The whole thread in response to our post about PBOT Director Millicent Williams’s “back to basics” comment at the Freight Advisory Committee is a doozy. Read it, it’s practically Shakespearean, definitely a pub scene. Everyone’s talking, the language is punchy, topics are all over the place. The energy. A lot of good stuff.
But nobody does that great American voice, “the guy on the bar stool next to you,” better than reader “cct” does. And nothing revs up cct like a meaty sub-thread about sidewalks, with some politics thrown in for good measure.
Read their comment below:
The city will swiftly act if you put a sidewalk on their right-of-way because they are terrified ‘someone could sue us if hurt on non-approved sidewalk!’ The joke is that the adjacent property owner is the one who will be liable so the fear is moot. To be fair, the sidewalk my neighbor illegally poured is so pathetic that it wasn’t even smooth or level the day it was poured, and now it resembles the surface of the Moon. And he was a developer!
Back to topic – this whole episode is another example of why we needed to junk the old commissioner/bureau setup. Mapps wants to be Mayor. Williams wants to keep her job, so she delivers what the boss wants; in this case, what Mapps thinks voters want – no potholes, faster commutes, no cyclist-coddling, etc. If she didn’t have to carry her boss’s water maybe she wouldn’t keep beclowning herself.
This also ties in with my opinion that people do not give Wheeler the credit he deserves for being a master political knife-fighter (a view Allan Classen recently came ’round to); seeing a credible mayoral threat, he tossed Mapps the flaming pile of poo that was bankrupt, mismanaged, and was pleasing no-one. Bye-bye, Mayor Mapps! Amusingly, Ted decided not to run again, but he’s worked hard backstage these last 2 years to lock-in a bunch of things (pro-police and pro-developer for a start) that will be hard for new council to unravel.
Read the comment in the original thread here.
And speaking of politics, has anyone else noticed how troll-free our comments sections have been this past few months? Pretty incredible. We are all right now sitting around with ballots, but BikePortland is not under comment-barrage from political operators. Knock on wood, cross fingers, but moderating seems to work.
Thank you cct, and everyone else on this thread, for so colorfully expressing your sincere and varied opinions, and for staying fairly civil while you do it.
Wheeler has always used his power of bureau assignments to cut the legs out from under his political rivals on the council, and the city has suffered for it. PBOT in particular would get handed off like a flaming bag of dog poo to whichever commissioner Wheeler felt like screwing over.
Eudaly won her election by campaigning for housing reform, so did she get to manage the Portland Housing Bureau? Of course not, she got PBOT.
Hardesty won her election by campaigning on police reform, so did she get to manage the Portland Police Bureau? Of course not, she got PBOT.
Mapps won his election by uh…having the nicest looking yard sign, so did he get to manage the City Arts Program? Of course not, he get PBOT.
You gotta admit… those were some pretty good looking signs.
Hasn’t the mayor always had PPB?
And we’re lucky that Eudaly wasn’t given much responsibility.
PBOT has nearly double the budget of the Portland Housing Bureau.
1/2 billion dollars and they can’t fix the potholes or put up concrete barriers to protect bike lanes.
I never really understood why Eudaly got so much hate
*An assertive woman really pisses off the patriarchy
*Championed poor people/renters
*Tried to take power away from predatory and sociopathic real estate industry
*Was critical of the “f**k you, I got mine nimbyism” of homeowner-centric neighborhood associations.
That’s pretty much what I thought. She also championed disability rights- not exactly a popular position to take.
LK, you have written probably the most succinct argument I’ve ever seen for junking the current elected-amateur-runs-a-bureau system: not only do these clowns have no expertise in the areas they are supervising, the entire system is used for political payback instead of serving the people.
Good riddance! Bring on the people who actually know how to run a city gov’t. Can’t wait for the new system in 2025.
Ossified regressive bureaus run by an out-of-touch, chronically-unaccountable, and elitist managerial class.
Portland voters have the city government they deserve — and I expect that this will be even more the case in coming years.
*popcorn*
Is it actually bad to do what the voters want? And why would this dynamic change? A bureaucrat overseeing the bureau will still probably “go with the flow” (unless they have a personal agenda, in which case all bets are off), delivering what they think will make the fewest waves. Kind of like today.
