That's enough of that

It was inevitable. The only surprise is how long it took. The wacky book club known as the Portland City Council is about to pull the plug on Mayor Keith Wilson's eminently reasonable program to clean up the city's streets.

On Wednesday, Portland City Council is expected to vote on a budget amendment proposed by Councilor Angelita Morillo that would reroute the city’s Impact Reduction Program funds toward housing, food assistance, and immigrant relations.

The amendment — if approved — would cut $4.3 million from the city’s program that cleans and removes homeless encampments and transfers $1.5 million to Morillo’s efforts. 

According to Mayor Wilson, the program has removed 12,400,000 pounds of hazardous garbage from Portland streets and public spaces in the past fiscal year.

In a newsletter sent to the public on Sunday, he said defunding the program could be “devastating for every neighborhood as upwards of 4,000,000 lbs. of biohazard materials could be left uncollected,” and urged Portland residents to contact their city council representatives to preserve the program’s funding....

In response, Morillo took to social media Monday morning, stating that her amendment does not cut trash abatement. She also criticized Wilson, claiming he “could’ve called me to clarify and ask questions before blasting us in a newsletter, but of course he has to find a scapegoat when he doesn’t magically end homelessness on 12/1 by warehousing people.”

Unfortunately for Wilson, he's saddled with a 12-member council of which half are far-left zealots, and two more of which are Portland Weird in the worst sense. Working control of the council is vested in a "caucus" of strident "progressives" who by their text exchanges (which may or may not violate public meetings laws) have revealed the maturity of a freshman high school dance committee. And of course, now emboldened by Zohranmania, they're not listening to some grey-haired white business guy, even though he was elected with a pretty clear mandate to get the addicts and their filth off the sidewalks.

The "Peacock" councilors, as they call themselves, apparently believe that if we can't immediately bring about their utopian society (four are avowed socialists), then anything goes. Everybody just do your thing, no rules. If you're a druggie living in the public right-of-way, their solution is to give you free paraphernalia for your habit, a new tent, and directions to a day spa paid for by the taxpayers.

The current lineup of council oddballs is even worse than the motley crew that preceded it under the previous charter, which went out the window in 2022. In ye olde days, we tended to have one or two clunkers out of five commissioners. Now it's six out of 12, with a couple more on the margins. 

And if you think the talent might improve in the next round of elections (half of the councilors have to run again next year), you are mistaken. Extremism is baked into the system by virtue of the crazy version of "rank choice" voting under which the council members are elected. The charter ensures at least four far-out councilors, and maybe as many as seven or eight, at all times. That was the whole point: It's for "equity." The insanity is only intensified by the city's public financing of the jokesters' political campaigns. The taxpayers provide hefty subsidies that pay for the candidates' election season come-ons. And for all that, we get a Marxist book club. It's a feature, not a bug.

The imminent defunding of the cleanup effort comes at a particularly bad time. A new report from some self-appointed experts at Portland State University indicates that Multnomah County's homeless population has increased by 67 percent between 2023 and now. Like all numbers coming from the PSU census-taker wannabes, they're not guaranteed reliable. But if they're anywhere in the ballpark, they confirm that the hundreds of millions of dollars that have been thrown at Portland homelessness in the last five years are not having the desired result – indeed, the way we're spending the moolah seems to be making a dire situation worse.

And the lack of progress on the street camping front is no doubt a big factor contributing to the city's rock-bottom reputation as a place to do business. This week a survey of real estate sharpies around the country showed Portland again ranked 80th out of 81 American cities for development and investment potential. 

That's no surprise either, really. Between the messes on the street, the hideous tax climate, and the "landlords-are-greedy-and-evil" mindset of the "Peacocks," you'd be crazy to put your money into real property here.

When a city has a lousy economy, that usually means more people living outdoors. To keep the street-dwellers from wrecking the place costs a lot of money, which has to come from those who are making a living. When a city taxes the successful people too hard, they leave, and the city has a lousy economy. 

If Wilson could somehow break that doom cycle, he'd go down in history as one of the greatest mayors Portand ever had. But given the crew he's been given to work with, he appears certain to be just another fizzle in a long string of duds.

No doubt he'll get a mention in the books as being the first mayor under the new charter. But eventually, that whole setup will be recognized as a colossal mistake. Heaven knows what a wreck the place will be by then.