Assume the position
This week we learn that the Portland City Council is about to sock the city's hapless residents with yet another new tax. This one will go on your utility bills, and they're telling us that if we don't pay it, they can't maintain the roads.
It's the same old shinola on a shingle – the solution to every problem – but it's kind of sad to hear it coming from Olivia Clark, who I thought was one of the adults in the council book club. She's going the way of Mingus Mapps, I guess. They cruise into City Hall possessing at least a modicum of common sense, but within about a year on the job, the bureaucrats have them brainwashed. Next thing you know, they're crowing the party line.
Portland fixed the roads for many decades without a new utility tax. And in that time, the city's overall tax burden certainly didn't go down. So where is all the money going? I'll tell you one thing: If I were on the City Clowncil Council, I'd be laughing that one right out of the room.
I'd also be looking into what we're paying at least two, and probaby more, p.r. flacks to spout pure arrogance and nonsense on behalf of the "transportation" bureau. Did you get a load of this guy last week?
A project is in the works to widen the bike lane on SW Alder Street in Portland.
The Portland Bureau of Transportation is still in the design phase, but residents in a Goose Hollow apartment building are up in arms, saying they are losing parking that is already limited....
“Yeah, we know there are impacts,” PBOT spokesperson Dylan Rivera said. “And there’s a shortage of parking in the Goose Hollow area. That’s why we need to get more people biking and walking, as much as possible. And that’s what a project like this is part of.”
That dude reportedly makes $127,000 a year plus PERS. Which would fix a fair number of potholes.
Why are they singling-out "utilities"-??
ReplyDeleteDelivery trucks certainly take a toll, and especially as many folks continue getting a lot of thing delivered at home after the Covid restrictions had ended (and the constant pick-up of all that packing material - the garbage / recycling providers-?).
And the real estate developers-?? They tear the sh!t out of a street & then leave it with a half-a$$ed patch job, which the City usually then signs-off on.
The development industry has owned/influenced Portland city Hall for years, and they've already got this new Council doing their bidding (cancelling the SDCs was a longtime dream come true for them, for one thing).
You're not actually a "Socialist" when you intentionally burn the utility ratepayers and give Amazon, the developers & other profiteers a pass.
I don't get to Portland much anymore, but on a recent drive through Albina I was - again - amazed at the extent of the bike and alternative infrastructure, striping, and such. All shiny new half a block from a big pothole or pavement buckle. The outsized influence of the small bike minority is making Portland less livable for the rest, particularly folks that are past their prime biking-in-the-rain years.
ReplyDeleteThis is why they NEVER ask us for our priorities of what the city budget should spent on. No. They come up with their BS priorities and then give us 2 minutes to tell them to put that waste of money idea where the sun don't shine. Running a city isn't that hard. What's hard is the thickness of their self-entitled little noggins.
ReplyDeleteThe comments here are so off the wall. Developers are just as put upon as the homeowners (and tenants). Pointing fingers at each other simply misses the fact that it is councilors who spend money like drunken sailors (no offense intended to drunken sailors) on pet projects and black hole non-profits need to be made accountable. How about requiring all public monies be accounted for publicly, even by the non-profit recipients? In any case, blaming anybody other than the council members is a diversion that enables their conduct. Please knock it off.
DeleteYour reading comprehension might need a review- I was ONLY blaming the council of dodo heads
DeletePBOT is an over-large social engineering project--broke, but able to find money to repaint miles of streets (and to do so, they will repave a perfectly functional street to do so...just check out what happened on Montavilla's Washington St., now properly "road quieted" with an unused bike lane and a lane reserved for one underused bus line). They are about to apply the same lipstick on a pig for NE Glisan...more $-millions, more slalom lanes, more repaving in a neighborhood with blocks of gravel streets.
ReplyDeletePlenty of money, too, for new "greenways" on SE Tolman and SE 60th, with speed bumps, bike lanes, and curb cuts. But the surrounding streets haven't been cleaned in about four years, and gutter sludge build-up is disgusting (as well as unsafe for bicyclists).
ReplyDeleteI just drove downtown past city hall for the first time in a couple of months. There is now a new bike lane separated from the car part of the road by large concrete blocks. Also, they have installed turn signals for the cars to keep them from hitting the bikes, whatever few bikes actually use the lane. How much money went into this truly unnecessary project?
ReplyDeleteIf I had a dollar for every "stick from hell" they've stuck into the roads, I'd be on a beach somewhere.
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