What specific outcomes do you think will be different with the new structure?
A bureaucrat could do what they are supposed to do: explain to council and citizens that ‘here is a need; here is a cost; here are funding realities and here are some suggestions on how our political leaders can lobby for state and federal funding to help.’ You know, like how the Big Pipe was done? Instead of ‘you’ll get nothing and like it because my boss prefers to spend money on something they can pander to voters with.’
I mean, despite some epic fuckups (“forgetting” to add cost of pipes to budget request to keep it sounding low.for one), Water managed that with Bull Run treatment plant.
I am not naive enough to think a rainbow and elves appear as soon as the new council is sworn in. I am also not cycnical enough to assume nothing will change.
The Big Pipe came out of the current city council structure.
Why you think that the bureaucrats are going to be more progressive than the folks who answer to the voters? You’re assuming a set of values for the new administrators that are completely speculative; in reality they could swing any way, most likely toward the center.
Of course things will likely change; I’m just not sure why you think that change will have any particular political valence.
cct put his finger on the “political valence”: instead of stupid political vanity projects, bureaus can concentrate on projects that have long-term potential to help citizens. No longer will elected amateurs have direct control over the operations of the city; instead they will make policy and pass ordinances, meaning that their control will be attenuated by distance and filtered by experts who actually know how to run a city.
I’ve been a keen observer of Portland for some time now. I’ve never seen a councilor exert operational control over any city bureau. Their role is political oversight. They simply don’t have the bandwidth to do more.
The experts who will run things next year are the same experts running things this year.
Uhhh, comments are like cookies for me, I can pass an open box a million times a day, but damn it, here I am again.
I think that the Office of Neighborhood Involvement is a fine example of a bureau which, even years later, is still having a hard time recovering from the damage caused by its commissioner-in-charge.
I agree the bureau is damaged, but it was Suk Rhee who joyfully twisted the dagger. She likely got political direction from Eudaly but continued to salt the earth even after Eudaly was gone. I never got the sense that Hardesty was a fellow traveler, yet the damage continued well after she took control.
That is not an example of a councilor exerting operational control over a bureau, but rather the damage deranged bureaucrats can do once they get in power.
Hardesty also hated neighborhood associations; she allowed Rhee to continue because it served her world view. By the way, MAPPS was widely expected to get ONI (including by him) and restore NAs to some semblance of function. By giving it to NA-hostile Hardesty Wheeler not only denied Mapps an issue that might gain him future voters, but continued Ted’s magnum opus of disassembling citizen involvement in governance.
Also, who hired Rhee? “Gosh, when I hired her i had no idea she was gonna do those things I hired her to do” – Eudaly, probably.
‘some time’ apparently means AFTER Randy Leonard, the Poster Child for interfering in bureaus.
“Barkeep, could I have a Boulevardier please?”
I think the new structure is already changing the political dynamic in this town. Have you been … no, I know you’ve been paying attention to the District candidates for city council. I’m super-excited about several folks running in District 4. And how ’bout that District 1? Wow!
I’d be tickled pink to have their voices speaking for my interests on council. They know more than me. They have connections, experience.
I think the problem might be that you aren’t thinking big enough, you keep trying to evaluate the new system through the lens of the old system.
Someone at Bike Happy Hour told me that I must have a finger on the pulse of the city because I read every one of the BP comments. I demurred. But I do have a feel for shifts in the BP comment cloud — and it has shifted, already, pretty profoundly.
I’ll bring a heap of criticism upon myself for saying more (and I don’t feel like taking the time to respond to it today). But look at the candidate pool each district is producing, look at who has received the top contributions in each district. Look at District 2. That makes me chuckle inside. I’m not saying more.
I agree that if you can get 7 of the new councilmembers to push for a change, it could happen, especially if they are not overly concerned about re-election, and especially especially if that change doesn’t cost much. I am skeptical we’ll elect 7 transportation progressives when it’s been a while since we elected any, but it is definitely within the realm of the possible.
Agreed. I will add:
It seems with the new form of government that lobbying for any bike infrastructure is going to be an uphill battle given the large amount of city council members that will have to support it to get a majority. Add to that a mayor with no real power.
