I realize the neighborhood associations are viewed in some circles as “part of the ‘problem’” - and perhaps are due for review. But that seems small potatoes compared to the the Rube Goldberg machine that’s been made out of “charter change”.
Could a Hail Mary pass from the neighborhood associations mitigate or at least slow down for reconsideration this convoluted so-called “ reorganization”?
Thanks, Larry. The media are so obsessed with the “shocking laughter heard round the world” in Seattle I guess they let this brutality slip by — and it’s just as bad, if not worse, than Seattle.
Portland is daily less possible. The town could reignite at any time. Like a mill's huge sawdust piles that burn within but give no outward sign. Never a good idea to walk across them.
In Multnomah County and throughout the nation little flames have been ignited and carefully nourished as in pioneer homes of old:
Recently, I've been everywhere reading about this Boebert woman vaping and groping. Yes, wicked and evil, evil, evil, I know. Meanwhile her peers cheer on millions of illeagal immigrants and express loathing for our nation. One of these peers has, perhaps, married her brother. Hunter had hussies doing dope off of his johnson while cutting deals for the old man. He runs a blatant money laundry: Churchill noted that "Beginning with audacity is a very great part of the art of painting" and political chicanery.
A few years ago Russell Brand was the coolest entertainment leftie on the block. Evidently he left the rez (I cannot listen to him very long) and now is to be hounded as a rapist.
Ah well. What about that suicide's client list?
Meanwhile, as you note Bottomly takes a knee. I look at the masses pouring over the border and our supine citizenry - local/national, it's the same people being swept away by the deluge. I will never understand the complicity
To paraphrase the gag on "Airplane!," looks like I picked the wrong time & place to not be addicted to emotion-killing drugs or alcohol.
This is all so depressing.
My guess is that Teddy will go back to his previous creepy job that no one remembers: crunching numbers for the West Coast Infrastructure Exchange.
WCX--a pet project of Ted's former boss John Kitzhaber, who is also remembered by no one--is an ephemeral, DoubleSpeak-y intergovernmental cartel that helps structure public-works contracts and mega-developments of brown-fielded or other distressed urban swaths, on behalf of private for-profit public-works contractors and mega-developers, in such a way that the information contained in those public-private-partnership contracts circumvents public records laws and remains unknown to the public taxpayers and retirement funds who bankroll said PPP contracts and who will take the loss if said contracts invoke their cushy performance-guarantee clauses.
Yeah. That's probably where he'll slink back to. I've no doubt they've missed his simpering, weak-willed obeisance to every remotely stronger will crosses his easily alterable path.
Lars Larson was warning about this since it first showed up on the ballot. No offense to Cheverton/Fitzsimmons as I didn't not know of Portland Dissent until very recently. But besides Portland Dissent, people who live Portland/Metro or Vancouver really should listen to Lars.
The rest of the media seem to be beneficiaries of the grift.
Outstanding analysis, Richard. It’s too bad Portland’s weak media didn’t offer this kind of scrutiny when it might have mattered.
Shane Dixon Kavanaugh's snarky lede was amusing, but he overestimates how much a Portland mayor can do to fight homelessness or curb crime. You know who has just as much power — the media.
Kavanaugh’s boss, Therese Bottomly, cut loose a reporter to spend more than a year delving into The Oregonian’s racist history dating back to 1861. But she couldn’t show a similar commitment to an honest examination of what’s happening right now in Portland.
This is a good time to revisit your essay, “Ms. Bottomly Takes a Knee.”
As you well know, Bottomly hated reader comments on OregonLive and eliminated them. She should have treated them like a free poll. One regular, NOLAWest, posted observations on how Portland was turning into New Orleans West — a city where you go to eat, drink, do drugs, watch strip shows. A city that resembled a never-ending birthday party for adults. Not a place known for its schools or family-friendly neighborhoods.
That’s where Portland has been headed (even before Covid!), except New Orleans shows more respect for its history.
