Last week, the Portland Parks & Recreation bureau announced a plan to remove 243 lampposts from 12 parks around the city due to “structurally unsound anchoring systems that may pose a life and safety hazard to the public.” The news concerned many Portlanders who use these parks and don’t want them to go dark after sunset. And given the list of parks where the lights are set to be dimmed, Parks’ decision could hit Portland’s bike community especially hard — because some of the parks on the list are popular gathering spots for evening group rides throughout the year.
The parks affected by the lamppost removal include Irving and Colonel Summers, both of which are frequently used as the meeting/after-party spot for group bike events that sometimes go on late into the night. Those days are over, it seems — even if you can light your own way with headlights, all of the parks in question will now be closed at 10 pm — hours before post-bike ride dance parties could even get started. PP&R will be sending Park Rangers to affected parks to make sure the rules are being followed at night.
What’s the impetus for this? According to a Friday story in the Willamette Week, PP&R may be shutting off the lights because of litigation fears. WW acquired documents revealing that the city began investigating park lampposts after receiving a tort claim by a person who was injured last summer when a light pole fell on her after she tied a hammock to it. Some public responses indicate frustration that the bureau’s reaction to this lawsuit is to limit a public resource for everyone.
“Am I the only one frustrated about PP&R’s reaction to remove light posts over load-bearing that poles weren’t designed to do and because we live in a litigious society?” one person asked on Twitter.
“So endanger everyone’s nighttime safety because of one person’s accident. Yep, makes perfect sense…in Portland,” a commenter on the WW story said.
This incident has also brought to light (sorry) some of the budget woes facing Portland parks. Evidently, similar to the Portland Bureau of Transportation, PP&R has a substantial maintenance backlog ($600 million). This means they can’t afford to replace all the lampposts they’re removing, at least not anytime soon.
“PP&R redirected $5 million from already budgeted major maintenance funding to remove the light poles and begin the partial replacement process. Currently, the project is estimated to cost $15 million.” a Portland parks statement says. (That means $60,000 for each lamppost.) “PP&R does not currently have sufficient funding to replace all light poles in the park system.”
The parks bureau has provided a timeline for replacing only the lamps at Irving and Mt. Scott, where they plan to install replacements within 16 months. That’s a pretty long time, but it’s a better prognosis than what we have for the other parks, which are to remain without lamps indefinitely.
According to PP&R director Adena Long, one in five park assets could be removed or closed within the next 15 years if the bureau doesn’t find a new, sustainable funding source.
One of the ways the city might find the funding for PP&R’s maintenance backlog is by creating a new taxing district for parks funding, allowing the bureau to access its own pot of money just for local parks and recreation needs. For now, though, Portlanders are going to have to deal with the cuts.
So, how will this impact bike meetups? The full reality of the situation might not hit until Pedalpalooza goes into full swing this summer, but I asked Moorland Moss, who leads rides for Naked Hearts: PDX all year-round (many of which are based at Irving Park), and he’s not too worried about it.
“I am prepared to host rides and parties even if the world literally ends,” Moss told me. “We can definitely survive the city taking down some lampposts. I am prepared for the apocalypse.”
Those who aren’t as prepared as Moss might have a more difficult time adjusting to the dark. But it’s good to know that Portland’s bike rides will carry on.
You can find more information, including a list of all the planned lamppost removals, at PP&R’s website.
It’s pretty ridiculous that they’re doing this. Surely if they are afraid of litigation, they could post warnings to not hang hammocks/other things on the posts and that would be fine to avoid lawsuits. And parks closing at 10 PM is frankly ridiculous – for the entire summer, 10 PM is twilight. On the longest days of the year, it’s like 10 minutes after sunset – when the sky is usually still kind of bright.
Portland is a city with an incredibly broken city government, with a very high tax burden. We literally just levied a new park-specific tax, and they can’t even afford to replace lamp posts – or post a warning on “structurally decifient ones”? Give me a break.
