Free fallin'
There have been a couple of extremely distressing assessments of Portland's economic health over the last month. Both were the results of studies paid for the by local chamber of commerce, which although it has its axes to grind, doesn't usually seem like a pack of gloom-and-doom mongers.
First they had DHM take a poll, and it showed that area residents are as pessimistic as ever about their future financial well-being.
Nearly two-thirds of voters rate their economic prospects are poor or very poor.... That’s an astonishing turnaround from just six years ago, when three-quarters of voters said their prospects were good or very good.... Sixty-five percent of voters say they’re extremely concerned about the cost of living, up from 41% just before COVID-19 hit in early 2020.
More striking, perhaps, is a rapid increase in voters’ fears about the job market. Thirty-five percent now say that’s a topic of great concern to them, up from 19% just a year ago.
Those growing worries correspond with a historic wave of layoffs, concentrated in Portland’s suburbs, and a steady rise in Oregon’s jobless rate. At 5.2%, the state now ranks third nationally for unemployment.
And just this past Thursday, an economist from ECONorthwest declared the metropolitan area to be in a recession.
“The conditions here are unlike what we see in any other metro” area, [Mike] Wilkerson said at the Portland Metro Chamber’s annual State of the Economy breakfast. He said the region’s decline is broad-based and foundational.
“Unfortunately, it’s not one sector. It’s all of the sectors,” said Wilkerson.... The chamber commissioned Thursday’s report.
It's not helping that business is being scared away by the type of politician who controls things in this town nowadays. For a decade or more, competent, moderate, independent-thinking people willing to run for office have been few and far between. And several good candidates who have taken their shots have lost their races to the socialistas, nonprofit industrial hangers-on, bobbleheads, and weirdos.
Is there any hope for the Rose City? What will it take to turn it around? And please don't tell me it's the Republican Party. Be serious.
Street campers sit in middle of all arguments as the elephant in the room. Tail is wagging the money dog in Portland. When everybody leads, no one leads in Portland. The social work army needs to get rid of the idea that Portland needs to "manage" the campers and decide where they need to go, which yes, may be jail, or forced rehab anywhere but allowed to stay hidden out on the streets or neighborhoods. Community policing, which involves more police hiring, would go a long way to making people feel safe to be a pedestrian on downtown streets or in their homes. The second biggest issue is attracting new business by eliminating red tape (high fees and taxes) that make Portland a pariah for business. Who and how fast that can be done is murky it seems. The third problem are wages which of course get lost in the inflation and Trump tariff arguments. Barista's and waiters alone, can't keep the city thriving. The outlier beyond all this, is the myth of apartment building saving Portland. That
ReplyDeletefound money, $100 million should tell you something is fishy in (Denmark) er Portland.
Making matters worse, our clueless special session legislature and Governor are proposing decoupling Oregon from important corporate tax incentives recently passed into federal law, instantly making our business environment even less attractive to job creation and economic growth. Plus the socialist city council block is running the city which effectively runs the state……as Portland goes, so goes Oregon. You ask “is there any hope”? Unfortunately, I think people here got what they vote for and 40 years of one party rule has produced our current reality.
ReplyDeleteOne thing that is needed is a return to accountability for government officials/employees. There is of course a lot of complexity and hurdles but some basic aspects would be (1) fundamental HR practices executed with competence (performance assessments, improvement plans, and actual discipline for misconduct and failures to improve), (2) removal of bad actors coupled with an increased risk tolerance for litigation, whether threatened or initiated, and (3) criminal charges when warranted. While litigation has incredible downsides, I think the alternative is worse over the long term. If, say, the City of Portland fired me (an over-40 woman) for being bad at my job, I would be far less likely to initiate litigation claiming bias if I knew that the City would go the distance rather than, say, offer me $100K to go away six months down the road.
ReplyDeletePortland is the canary in the coal mine. Years of being run by cry babies and fix it with a tax cause capitalism bad folks has left us with few solutions to pull out of this mess. They have completely mismanaged those living on the streets- regardless of how they got there. Many have never even been contacted to access their needs. But boy can they talk about all the "wrong" reasons for the problem and all the "wrong" methods to deal with it. Add in the mismanagement of "protests" where they let them destroy large segments of downtown and you have dug a huge hole- and they are still digging.
ReplyDeleteBefore those two massive blunders, you had a ton of stress on businesses with so many taxes and fees that forced many to leave. And what did the city do with all that revenue? Piss it away on anti-car projects, "urban renewal" boondoggles, and a bloated bureaucracy of city, "non-profit" and public school layers that added nothing but more cry babies and hanger-ons. Our kids now get a really bad but very expensive education- where Mississippi now has better reading levels. And speaking of education, most graduates now have very few opportunities for work in their field, but have massive loan debt. So we have a generation of folks barely able to pay rent, and have little to no disposable income- which further dampens the local economy.
So how to get out of the hole? If you take the example of many people that have overcome great misfortune, they first acknowledge they FFF'd up. Then they use that as a guide of what not to do and create a new plan. Does anybody on this council have the guts (or intelligence) to admit defeat and take a good hard look in the mirror? And this goes for the folks down in Salem. I say no way Jose. We are most likely going to have to completely hit rock bottom, before that is even possible.