All we wanted was a City Manager - a ringmaster to wrangle the bureau fiefdoms and get elected officials the heck out of management. That was it! it was a rational, manageable ask. But somehow it became this bloated byzantine thing that no one could have imagined when we voted "yes". I've begun doing what was once The Unthinkable - seriously considering Vancouver.
City Club has supported two member-led research reports about Portland’s form of government and elections. The first was charged with analyzing what the best form of government would be in terms of representation for the residents of Portland and whether Portland’s current commission form of government equitably represents all residents of the city.
That report, supported by 92.6% of City Club members, recommended that Portland transition to a modified council/manager form of government, increase the size of the City Council, and switch to district-based elections — preferably with multiple City Council members elected in each district. At the conclusion of that report, that committee called for additional research on district elections and election systems.
Rethinking 100 Years of the Commission SystemRead the full report >>
In 2019, the Board of Governors formed a new committee, charged with examining alternative voting methods that would result in more equitable representation.
That report, supported by 91.3% of City Club members, recommended that the City of Portland and regional philanthropy should provide financial support for much deeper civic engagement to understand what community members thought about and wanted from the City. They also recommended that Portland should adopt a voting method that eliminates the need for a primary, such as Ranked Choice Voting or another proportional voting system, and that Portland must adopt multi-member districts.
Read the full report >>
The second Committee re-convened in March 2022 to review their research, consider new data and analysis, and consider an amendment to their 2020 recommendation. The Committee’s amended recommendation clarifies their positions on multi-member districts, single member districts, and proportional voting. The full recommendation is available to the public via download here. https://www.pdxcityclub.org/new-government/
View The Reports
Rethinking 100 Years of the Commission System (2019)
No? Then this is fertile ground for any enterprising historian or political scientist wishing to write the untold history of the 2022 charter reform and the interplay between the city's traditional elite and woke activists in shaping city government.
If only the City Club hadn't stopped their deliberations once they designed the charter blueprint! It was downright shortsighted of them not to have convened another study group to map out the details of implementing the plan they spent so much time designing. Is COVID to blame? Or was it just great confidence on the City Club's part that the people of Portland would somehow muddle through and produce a functioning city government worthy of the time and effort the club invested in setting Portland on its path to a new charter?
Sep 17, 2023·edited Sep 17, 2023Liked by Richard Cheverton
I have to laugh at the idea that City Club would somehow have gotten it right if only they'd had the courage of their convictions.
City Club did exactly what it's always done. This *is* what their courage and convictions look like. Wasted resources, recommending "more engagement!" and unconstitutional crap that lefty Portland politicians already wanted, like ranked-choice voting.
You know who Portland should actually have listened to? The many, many grassroots initiatives over the decades that repeatedly tried to get Portland actual district-based representative government, and not some watered-down facsimile in which representation will be undercut by some votes being more-equal pigs than others, which is what ranked-choice is if we're honest.
City Club recommended against every single one of those. "No!" they warned, "We need more studies! More engagement!"
We need less City Club and less shit tied with a pretty bow.
One person, one vote. Actual districts representing the competing interests. Enough representatives that they'll have to argue. In other words, what every other formerly commission-governed city got when they ditched commission stupidity.
But Portland can't have nice things. It can only have bad ideas, made worse with every level of "stakeholder input!" and "engagement surveys!" that always seem to find ways that the bad ideas could be made stupider.
Sep 17, 2023·edited Sep 17, 2023Liked by Richard Cheverton
Well said!
To my knowledge, you and Richard Cheverton are the first to comment publicly and in writing on the City Club of Portland's substantial behind-the-scenes role in shaping the city's future by essentially designing its form of government before the charter review commission was convened to rubber stamp the City Club's work. It's a pity our somnolent press didn't report this story back when opponents of the initiative might have used it to their advantage.