I don’t know why some progressives think this new form of bloated government is going to be such a good thing, and not the obvious dysfunctional disaster awaiting us with a city council filled with 12 mid representatives with their own niche agendas who will never agree on anything. Combined with a completely neutered mayoral position who will be unable to push things through all sounds pretty terrible to me (I will be more than happy to be proven wrong on this, for Portland’s sake – I hope it will work out…)
Currently, you only really need one (or even just a sympathetic staffer). And if they aren’t on your side, you need to get three. Seven seems like a big lift by comparison.
(This is doubly true when the big three issues on voters minds are crime, homelessness, and drugs. Those are the issues that are going to motivate voters, and they have no obvious overlap with progressive transportation.)
What I hope will happen is that city staffers in PBOT who are committed active transportationists will quietly and diligently go about making the city more bike-friendly, while 12 electeds slug it out in council meetings over policies that experts will enact later.
Right now the PBA tells members to call Mapps and lobby him, and they do. Mapps can directly impact bike lanes.
“What I hope will happen…”
Sure, I hope for that too, but the evidence I see suggests we’ll keep on trucking.
The most obvious case of political involvement in bike lanes is Broadway. In that case, political pressure cut both ways. Staff supported bike lanes, and political pressure was exerted to have them removed. And then more political pressure caused the removal to be reversed. PBA is still going to know how to exert pressure to get what they want. Will active transportation folks have more power and tools to resist removal under the new system?
The other examples we could cite would be NE 33rd and NE 7th. In those cases, staff supported bike lane/traffic calming removal for all the “equity” reasons that were hashed out here. Those examples do not support the existence of a fifth column of active transportation people inhabiting PBOT waiting for a chance to make their move.
None of those cases suggest a different result under the new city structure.
I don’t know why anybody thinks it’s going to be harder to get a majority in the new system vs. the old. We do that all the time, it’s called an election and it involves getting millions of people on your side. By that line of thinking, if you extrapolate from our city council to the country, it should be impossible to get anyone to win for president because you have to convince so many people.
It’s still majority voting. And it’s not like we’re talking about some unfathomably large number. It’s 12. And not just that but they’re conveniently divided into geographic groups which already might have some common interests. I don’t think getting a handful of people to agree with a position is as monumental a task as some are making it out to be.
The “millions on our side” are going to be voting on homelessness, drugs, and crime, the three most important issues to voters this year.
It will be a happy coincidence if we get more than one or two transportation activists. The chances of getting 7 seem astronomicaly low.
Well, that’s your vibes-based guess. Certainly, it’s what the dark money ads will tell you people care about.
On the other hand, they do, in fact, still have to actually manage transportation regardless. So nothing about what you say contradicts my point. You don’t need an activist to stick to our existing established plans. Even with the at-large system we have now, we have council members forced to alter their behavior in response to outcries / protests from actual activists. I’m just saying it isn’t going to be any harder to get 12 people to act on various issues than it is today. This isn’t a matter of what you think the most important issue is, the question was about if the new system will be more or less representative and responsive to voters.
“Well, that’s your vibes-based guess.”
It’s what recent polls tell us voters think is important, so a vibes-based reading confirmed by data.
I suspect the system will be somewhat responsive to voters, which, in a time of constrained budgets, does not suggest big things to come for cycling and transit.
Maybe getting to 7 next year will not be harder than getting to 3 is today, but look how hard it is to even get to 1. That said, it’s absolutely not impossible that Portland politics is going to be completely different next year. It totally could conceivably happen. It just probably won’t.
https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2024/05/these-3-pressing-problems-remain-a-top-concern-for-portland-area-voters-poll-finds.html
I hope BP is planning on putting out a voters guide for or at least a list of bike friendly district candidates by district because honestly it’s a little overwhelming and my eyes glossed over when I got the voter guide in the mail. I can’t be the only one
You know what’s going to bring us PBL’s and clean swept bike lanes? Economic prosperity so we generate taxes to pay for it and a realization that municipal government should provide boring essential services in a competent efficient fashion. Voting for the “bike guys” or “bike gals” is not going to get us there. It’s time we vote in people that will work to restore livability to Portland and stop the obsession with ideological pursuits. That will stop the exodus of tax dollars and allow us to once again be the “city that works” and once again be a platinum bike city. It’s a bit counterintuitive to vote moderate to support progressive goals but that’s what will work.
