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.