You're right: the City Club did call for "more engagement." And how! The following expression of White progressive guilt was included in the City Club's August, 2020, document titled: "New Government for Today's Portland Part II: Rethinking How We Vote":
"Significant and expansive community outreach efforts must be undertaken to ensure that the voices of historically marginalized communities are elevated in the final comprehensive package of reforms. Broad and thorough engagement is needed to understand the changes that would best meet the needs of those historically marginalized or shut out of the political process."
"We do not and cannot speak for all the communities of interest who would be impacted by reforms. [LOL] This kind of civic engagement requires focused resources, leadership and commitment. We call on the City of Portland, philanthropic institutions,[The Junior League? Trinity Episcopal Cathedral? The Oregon Community Foundation?] and supporters of civic engagement to prioritize this work in the coming years, and specifically during the 2021 Charter Review Commission process."
Given how grossly disproportional the "voices of historically marginalized communities" on the commission were in relation to their percentage of the city's population, the charter review process wildly exceeded the City Club's paternalistic expectations.
Congenital defects aren't the product of genetic inbreeding only. Political inbreeding can have the same result. Thanks to having substituted Crayola diversity and lived experience for diversity of viewpoint and actual subject matter expertise, the new city charter was born into the world with deficient checks and balances resulting from the city executive's lack of a veto power over the acts of the city council.
As far as the lefties who backed the reform were concerned, welcome engagement with charter reform became sinister coup-plotting once the grownups in city government noticed the huge gap in the city charter where proper governance should have been. "Veto? What veto? We don't need no stinkin' veto" is what the woke defenders of the new charter's integrity might have said had they understood what they were protesting. Yep, that's how bad ideas get made stupider.
Sep 17, 2023·edited Sep 17, 2023Liked by Richard Cheverton
Precisely! Political inbreeding and stifling of engagement is what we do best, and always with City Club's expert "help."
The sad thing is that Portland's need for ACTUAL representative government has been very well reported on. For decades. We even have input from an international expert on electoral integrity backed by a full PSU study, fully reported by lefty media. (Substack won't let me post the URL, but you can Google "Portland Mercury Odd Man Out" to read an example of how fully this issue has been reported even by the lefty press.)
Which data were widely publicized by the most recent representative-government initiatives prior to the current fake one.
To the extent that no candidate for Portland public office since has been able to run without endorsing district representation.
Which is why, once it knew that district representation would be endorsed by every candidate henceforth, City Club helped reshape the narrative on district representation, so that when we got it, it would not actually be what it claimed to be.
When I say they helped reshape it, I don't mean subtly or in spirit only. I mean they sent "stakeholders" to the meetings of the last serious initiative (Colleen Swenson's--I think it was called Portland Community Equality Act?), who on probing all turned out not to be the ordinary neighbors they claimed to be but working outright for or affiliated with City Club; railroaded the meetings with "ideas" about how the proposal could be improved by removing any characteristics that would make it truly reflective of representative government by any sane definition; and outnumbered the actual concerned citizens to the point that the initiative died because none of us serious volunteers were going to bust their ass campaigning for what it turned out to be once City Club took it over. Which was no doubt the point.
Ollie...thanks for pointing this out. The self-selected elite, aka the City Club, will come to regret the little monster they helped create. You hit it: ...the interplay between the city's traditional elite and woke activists in shaping city government..."
Sep 15, 2023Liked by Richard Cheverton, Pamela Fitzsimmons
The phrase “all part of the plan” became popular during the Obama years when the leader openly touted his goal of “fundamental change” for America. We are sadly witnessing that change today. This outstanding article demonstrates that Portland’s new form of government is “all part of the plan” to fundamentally change the city. It will likely be catastrophic.
