City Commissioner Mingus Mapps is once again making headlines alongside business interests who don’t like a major bike project and seek to leverage their influence with his office. And once again the public is left wondering who’s telling the truth.
Last week BikePortland broke the news about a letter to Mapps from president of Portland Metro Chamber (formerly Portland Business Alliance) Andrew Hoan. Hoan said the Portland Bureau of Transportation’s SW 4th Avenue Improvements project should be cancelled because he believes it is, “unnecessary, wasteful, and disruptive.”
The $23 million project’s main focus is a physically-protected bikeway on 4th Avenue between I-405 and W Burnside. It has been years in the making and is considered a key part of PBOT’s Central City in Motion plan. It seemed odd to me from the get-go that someone as experienced as Hoan would demand such a drastic move from PBOT at such a late hour (the project had already begun). The Chamber has opposed the project in the past, but has made no coordinated, public effort to stop it until now.
Another odd thing was how quickly Mapps’ office issued a response to the Chamber. Just six hours after our story, Mapps sent a letter back to Hoan that flatly rejected his requests, defended PBOT’s record, and extolled the virtues of the project.
But one week later, according to a story by Willamette Week published Wednesday May 15th, Hoan emailed City Council to say Mapps was hiding something. From that story:
“… the Chamber wrote in an email to all of City Council that Mapps had, in fact, told them verbally that he would be scaling back the 4th Avenue bike lane project. According to the Chamber, Mapps told them that before he sent a May 7 letter that made no mention of a scaled-back project.
‘Our main purpose of writing today is to thank Commissioner Mapps for his commitment to reducing the scope of this project,’ Metro Chamber president and CEO Andrew Hoan wrote in a Tuesday email. ‘This wasn’t communicated in this letter, but we greatly appreciate that he personally communicated to the Chamber that only the broadly supported parts of the 4th avenue project will move forward under his watch.'”
This email from Hoan suggests that Mapps is talking out of both sides of his mouth, telling the Chamber he’d cut certain parts of the project while telling the public it would move forward as planned.
This episode echoes the problems Mapps created for himself in the Broadway Bike Lane Scandal last fall where he was caught between his own public statements and meetings and conversations he (and/or his office) had with downtown business owners.
Asked about Hoan’s claims that Mapps promised something to the Chamber, the commissioner’s policy advisor Jackson Pahl told BikePortland via email yesterday, “Commissioner Mapps stands by the letter that he wrote.”
And at the PBOT Bureau Budget Advisory Committee (BBAC) held at the Portland Building last night, committee member David Stein asked PBOT Government Affairs Manager (and BBAC staff liaison) Matt Grumm about the project.
“I’d like to just understand what if anything is happening,” Stein asked.
“We’re doing the project as you know it and as the contractor knows it and everything else, so that’s what we’re doing,” Grumm replied.
“OK, so no changes?”
“No,” Grumm added.
So, we can rest assured that the project is going forward in its entirety, without any “scaling back” as Hoan suggested; but we can’t be sure that both of these men are telling the full truth.
Note: BikePortland connected with a Portland Metro Chamber spokesperson yesterday but they have so far been unable to answer my questions.