It's for the monkeys – just not the ones you think
It's been decades since I spent much time in Northwest Portland, but I have never stopped reading and appreciating the Northwest Examiner, the independent monthly newspaper over there, run (and mostly all of it written) by the sharp and indefatigable Allan Classen. I was flipping through their May issue last night when I came across this ad, which I haven't seen anywhere else. It's a doozy, no?
Even the Weed is a "no" on this one!
ReplyDelete^might be close?
ReplyDeleteI can see the more ‘it’s for the children’ education or childcare type stuff *maybe* passing as I can believe there are *maybe* enough millennials that at least *aspire* to have a kid & live within PPS, such as anyone can afford to have kids &/or believes in their future getting much/any better anywhere urbanized in the first world short of *maybe* Norway with a sovreign oil wealth fund, lots of able bodied seamen and utility trained helicopter pilots / well paid and now skilled trades wan in an age of car stretched complicated global capitalism & only spread over ~5million heads, no major baby boom demographic crunch & (relatively) untouched/well positioned for climate change (thus far)?
They used to be considered the hicks of Europe, but they find oil and start to really make $ on it by the dumpster fire that is the 21st century post soviet collapse & USA yeltsin/Putin Wall Street looting…you gotta feel like you won the freakin’ lotto if you’re born/pre late middle age in Norway (but being a poor former nazi occupied colony still within living memory) Vs. In northern England/Scotland with 60 million people/way overpopulated with the elites/administrators of empire returning to the nexus & all your oil/assets privatized & manufacturing / industry sold off/run to wreck & ruin to the point you might freeze to death?
Others in Anglo sphere take note?
We may be/are on the same trajectory, just less progressed?
Zoo, I have *some* hope their absurdly large / cool 380mil ask/touch (as Bertie Wooster might say?) might be an ask too big (I’d love to know how many people can even get to the zoo in sunset hwy hellish traffic these days/what their admittance #s are) & when a 2 person date to the zoo on all but the ‘Wednesday?/hump day (discounted) happy hour’ wrecks a $100 bill?
Plus, presumably everyone in metro bounds gets to vote (maybe no?) on it?
There’s gotta be some Oregon Shitty, Milwaukie, tigard and gresham no votes, yea?
Plus if even the weed says it’s absurd to ask that much?
With the city in the state it’s in, why do we need a zoo at all (unless we can really justify it with user fees and get enough of a draw off it to really soak tourists enough like more world famous zoos like San Diego, San Francisco & Seattle?
Sane minded millennial checking in. The pulse I get from similar aged folk is that they’re fed up, which is always a fun conversation into the effects of saying yes to everything. Anyways, should be a fun May
DeleteI’m all for soaking tourists with user-fees, green space/Washington park and education and preservation of biodiversity, but I just don’t see how a contractor’s pork barrel, politician remodel ribbon cutting/sopranos esplanade in zoo form is necessarily in line with accomplishing that for the greater good ‘n all?
ReplyDeleteBig NO on this one. This is a con job
ReplyDeleteMetro uses a system of overhead rates to siphon significant amounts of money from bond measures like this one to pay for its general operations. They need to constantly float new bond measures to maintain support for their constantly expanding bureaucracies.
ReplyDeleteYou know what's for the kids? Leaving them a tiny bit of income they can use for themselves after paying for huge rents, expensive groceries, and ridiculous tuitions.
ReplyDelete^Truth.
DeleteIdk how we have such hideous public HS graduation #s in Oregon (not so much schools in better neighborhoods (Cleveland, Wilson, Grant, Lincoln, Roosevelt or Benson within PPS and obviously LO, lakeridge & riverdale just outside that are ‘public’ (& at some base level have to take everybody as a base mandate, but all generally pretty affluent)).
Yeah, ok, urban schools have some more costly and needy students, but for what we spend as enrollment #s really dip (Oregon is in the lowest 3 for birth rates by state), we’re not doing so great.
I feel like it’s more the position the parents are in and what/who else is around + our PPS admin bloat that’s trying/doing it’s best to kill a trade school in a time of record low immigration, near world-wide demographic crunch & for every 7 people currently in the skilled trades, only one is coming in to replace them, currently, which, with aging population near ~50% of all USA hydropower and the one semi-publicly owned US nuclear power plant to power all those servers for all that mouse-ticking (are you a maker, fixer or mouse-tickler) (I sometimes say mouse-fondling/mostly pretend make-believe work to imply further degeneracy), the outlook isn’t so good?
The PERS incentive structure incentivizing the hacks and time servers as well as the revolving door double dippers/charter school privatizers instead of the good teachers that burn out fairly quick in public schools / only sort of have a handful of really good years in them ~ages 28-38.
Construction costs are high, & the buildings themselves did/do need a lot of reworking (although, go figure we give away the Lincoln HS real estate to the developer weasels & still ask the tax payers for a ton of $, eliminate parking at the new Benson / take away the vehicle & manufacturing labs due to legal liabilities that are more hands on & have some incredibly costly scheme to try to consolidate the Cleveland building with its track & field a few blocks away).
I often think as in look at Wilson (Ida Wells now I guess?) that part of what makes it succeed is that it’s in a good location that’s both walkable, trsnsit accessible, with a park-like feel green space & automobile-compatible too.
The building isn’t great (not functionally terrible), but very 1950s Jack-slab erector set/hardly inspiring.
Parents are neither dominated by a picky crazy wealthy nor super over-worked & desperate faction, teachers pretty average.
We need remodeled and safe buildings with fixed pipes and seismic that we should have been maintaining all along, but there’s no room for ribbon cuttings, Simpsons monorail gimmick / gadget salesmen, developers & charter school bill gates types to whet their beaks, so, good luck?
It’s not celebrity teachers, more admin or fancy buildings that I think we really need & the spending that necessarily correlates with positive outcomes it seems?
Some jobs require problem solving in the field & are dirty, dangerous & difficult to automate?
As a very young adolescent, I visited the San Francisco zoo often. Wonderful large scary place for me at that age. As a grandparent, I took my family to the San Diego zoo. Unbelievably beautiful place. Portlands zoo reminds me of a small walk-in closet.
ReplyDeleteSeeing television ads claiming that voting "yes" will not raise taxes. How is that not a lie, when by definition it's a property tax bond that raises property taxes by $x per $1000 valuation?
ReplyDeleteJust on that it gets a big fat NO vote. At least be honest about what you're asking.