Sep 15, 2023Liked by Richard Cheverton, Pamela Fitzsimmons
Another great analysis on politics and the chaos the new charter will bring. I look forward to news stories on fights, yelling matches and the like. You know it's gonna happen. Honestly, I hate politics. If ever I've written an essay on politics and/or tried to make a difference, writing on politics has been the biggest headache to me. Several years ago, I wrote a long exhausting essay on that awful Chloe Eudaly, who has a dusty Substack page here with her mediocre writing that no one cares about, I wonder if she uses IA to write her sleep inducing essays.
Yep, politics is a big headache to me. I hate that I even have to focus on it, Mikey Boy comes to mind. This was a really well written, and thorough article on what has happened and will likely happen in the future. It is going to be a freaking shit show with serious conflicts becoming a real possibility. LOL...
RE: My above post
I realize the neighborhood associations are viewed in some circles as “part of the ‘problem’” - and perhaps are due for review. But that seems small potatoes compared to the the Rube Goldberg machine that’s been made out of “charter change”.
Neighborhood Coalitions Raise Alarm Over Proposed City Reorganization
https://share.newsbreak.com/50hij7gd
I think this was originally in the WW.
Could a Hail Mary pass from the neighborhood associations mitigate or at least slow down for reconsideration this convoluted so-called “ reorganization”?
Intersectionality - Race and Bicycles
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2023/09/making-the-case-for-capital-punishment.php
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/09/a_disturbing_killing_and_the_media_wont_touch_it.html
with a dollop of structural racism
Thanks, Larry. The media are so obsessed with the “shocking laughter heard round the world” in Seattle I guess they let this brutality slip by — and it’s just as bad, if not worse, than Seattle.
Portland is daily less possible. The town could reignite at any time. Like a mill's huge sawdust piles that burn within but give no outward sign. Never a good idea to walk across them.
In Multnomah County and throughout the nation little flames have been ignited and carefully nourished as in pioneer homes of old:
https://www.thecollegefix.com/new-student-grants-at-drexel-fund-racial-literacy-for-pre-kindergarten-teachers/
https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1047078882699034624
Recently, I've been everywhere reading about this Boebert woman vaping and groping. Yes, wicked and evil, evil, evil, I know. Meanwhile her peers cheer on millions of illeagal immigrants and express loathing for our nation. One of these peers has, perhaps, married her brother. Hunter had hussies doing dope off of his johnson while cutting deals for the old man. He runs a blatant money laundry: Churchill noted that "Beginning with audacity is a very great part of the art of painting" and political chicanery.
A few years ago Russell Brand was the coolest entertainment leftie on the block. Evidently he left the rez (I cannot listen to him very long) and now is to be hounded as a rapist.
Ah well. What about that suicide's client list?
Meanwhile, as you note Bottomly takes a knee. I look at the masses pouring over the border and our supine citizenry - local/national, it's the same people being swept away by the deluge. I will never understand the complicity
To paraphrase the gag on "Airplane!," looks like I picked the wrong time & place to not be addicted to emotion-killing drugs or alcohol.
This is all so depressing.
My guess is that Teddy will go back to his previous creepy job that no one remembers: crunching numbers for the West Coast Infrastructure Exchange.
WCX--a pet project of Ted's former boss John Kitzhaber, who is also remembered by no one--is an ephemeral, DoubleSpeak-y intergovernmental cartel that helps structure public-works contracts and mega-developments of brown-fielded or other distressed urban swaths, on behalf of private for-profit public-works contractors and mega-developers, in such a way that the information contained in those public-private-partnership contracts circumvents public records laws and remains unknown to the public taxpayers and retirement funds who bankroll said PPP contracts and who will take the loss if said contracts invoke their cushy performance-guarantee clauses.
Yeah. That's probably where he'll slink back to. I've no doubt they've missed his simpering, weak-willed obeisance to every remotely stronger will crosses his easily alterable path.
Lars Larson was warning about this since it first showed up on the ballot. No offense to Cheverton/Fitzsimmons as I didn't not know of Portland Dissent until very recently. But besides Portland Dissent, people who live Portland/Metro or Vancouver really should listen to Lars.
