissioners to replace Shemia Fagan after she was elected Secretary of State.  He won election by 58.7% in 2022. 

Dexter represents Oregon’s 33rd House District, which covers the Northwest District and Northwest Heights of Portland, plus Cedar Mill, Oak Hills and most of Bethany. She was appointed in June 2020 after the death of Democrat Mitch Greenlick. She won election by 84.8% in 2022.

It’s harder to understand why Republicans Dick Anderson of Lincoln City and Vikki Breese-Iverson of Prineville signed on to the Advisory Council’s massive tax proposals, unless you accept the proposition that the two parties are actually a duopoly focused on expanding government through mock competition..

Anderson squeaked into office after the incumbent Democrat decided not to run for re–election. He defeated Democrat Melissa Cribbins in the 2020 general election by just 49.4% to 46.5%.  

Breese-Iverson, who formerly served as minority leader of the Oregon House, is an even more surprising advocate of higher taxes. Her Prineville home is in conservative Sen. Lynn Findley’s district. He’s one of one of six Republican senators who might be unable to run for reelection in 2024 because of his 2023 walkout. If he doesn’t run, Breese-Iverson may run in his place.

Then there are all the gubernatorial appointees to the Council.[1] With broad experience in affordable housing, finance and architecture, and most with a long Oregon presence, you’d think they would be sensitive to the public mood. They weren’t.

The reality is that the optimism and liberal tolerance so long present in Oregon has been degrading for quite a while.

A January 2022 statewide survey conducted by the Oregon Values and Beliefs Center found Oregonians questioning government spending, with half of respondents saying more than 44 cents of every dollar in state spending is wasted. 

“We spent way too much money on programs without any evidence that those programs are SOLVING the problems they are meant to address,” said one male respondent aged 45-54 in Multnomah County. “It seems that spending money is seen as a solution, but it isn’t. I want problems SOLVED and then the program must end. The programs go on forever and accomplish little, if anything.”

Young adults (18-29)—a group likely to exhibit strong support for tax increases to fund social programs—reported the highest perceived waste in the state budget of any demographic group. The median response among young adults was that a whopping 56 cents per dollar of state spending are wasted.

Liberal patience has degraded most noticeably in the Portland Metro area, where about half of Oregon’s population resides.

In a May 2023 poll carried out by GS Strategy Group for People for Portland, 75% of Multnomah County voters said homelessness in the area was “an out-of-control disaster”.

More than half (55%) said “Portland has lost what made it a special place to live”.  And even worse, 65% agreed that elected officials in the Portland area were listening to “a small group of insider political activists” on important issues, rather than the public at large.  

The erosion of once reliable liberal tolerance for the homeless and community crime was also evident in the overwhelming support (67%) for compelling drug addiction and mental health treatment for people in crisis. 

Similar shifts in public mood were evident in a December 2023 survey of Portland voters by DMH Research for the Portland Police Association. About two-thirds of respondents said the city was on “the wrong track” and more than half said they would leave if they could afford to.  Almost 70 percent of those surveyed said the city was “losing what made it special” and only about 20% said the city’s best days lie ahead.

Against this backdrop, the members of the Housing Production Advisory Council were way off track in their revenue-raising proposals. Simply put, they clearly failed to “read the room” .

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  1. Gubernatorial appointees to the Housing Production Advisory Council

Ernesto Fonseca is the CEO of Hacienda Community Development Corp., which provides affordable housing, homeownership support, economic advancement and educational opportunities.

Elissa Gertler, former executive director of the Northwest Oregon Housing Authority, is Clatsop County Housing Manager, leading the county’s efforts in developing more affordable housing.

Riley Hill is a longtime local contractor in Eastern Oregon and former Ontario mayor from 2019 to 2022.

Natalie Janney is Vice President at Multi/Tech Engineering, which designs subdivision and multi-family projects throughout Oregon.

Robert Justus was co-founder of housing company Home First.  With its development partners, the company has built 1,425 units of affordable housing with a development cost of more than $381 million. Justus stepped away from the company at the end of 2023. 

Joel Madsen is Executive Director at Mid-Columbia Housing Authority and Columbia Cascade Housing Corporation. Both work towards promoting and administering affordable housing in the Columbia River Gorge.

Ivory Justice was selected as Executive Director of Home Forward, Oregon’s largest provider of low-income housing, in January 2023. She previously worked as Chief Executive Officer for Columbia Housing and Cayce Housing in South Carolina.

Erica Mills is Chief Executive Officer at NeighborWorks Umpqua in Roseburg. The private non-profit works with residents in Coos, Curry, Douglas, Jackson and Josephine Counties on affordable housing development, education, training, and homeowner assistance as well as lending, loan servicing and other financial services.

Eric Olsen is the owner of Monmouth-based Olsen Design and Development, Inc., a design-build land development company focusing on small to midsize projects with emphasis on residential.

