Year: 2014

Mayor Charlie Hales, Transportation Commissioner Steve Novick, and PBOT Director Leah Treat faced a tough crowd during their street fee town hall this morning at the Oregon Convention Center.
(Photos J. Maus/BikePortland)

The town hall meeting this morning on PBOT’s proposal for a non-residential “transportation users fee” had all the markings of a potential debacle for Mayor Charlie Hales and PBOT Commissioner Steve Novick: A delayed council vote after getting push-back from business groups; huge demand forced the meeting to be moved into a ballroom at the Oregon Convention Center; a large majority of the 200 or so that showed up were in opposition to the plan; there were two private security guards in the room; a third-party company was hired to facilitate the meeting; and there were several outbursts of yelling at the outset of the event.

But — despite a few ugly moments of anger — the meeting eventually settled down and PBOT and Mayor Hales emerged relatively unscathed, if not stronger, as they continued their march toward finding a mechanism to raise new local transportation revenue.

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PBOT Commissioner Steve Novick at
a street fee press conference in April.
(Photo J. Maus/BikePortland)

The City of Portland’s effort to raise new revenue for transportation via a “Transportation Users Fee” (a.k.a. street fee) will likely face its toughest crowd ever at a town hall tomorrow morning.

The event, one of two town halls set for this week, will focus only on the business/non-residential side of the fee, which has emerged over the past month as the most controversial aspect of Transportation Commissioner Steve Novick’s proposal. Skepticism and concern from business groups (like Venture Portland) about how the fee will be calculated was raised at the City Council hearing late last month and it has gained steam since.

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