More lovable by the week
The 2022 Portland City Council campaigns are off to a roaring start. Both Jo Ann Hardesty and Dan Ryan will be facing the voters and defending their records. The primary is in May.
Things have gotten quite a bit easier for Ryan since New Year's. Akasha Lawrence Spence has dropped out of the race. As has Jamila Dozier. Neither seemed likely to win.
Meanwhile Hardesty, who's got serious opposition, isn't doing herself any favors with this maneuver: Jack up the parking meter rates on the streets around Timbers and Thorns games, from $1.60 an hour to $4.00 an hour.
The city says the change would increase parking availability in the Northwest District for people not attending the games by creating more turnover and reducing the number of spectators using street parking spaces.
OMG, really? Really???
Maybe Hardesty doesn't want the job any more. Or maybe, like the rest of City Hall, she just hates people with cars and their accompanying lives. But that's a heck of a proposal in an election year. Her well-deserved removal from government seems imminent.
Well it really is about equity you know. How many BIPOC’s are going to Timbers or Thorns games, besides maybe a few Latinx’s?
ReplyDeleteIt’s not right that a predominately privileged and White clientele should hog all of the available parking. That is not equity at all. What it is in reality is the hogging of resources on stolen land, by a privileged class of people. Who by the way are adding to the carbon level of our non-gendered (formerly Mother) Earth.
Well...I'm out here in the city and, frankly, I don't care. Anything that impedes Merritt Paulson from squeezing another dime out of the naive is fine with me. What happened to the Parking Patrol? Do they ever come up to Sector R?
ReplyDeleteThe # on parking & property tax only goes one way (^), no?
ReplyDeleteYou expect different on an easy to collect fee?
Mostly, what I objected to parking is that those A-holes have a zillion dollars for new parking meters & now no longer give out a paper stick-on receipt & want your car's plate #.
Great, undermine solidarity & citizens (portlanders?) sharing or handing parking passes to each-other with remaining time on them to get / have the opportunity to meet each other & be in the habit of acting communally w/mutual-aid if the cost to them personally is low enough (nothing/couple seconds offering it to someone(s) pulling in a space,) I paid city of PDX for x-many minutes of parking / right to park within city limits for x-many minutes, if there's a space available or I wanna move my work-van where I do actual real dangerous/sweat my guts out work w/liability w/ $250,000 of tools where I can damn well see it if a space opens up, goddammit I'm gonna move it!
This is the sort of BS makes us that unfortunately have to own a car/work van & have capitol/artisanal scale-1-man-band tools that are a theft-magnet that we worked hard for resent living in the city, its leadership/corruption/outta-touch attitude & the lonliness of not getting to meet or have positive interactions with random people on neutral ground with no cost to us personally.
That said, I other than generating possible tax revenue from player salaries etc. I could give a crap less about pro-sports & spectacle or tourists one way or the other hahaha.
That's all in the - column as far as I'm concerned / run it & the monied yuppies & CA retirees outta town on a rail! It's a cancer/parasite mostly!
That said, if the rubes wanna go to pro-sports & want the barons of such franchises to front their capitol for it at their risk with careful analysis for maximal asset utilization & negative side-effects on the city mitigated, go for it!
ReplyDeleteIf they need to as an aid habitually thinking strategically &/or making predictions, rooting for something/someone to feel familiarity & local pride & to distract from how wretched & empty their humdrum lives are, far be it from me to say they 'can't' or 'shouldn't' & be a kill joy or Eyore wet-blanket?
I'd rather just have shooting/hunter's safety class ranges in schools again and pay people really good at sports to teach others how to think about them or play them casually in public park spaces separated off for days or hours as needed/deemed appropriate & have one/handful super super smart/nerdy sports critics analyze & film/capture games played by all-stars as a public good or learning opportunity, but whatevah, that's a daydream/pipe dream & not the world we live in.
& mob mentality, familiarity & nostalgia is rampant/ 'a thing' in our world/we're prolly/by all evidence part pack-animal...it is what it is?
The Blazing Saddles Taggart line (with-regard-to the faux-toll-plaza) applies (I think);
ReplyDelete'Le Petomane thru-way, what'll that asshole think of next?!'