This is something I feel like voters don’t really understand. Changing the city government is great, but the real reason our city is so broken is that the professional leadership that runs the city is beyond incompetent. The horror stories I’ve heard from CoP staff are impressive.
Until their metrics for successes and consequences for failure, the city will never get better. You can’t convince me that any Bureau leader should keep their job at this point.
I chose to move to this city 10 years ago. I chose to move here for many reasons, but one was the parks (ok the other was to ditch a car). It’s challenging to put a finger on *one* thing when everything feels so broken, but this is yet another example of such disfunction within the city. On one hand we have exploding gun violence and failing housing infrastructure and a steady uptick in VMT & traffic violence and on the other hand we’re removing infrastructure than can make a tiny dent in those trends. Or a tiny hold on the livability of our neighborhoods. Sellwood Park is going to only have FIVE light posts. FIVE. People recreate there all year round before and after sunrise, as well as commute through the park to the Springwater, etc. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if summer pool hours are cut short in the evenings because it’s too dark to safely move around the park when the pool closes. Or how many of us joggers are going to trip on something during our 6:30am runs? Where’s the liability in that?
These decisions make no sense in light of the greater public good these spaces serve. And their overlapping role in other issues in our City.
Agreed! It is so insulting for PP&R to spend money removing these valuable light poles AND paying rangers to enforce park closure hours. There are so many thing I would rather Parks spend some money on: removing invasive species, removing squatters, improving accessibility (especially around closed gates), cleaning up the beaches, the list could go for a long time before I would ever add “pay Rangers to kick people out at 10:00”
I wholeheartedly agree that the city is broken, but I am willing to crawl out on a limb and suggest the city attorney’s may have discussed this issue with PPR staff and it was determined, given what they now know about the fault in the light posts, signage was not the panacea you’re proposing. What is more sad is that this is just an admission that not only is the city broken, they are also broke, and the leadership that couldn’t govern during the best of times is certainly going to struggle with the purse strings getting pulled taut.
This is just another check on a long list of boxes that will encourage the residents the city can afford to lose the least to begin looking at options outside the city.
The city isn’t broke. It’s just making a statement on what it values.
A couple weeks ago, council voted to buy PPB a second spy plane for $1.5M. They are now looking to spend millions on technologies like Shotspotter to surveil poor neighborhoods.
No money left for things that actually help people.
Perhaps a reaction to our murder rate tripling over the past 2 years? Not sure if those are effective solutions, but I can see why the focus might be there, instead of on old lampposts that people seem to think can work as hammock anchors.
PPR is sitting on $160 million that they can only spend on park expansion. The city is broken, but they are not broke. Our leadership is inept, but the Portland suburbs are so hostile to someone who wants to walk, bike, or take transit that they don’t even remotely compare to Portland. Not to mention cultural events (concerts, shows, etc.) or food. I guess this could be the “last straw” for someone – but cmon.
Portland Oregon has relatively low city taxes, since property taxes are more or less limited to 1% (most big cities charge 2-3%) and the city gas tax is modest, while there is no sales tax. Portland Maine on the other hand…
If Portland Parks & Rec needs a new “sustainable” funding source they can start by ticketing hammock and slack-line users. Two birds with one stone. Three if you consider the damage these folks do to trees (look up “girdling” if you don’t believe me).
I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve seen these being used in our parks over the past few years and it’s gotten worse since the pandemic. I’ve even seen them strung across trails on Mt. Tabor. It’s time for Portland to stop pretending that rules and laws don’t exist for very good reasons.
$61,728 per pole. What a bargain!
No wonder they’re running out of money (again).
The lampposts aren’t falling from their own weight, or from weather. It’s crazy that we would have to post signs on every one but that’s cheaper than taking them out, never to be seen again.