Another believer in Randian “trickle-down” economics. .
Immense economic prosperity for “job creators” has only resulted in less prosperity and fewer basic resources for the working class.
The problem is that the progressive champions of the working class become moderates almost overnight once installed. Portland City Council has had a long history of progressive populists that promptly sold out to monied interests to stay in the job or were ejected after one term because they could not get anything done nor could they work effectively with other council members. The new city government structure is going to reinforce that dynamic.
Progressives are moderates who compromise with capital. The typical ‘murrican progressive is an enemy of the working class.
Angus is onto something, but he attributes the wrong cause to the problem. The people who run businesses are leaving Portland (or not coming to Portland) b/c they don’t want to pay the homelessness-services and pre-school taxes, which only high earners pay. Those taxes are killing Portland and need to be repealed.
Yeah and aren’t we actually in a period of pretty great “economic prosperity” (by the measure of people who would suggest such things are good)? By any measure, if “economic prosperity” and its inevitable trickle down was real, we’d be in a utopia right now.
Remarkably, inequality has slightly lessened for many low-income people due to the lingering stimulative effect of Keynsian economics on a grand scale*. Nevertheless, the engines of prosperity/inequality are still intact and I expect that the long-term trend of “f*** you, I got mine” capitalism to soon reassert itself.
* only possible due to a pandemic
We are definitely in a period of unparalleled prosperity. Pick your metric: hunger, education, women’s rights, racial equality, global poverty, childhood mortality, lifespan; by all those measures and more humanity has never had it so good. To anyone living even in fairly recent historical times, we are living in a utopia where a huge number of people are living far better than royalty did even 200 years ago.
Very few of even the doomiest and gloomiest among us would trade their life today for one in the historic era of their choosing.
This can be true while not at all contradicting that the product of labor and capital have over many decades increasingly flowed upward to the wealthy and the corporations they own (directly or indirectly). Even the one-time massive Keynsian stimulus triggered by the pandemic was incredibly unequal in who it lifted up:
https://www.pewresearch.org/2023/12/04/how-wealth-and-wealth-gaps-vary-by-income/re_2023-12-04_race-wealth_3-02-png/
Agreed — everyone can be markedly better off even if inequality has increased.
I agree to an extent but I am going to vote for my family safety first. We are a car free family that gets around town 100% by bike transit or walking. I want to know who is going to push to make the roads safer, transit safer, hold drivers more accountable , and expand a protected bike lane network. If that makes me a single issue voter so be it, but my families lives depend on it. Biking isn’t just a hobby it’s how we get to work, go to the store, go out for entertainment. Biking is everything.
Jay,
If you truly want safety do be careful voting for the type of folx many of the bike portland crowd seemed to love and support in the past (Hardesty, Eudaly, Inarone, Vega Pederson, AJ McCreary, Rubio, etc). Voting for the same flavor under a new name isn’t going to help with what you seem to want.
Sounds like you’re voting for the wealth extractors’ tricks. America appears prosperous until you realize that 90% of the people are living their lives looking at prosperity that they are not allowed to share. They are wondering around a gaudy department store where everything is out of reach. Even worse, they suffer the everyday stress and violence that is required to produce the things they can’t have.
Hi Jay Cee,
I’m looking at this a little like Angus is. A little. I’m supporting candidates first and foremost who are competent and qualified. I think it would be a mistake to select someone because they agree with you on all the issues (s/he passes the purity test) but lacks governmental chops. There is a skill set that accompanies effectiveness and success. Some candidates have picked it up with experience, a couple others appear to be naturals.
In my district, District 4, we need money from the state or federal government to build stormwater infrastructure, most likely a series of treatment and containment ponds serving selected major streets (Shattuck, Capitol Hill Rd, Taylors Ferry, Hamilton …) I am looking for candidates who know how to go after that.
Council can pass all the bike and pedestrian code they want, SW can’t benefit from any of it (and historically hasn‘t benefited from it) because it doesn’t have the necessary infrastructure to participate.
Comment of the week!
(Go on, Lisa – win it yourself!)
Olivia Clark is soooo much better than me, Eric Zimmerman too. I might be qualified to make coffee for them.
Wow, I wouldn’t have pegged you as an Olivia Clark fan! I like her too! You’re gonna get a lot of blowback from the BP peanut gallery for this one….
