Hold onto those ballots! We’re back with more Ballot Banter. If you live in District 4 (West/Sellwood), make sure to listen to my conversation with Lisa Caballero. This time I sat down with District 2 (N/NE) resident and cycling advocate extraordinaire Kiel Johnson. You might know Kiel as one of the leaders of Bike Loud PDX or maybe as the guy who owns Go by Bike!, the largest bike valet in North America. Or perhaps you know him as the dude who put his body on the line and stood in front of a striping truck to prevent the removal of a bike lane on NE 33rd. I first got to know Kiel in 2010 when he created “bike trains” (now called bike buses) at local schools as a fresh college graduate.
I loved talking to Kiel about D2 not just because I love and respect him as a friend, but because I live in the district too!
We went over the basic demographics of the district, went down a list of viable candidates, highlighted the ones we think are strongest when it comes to cycling and transportation, discussed the various major endorsements, and much more.
D2 is arguably the most competitive district, with more candidates (18) than any other district having qualified for public matching funds and eight different candidates nabbing at least one endorsement from the three big media outlets. This episode will help you make sense of it all, so grab your ballot and voters pamphlet and sit down for a listen or watch it on YouTube below…
Links for this episode:
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Looking at the attached district map, I’d think inner Sandy would be more of a District 3 thang, it barely intersects District 2. (I do know that the ODOT-owned portion east of 105th is still a major concern in District 1.)
Yes is it in D3. We’re going to make it into a D2 thing! I’m curious how these boundaries will play out when big projects like this happen.
I can only speak about Greensboro which has 5 districts (one councilor from each, plus 3 at-large, plus the mayor at-large, 9 total). In general, those stroads that cross several districts are among the most neglected, but it may have more to do with poverty, or maybe district boundaries tend to split poor areas more than rich areas, like freeways do?
Another generality is that where districts converge is usually where Council is hoping to concentrate city resources. Four of our districts converge on downtown, and our civic leaders do in fact try a quite a lot with our comatose downtown (you’d laugh, our downtown is less alive than Gateway is in Portland), but the district that doesn’t touch downtown has many of the busiest parts of town, as well as super rich and super poor areas – it’s a bit like East Portland in many ways, except it’s on the west side of town and our main black areas are on the (historically segregated) east side of town.
The Portland district boundaries are based entirely on the 95 official neighborhood association boundaries (there are zero deviations from these) and the stronger NA District Coalitions. EPCO is totally intact and has almost all of District 1, plus it “gained” Sumner NA from CNN/Cully. District 4 has the entirety of SWNI and NWNW plus downtown. District 2 was the entirety of NOPO and NECN. SEUL and Cully/CNN were the losers, they are now badly split between various districts.
Judging from the resulting district boundaries and if I was utterly ignorant of local city politics in Portland, I’d say the city intends to massively redevelop the area around the UP railyards next, presumably where the I-5 cap is going, and also the area around NE 82nd & Sandy is gonna get a lotta love and TLC from City Council – big wins for District 2. Rather than Sandy getting fixed, I’d say the Sullivan’s Gulch trail is going to get a lot of city funding, again based on where the boundaries are.
Sandy Blvd passes through District 3, then District 2, then District 3 again, then District 1 as it runs from the Central Eastside to Parkrose, so it’s of interest to many districts! And PBOT has scheduled repaving projects in all three districts, one from 14th to 28th (District 3), one from 40th to 46th (District 2), and one from 82nd to 92nd (District 1).