Gauri Rajbaidya is a principal at Portland-based SERA Architects.

Karen Rockwell has been Executive Director with the Housing Authority of Lincoln County since late 2022. She served previously as Executive Director of Benton Habitat for Humanity in Corvallis, a commissioner on the Linn Benton Housing Authority and as vice chair of the Corvallis Housing and Community Development Advisory Board.

Margaret Van Vliet is a Portland-based consultant focusing on strategy development, organizational improvement and project management. Her specialties are housing homelessness and wildfire recovery. 

Justin Wood is a Portland developer and vice president of Fish Construction NW Inc.

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Batten Down the Hatches: Portland’s New Form of Government is Going to Cost a Bundle 

In 2022, when Portland voters considered Ballot Measure 26-228 proposing transformational changes to city government, the City Budget Office estimated the cost of implementing the measure would be $910,000 to $8.7 million annually. 

“The range of the cost estimate is dependent on policy decision making outside the charter scope,” the Charter Review Commission said. 

Talk about buying a pig in a poke. To say the least, that left a lot of wiggle room.

Based on discussions to date, you can count on the final number being on the high end.

First, even the City Budget Office’s number is a ballpark estimate at best. As the Office said, “It is essential to note that the figures in this report are estimates and this report does not represent a budget document. Costs associated with council and mayor staffing levels, ranked choice voting implementation, and other election-related costs will only be known after certain operational milestones.”

Unknown’s, for example, are costs associated with the new ranked choice voting system, including voter education and outreach and changes in the Small Donor Elections program that provides candidates who have broad community support and follow program rules with up to a 9-to-1 match on the first $20 of small donations they receive from Portland residents. 

On top of that, according to Willamette Week, an emerging  sticking point is renovation of City Hall to accommodate the City Council’s expansion from a mayor and 4 commissioners to a mayor and 12 commissioners elected to represent four new geographic districts. 

From 5 to 13

Despite nearly a third of Portland’s downtown office market sitting vacant, and companies potentially reducing their footprint in more than 500,000 square feet of leased space that is set to expire market-wide during the balance of 2023, the city has budgeted up to $7.2 million to renovate City Hall to accommodate the council’s expansion. 

That renovation does not take into account the potential cost of establishing an individual office for each of the 12 commissioners within their district.

Meanwhile, Mayor Wheeler has proposed spending $893,000 – $1.4 million to relocate commissioners’ offices to another city building during the City Hall renovation.

Then there’s the need to plan for a City Administrator and that person’s staff. The Administrator will be responsible for implementing the laws approved by the City Council and manage the city’s bureaus. 

Mayor Wheeler has proposed that the City Administrator have an assistant city administrator and five deputies who would each oversee groups of the city’s bureaus. There are currently 26 bureaus, but that could change. Presumably, the City Administrator, Deputy City Administrator and the five deputies would also have administrative assistants of some sort.

Then there’s the issue of paying the mayor and the 12 city commissioners. Their initial pay has been set by an independent salary commission that was appointed in Jan. 2023. 

In June 2023, the salary commission decided to give all of Portland’s elected officials big pay raises under the new governance system.  The annual base pay for all incoming City Council members will be $133,207, $7,513 more than the current rate. The mayor’s annual base pay will be $175,463, a $26,202 raise. The salaries will go into effect in January 2025.

The salary commission was not responsible for proposing how the city should pay the new salaries. The current City Council will have to figure that out. 

Then there will be the staff of the mayor and each of the 12 commissioners. Currently, each city commissioner’s office has eight employees, including the commissioner, a chief of staff, and other aides performing a variety of duties.

Under Portland’s Adopted Budget for 2023-2024, three of the commissioners have a budget for 8 full-time positions and one (Dan Ryan) has a budget for 9 full-time positions::

  • Commissioner of Public Affairs, Rene Gonzales: $724,246
  • Commissioner of Public Safety, Mingus Mapps: $740,085
  • Commissioner of Public Utilities, Carmen Rubio: $775,038
  • Commissioner of Public Works, Dan Ryan: $761,405

In 2022, the City Budget Office assumed each of the twelve new offices would have between 3 and 4.7 full-time equivalent staff members supporting the Councilor and that each district of 3 representatives would have some level of shared staff providing communications and business operations functions. 

Mayor Wheeler has proposed that each of the 12 councilors have two aides and some shared staff. Three of the current City Council members have proposed that each of the 12 Council members have just one staff person and that there be some administrative staff to serve all the council members.

If the number lands at the total envisioned by the City Budget Office or Mayor Wheeler, be prepared to for higher costs with such an elaborate expanded city government and for calls for more staff as the 12 individual commissioners press for more power.

And get ready for more waste as time goes on.

As humorist P.J. O’Rourke put it, “It is a popular delusion that the government wastes vast amounts of money through inefficiency and sloth. Enormous effort and elaborate planning are required to waste this much money.”