The city shouldn’t roll over on this litigation. A countersuit for damage of city property seems in order. Also, somehow dangerous streets are still in use. Would the proper response for one motor vehicle traffic injury be to close all similar streets?
Parks have already lost pools, bathrooms, and other facilities. Now it’s the lights and many hours of access? What would have to happen for the lights to be replaced?
I use Mount Tabor on a regular basis all year long and yes, the lamp removal is a real bummer.
But I love Moorland Moss’s response and hope the Portland bike community embraces it. More Loud, and definitely More Lit for Pedalpalooza and Bike Summer.
We did save the reservoirs years ago. Have neighbors tries save the lampposts. Have neighborhood groups organized volunteers to take over responsibility for doing public affairs work by showing up and ensuring public safety each night at dusk?
Seems big developers are able to hack away at all the good things through their friends in the city now a days.
Having seen a loud and lit ride, once a year is plenty of those. I’ll take my chances with civil disobedience in a darkened and “closed” park but I don’t want that experience to be slammed with too many LEDs.
I have a headlight that is shockingly bright. I know what it looks like from the front and I point it down when meeting other humans out of cars. One of my biggest regrets about living in a town is that the night is shattered by a damaging amount of light. Personal transportation has become an almost literal arms race.
Direct view of an LED is really bad for your eyes. You probably don’t want to know what it’s doing to wildlife.
Will the park be closed to homeless campers after 10pm as well?
What is it going to take? Will someone need to sue the city after walking on a used needle? Would that be sufficient?
Hell yeah, I’m glad people like Moss are prepared to straight up ignore this nonsense. Or find a workaround.
I absolutely cannot believe the idiocy of PP&R for doing this. It’s pure spite. How about, now hear me out, instead of paying park rangers to go around and enforce people staying out after dark after spending millions ripping out perfectly good infrastructure, you instead pay those rangers to go around and make sure people aren’t vandalizing lamp posts with their hammocks. There can’t be that many that are even in range of another post or tree to attach both sides of a hammock to.
This is just ridiculous. There are always going to be ways to pull a lamp post down on yourself. No matter what they do. Someone can climb a tree and fall out, should they cut down all the trees? No. Someone at PP&R should be facing serious consequences for even suggesting this.
When I lived in East portland, we regularly heard complaints about how nice and well-lit inner west side parks were, that they got all the maintenance funding. It’s ironic that the inner part of portland is gradually becoming part of East portland now rather than the other way around.
We JUST passed a $68 million dollar parks bond. Where is this money going?
https://www.portland.gov/parks/parks-replacement-bond
They publish a yearly report telling you exactly where it’s going.
Starting on page 38 are the costs for each project. Most of the most expensive projects are in or near downtown, particularly $10 million for Pioneer Courthouse Square.
Close-in Portland needs to be “activated” so that homeowners and “Sightline” condo owners receive the imputed rent/capital gains they are accustomed to.
They’ve been adding and improving a lot of parks in east Portland. Some of the nicest playgrounds in the city are east of 82nd now.
Worth mentioning that Portland Parks is sitting on a whopping $169 million SDC fund, rapidly growing, with no plan on how to spend it. No, SDCs can’t be spent on stuff like this (can only be used for new parks, not maintenance of existing parks), but it shows how their huge SDC rate increase about 5 years ago was a terrible idea, raising development fees by a lot without providing any real benefit or justification. They’re not spending their SDCs on new parks because they can’t afford to maintain what they have. I think they should be required to refund some portion of SDCs (or come up with a plan on how to spend them) and reduce their rates.
Why do people think they can tie hammocks to whatever they want? Didn’t Lewis and Clark College just have a terrible tragedy where students tied a hammock to something that collapsed and killed them? In other cities I’ve seen signs posted prominently in parks that strongly warn people against tying anything (like those bouncy “slacklines” that have become so popular) to a structure in the park. Why isn’t a sign enough to ward off a lawsuit?
