The next phase of the City of Portland’s effort to raise transportation revenue is upon us.
This Thursday, February 19th, the Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) will kickoff a series of four open houses to garner feedback and inform Portlanders about how best to generate more funding to pay for road projects and transportation programs.
As BikePortland has reported for many years, local sources of funding for transportation are woefully outdated and ineffective. PBOT officials say after eight straight years of painful cuts, they are now in crisis mode and the time has come to ask us to pay more to make sure our transportation system remains usable. In years past, we could at least count on state and federal funding to help fill holes in local budgets. But with the failures of the Trump Administration and state lawmakers to do their jobs, even those sources of revenue are no longer certain.
As PBOT continues to develop the policy behind their favorite new revenue mechanisms, they want to take the temperature of us, the tax-paying public. Late last month I shared the initial assessment of costs and benefits associated with each of the city’s top revenue generating ideas. Now they want to workshop those with you in-person at Local Transportation Fund Open House events.
There will be one event in each district and they kick off this Thursday. Below are the dates, times, and locations of each open house.
District 4: Thursday, Feb. 19, 6:30 to 8:30 pm at Rieke Elementary School Gym (1405 SW Vermont St.)
District 1: Feb. 23, 6:30 to 8:30 at Lent Elementary School Cafeteria (5105 SE 97th Ave.)
District 3: Feb. 25, 6:30 to 8:30 pm at Atkinson Elementary School Cafeteria (5800 SE Division St.)
District 2: March 3, 6:30 to 8:30 pm at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School Cafeteria (4906 NE Sixth Ave.)
For more information on the PBOT funding crisis and open houses, as well as a funding survey that opens 2/19, check out the official website.
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Time to break out the PCEF money. It didnt take long, but it’s officially regarded as a slush fund by everyone in power now. Why nickel and dime us with fees and taxes when there is a big lump sum just waiting to be used to help all locals who rely on transportation (which is everyone)? I’d much rather it went into infrastructure repairs done by city employees and contractors earning a living wage than given to a Texas billionaire. Especially since our corporatist leadership (time to abandon the DSA handle since you’ve just passed up a chance to choose working people over a billionaire) is so eager to give money away without even a justification of how it meets PCEF values or without a written contract stating that the basketball team will stay in Portland for any amount of time.
“Councilor Eric Zimmerman says his understanding is that the “large local investment” referred to by the letter would be, in large part, made up of PCEF funds. All councilors, he says, were briefed that the investment would be made up largely of PCEF funds.Council President Jamie Dunphy had the same interpretation, saying that the council’s letter is referring to PCEF revenues, “plus city redirecting taxes from the sale of the Blazers back into the facility in capital expenses, investment from Prosper Portland, and ongoing operations expenses from user fees on tickets and parking” at Moda Center. (Dunphy says the chairs of the PCEF Committee, which makes funding recommendations to the council, “are supportive so far of how the process has been rolled out.”).”
https://www.wweek.com/news/city/2026/02/16/entire-portland-city-council-urges-legislature-to-pass-moda-center-funding-bill/
The sooner we run “sports” teams out of town, the better off Portland will be. It’s criminal how much of our tax money goes to these teams and how little return we actually get. Oh boy, over priced tickets and concessions . . . “pass me the beer and pretzels Martha . . . Sorry Solar we can’t afford them with all the taxes we pay to support a professional sports team”
What taxes do you pay to support professional sports teams?
Portland has the Blazers, the Timbers and the Thorns and soon to be a WNBA team, the Portland Fire.
How much a year are you paying in taxes for them to play in our city?
Well they are talking about 600 million of tax money here. Arguably there will be more to show for it than the same amount that gets spent per year on salaries and benefits that arguably benefit the homeless somewhow.
I wouldn’t be a reader of this blog if I didn’t prefer the money spent on public transport, road upgrades or something even more useful
But PCEF money, which is our sales tax in all but name, should just go back to the people who pay it. What a moronic concept the entire thing was–zero accountability and total nepotism.
Just in-the-know people handing money to their dinner party guests’ campaigns and non-profits.
The NGOs made the argument in council that the elected council should not oversee the grants from PCEF but rather the unelected comiittee full of insiders should.
So the Mayor, the socialists, the entire city council plus the Governor and every business group in the city wants to keep the team and refurbish a 30 year old building that the city was given for 1 dollar is a real problem for you.
OK.
Who do you think will do the repairs and get the local money if not local workers in a 300 million dollar repair?
Do you think the billionaire will be getting out his hammer?
It is hard to even address this level of discourse.
I’m addressing a way to solve the transportation woes that afflict the whole city. You’re desperate to give 100s of millions of money to a billionaire with no guarantee the team will stay in Portland. If we did it your way and the council’s (and all those other people you correctly mentioned) way then Poof, lots of public money gone so the Blazers can play about 41 home games a year for who knows how long until they move to greener pastures. If it was profitable to redo the Moda Center, the Texas billionaire would do it on his own to keep all the profits.. He knows it’s not profitable so why should we do it for him??. Wake up!
The sane method for using public funds is to repair the city infrastructure using city and union labor (we have no idea who would be brought in to do the Moda upgrade) for its citizens on bike, foot and board to enjoy.
As for your comment on socialists who agree with you, well, they must be the politburo type.
More bread and circuses, comrades. Anything for the modern oligarchs to distract the proletariat from seeing their city collapse.