This statement on her webpage is gold but not gonna fly on this blog….
From Olivia Clark:
Homelessness is inhumane and unsafe.
Crime & Safety Make our City safe by removing street camping and public drug use while providing more emergency shelter beds, mental health services, sobering stations and drug treatment.
We cannot tolerate what’s happening on our streets.
https://www.oliviaforportland.com/priorities
That’s right… voters are going to vote on crime, homelessness and drugs. Transportation issues are way down the list, if they appear on it at all. That’s why I don’t understand why people are convinced that the post-election future is so bright for alt-transportation.
I think am voting transportation, is there a better candidate, for transpo?
Both may well be worthy of support, but there are no indications that either are the transportation radicals that people here dream about. Transportation at least made Zimmerman’s list of priorities (last out of 7) but he was very vague, describing a desire for “standardized” transportation twice. What does that even mean?
I’m not tracking the candidates in District #4, so I can’t tell you who, if anyone, would be better. I don’t think Clark or Zimmerman will be bad, just that their priorities and energy will be elsewhere. Which is what I’m saying — transportation is just not a current issue in Portland, and it seems highly unlikely that big changes are on the horizon.
I think many of us are hoping that a candidate, if elected, at least understands the transpo issues, realizes they need some attention and long-term legwork, and fits that in to a busy term. As opposed to being indifferent, like Hardesty, or hostile, like Mapps.
I agree that this is what folks are hoping for (myself included). My point is that there is no basis to think that’s what’s going to happen.
If we’re electing folks based on a completely different set of issues, why would you expect people to hold certain views on transportation? Isn’t it just as likely that people who look like they’d be effective at “cleaning up Portland” would want PBOT to “focus on basics”? Why would they have a more bike or transit oriented outlook than the folks in power today (at least one of whom ran on an environmentalist platform and then led an effort to remove development requirements that many bike advocates fought hard for, another of which was generally regarded as neutral-to-positive on bikes, and a third who took transit to work daily).
So yes, I hope we get a transportation-forward city council, and we certainly could. But if we do, it will be because we rolled the dice and got lucky.
thank you for sharing that website, I just spent an hour looking through it, how cool!!! https://rosecityreform.substack.com/
This post sort of touched a nerve. This place is in my opinion sort of over moderated. And I get it, the Internet has a fair amount of nastiness out there, and moderating posts here makes sense and is appreciated when it comes to that. But to have a highlighted comment of the week regarding people having opposition in thought and lauding the moderation team is really only furthering for me that we are screaming into an echo chamber and doing little good to help other people see things our way if we continue on this path.
Hi Chris,
I don’t really understand your criticism here. Can you clarify a bit? Are you saying you think our moderation is too one-sided? Or that it’s not strong enough? Thanks.
I purposely was vague to not be judgy. I think moderation of any kind can be audience shaping/controlling. I personally haven’t seen anything I consider spam, nor do I have any examples of moderation of opinion – hence the neutral tone.
I agree with you Chris, but how could it not be? Even an algorithm is going to shape and control.
Look at internet. The design of internet favors men. (Oh boy am I going to get blowback for saying that.) Internet it is a hotbed of non-consensual pornography and threatening harassment of women. I marvel at the openess and availability Jonathan is comfortable putting out there, he probably doesn’t even realize the things he can share online that I can’t even possibly consider.
As far as moderation goes, all I can do is be aware of how my personality influences things, and I am. One plus about BP, though, is that Jonathan and I are very different from one another. He puts up with me, and that says a lot of good things about him.
As someone who often expresses opinions that are unpopular (here), I think you guys do a remarkably good job at managing these comments.
Thank you Watts. It’s important to Jonathan that the site doesn’t become a bubble.
Sorry but it’s important to realize it mostly is a bubble (with a few exceptions).
You have allowed my posts so it’s not entirely a bubble….just mostly. 🙂
… and Watts, and Jake, and WillTheLast, and David Hampsten, and a cast of others.
I’ve noticed that people who mention “bubbles” and “echo chambers” (and also people who either start their comment with “you probably won’t print this” or other references to being allowed or not allowed to comment) often don’t count opinions that differ from what they believe the “echo chamber” would say as being part of BikePortland.