I used to work for the City. All the bureaus deal with fusspot citizens who trip on a crooked water meter cover and sue the City. The most economical way to deal with lawsuits with a slim element of City liability is to settle. The settlements can end up rather large. In the end, it’s attorneys who really benefit. Removing infrastructure that is a litigation waiting for a fusspot is the cheapest way for the City to deal with the problem. I don’t like removing the street lamps either, but I do understand the sad reality of the litigious world we live in. It’s not the City’s fault–it is a reality of our litigious society.
Since the decision to remove the lights has already been made, I hope Parks will take this opportunity to improve lighting in the parks where it’s happening.
A lot of older fixtures provide poor lighting–they’re glaring and inefficient, not just bulb type, but because they don’t direct light down where it’s needed. Many create light pollution that’s especially bad for natural areas, while at the same time not providing good lighting for park users.
Some parks need more lighting, but others are way OVER or badly illuminated. One of Portland’s newest parks–Caruthers Park in the South Waterfront–has horrible glaring, bird-unfriendly lighting.
When lighting gets replaced, people tend to not think beyond “more is better” and “LED for energy efficiency” which can result in really bad lighting, especially in natural areas. I hope Parks consults with Portland Audubon before doing any replacement lighting: https://audubonportland.org/blog/the-quest-for-darker-skies-over-portland/
Plenty of money for cops, yet everything else gets cut. This is embarrassing. It is embarrassing for the legacy of a city government that promised to do better, but never delivers. We have a city government that squanders absolutely every hand it has been given. This is just the latest example of a city absolutely paralyzed and inept at doing anything despite having one of the highest tax burdens in the country.
I appreciate you all covering this story as I’m very frustrated by the Parks & Rec decision. I use my local park regularly after dark, often walking my dog to the dog park or through on a walk.
The lawsuit hasn’t been settled or litigated, so it’s not clear that the City will be paying up. Surely they could have waited before making this big decision? Next, there are competing safety issues in the parks: yes, we want quality infrastructure that doesn’t fall over, but removing lights makes the parks less safe in other ways. Many folks use these parks in the evening after dark all year round, and the excellent lighting and number of visitors are a big park of providing a safer environment. Without lights, even 7pm in the park in the winter might not feel safe and I suspect it won’t be as safe. Fewer people in the parks means parks are less safe, even at 7 or 8pm.
And while I appreciate Morland’s excellent spirit and ride leadership, it’s a different thing for a white man to express enthusiasm to continue to use our parks after dark and without proper lightning than it is for other folks. This will disproportionately impact vulnerable folks, including women and folks of color, who are more likely to prefer well-lit areas and have safety concerns.
And, I’m very concerned that Park Rangers will disproportionately target people of color using the parks after dark.
It’s become pretty clear to me over the last few years that Portland police pretty much ignore large bike rides like Pedalpalooza in a way they’d never ignore a protest even half as large, even when that protest isn’t nearly as disruptive as some of the big party rides. I suspect this new policy isn’t going to be a huge issue for the big party rides, which are mostly populated by white folks.
But the removal of lights and early closure of parks is going to have an immediate impact on who feels comfortable and safe in our public parks. I also note that Parks & Rec and Parks Commissioner Ryan’s office repeatedly mention their legislative and policy attempts to get additional funding in their discussion of this decision. I am cynical enough to think they made this decision in order to make things worse for us, like police work slowdowns. They want us to be mad more than they want us to be safe.
Thank you Joan for pointing out the vast differences in perspective on this topic. This removal really won’t affect large, self lighted gatherings in the parks but most certainly will influence the regular single “after work” user.
Commissioner Ryan’s office phone number is 503-823-3589.
I emailed PPR & Ryan’s office last week and got a response about how much funding they needed, blah blah blah.
I’m an occasional parks volunteer so I can’t help knowing about their funding problems. I’m hoping that Ryan doesn’t want to be identified with an unpopular policy.