The rest of the media seem to be beneficiaries of the grift.
Outstanding analysis, Richard. It’s too bad Portland’s weak media didn’t offer this kind of scrutiny when it might have mattered.
Shane Dixon Kavanaugh's snarky lede was amusing, but he overestimates how much a Portland mayor can do to fight homelessness or curb crime. You know who has just as much power — the media.
Kavanaugh’s boss, Therese Bottomly, cut loose a reporter to spend more than a year delving into The Oregonian’s racist history dating back to 1861. But she couldn’t show a similar commitment to an honest examination of what’s happening right now in Portland.
This is a good time to revisit your essay, “Ms. Bottomly Takes a Knee.”
https://portlanddissent.substack.com/p/ms-bottomly-takes-a-knee
As you well know, Bottomly hated reader comments on OregonLive and eliminated them. She should have treated them like a free poll. One regular, NOLAWest, posted observations on how Portland was turning into New Orleans West — a city where you go to eat, drink, do drugs, watch strip shows. A city that resembled a never-ending birthday party for adults. Not a place known for its schools or family-friendly neighborhoods.
That’s where Portland has been headed (even before Covid!), except New Orleans shows more respect for its history.
All we wanted was a City Manager - a ringmaster to wrangle the bureau fiefdoms and get elected officials the heck out of management. That was it! it was a rational, manageable ask. But somehow it became this bloated byzantine thing that no one could have imagined when we voted "yes". I've begun doing what was once The Unthinkable - seriously considering Vancouver.
A committee of the City Club of Portland, a private organization. essentially did the hard work of city charter reform in 2019 and 2020:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
City Club has supported two member-led research reports about Portland’s form of government and elections. The first was charged with analyzing what the best form of government would be in terms of representation for the residents of Portland and whether Portland’s current commission form of government equitably represents all residents of the city.
That report, supported by 92.6% of City Club members, recommended that Portland transition to a modified council/manager form of government, increase the size of the City Council, and switch to district-based elections — preferably with multiple City Council members elected in each district. At the conclusion of that report, that committee called for additional research on district elections and election systems.
Rethinking 100 Years of the Commission SystemRead the full report >>
In 2019, the Board of Governors formed a new committee, charged with examining alternative voting methods that would result in more equitable representation.
That report, supported by 91.3% of City Club members, recommended that the City of Portland and regional philanthropy should provide financial support for much deeper civic engagement to understand what community members thought about and wanted from the City. They also recommended that Portland should adopt a voting method that eliminates the need for a primary, such as Ranked Choice Voting or another proportional voting system, and that Portland must adopt multi-member districts.
Read the full report >>
The second Committee re-convened in March 2022 to review their research, consider new data and analysis, and consider an amendment to their 2020 recommendation. The Committee’s amended recommendation clarifies their positions on multi-member districts, single member districts, and proportional voting. The full recommendation is available to the public via download here. https://www.pdxcityclub.org/new-government/
View The Reports
Rethinking 100 Years of the Commission System (2019)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CA8EjvCq7xZyZrtXTxw8EslbSy_n-Cq4/view
Rethinking How We Vote (2020)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wgcWnWy58YBq5ojdhUu72nMxvFLxrz-6/view
New Government for Today’s Portland One-pager (2020)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eAmyhH3JiK_zqKWjvpcby945cgcGohNE/view
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We all knew this, right?
No? Then this is fertile ground for any enterprising historian or political scientist wishing to write the untold history of the 2022 charter reform and the interplay between the city's traditional elite and woke activists in shaping city government.
If only the City Club hadn't stopped their deliberations once they designed the charter blueprint! It was downright shortsighted of them not to have convened another study group to map out the details of implementing the plan they spent so much time designing. Is COVID to blame? Or was it just great confidence on the City Club's part that the people of Portland would somehow muddle through and produce a functioning city government worthy of the time and effort the club invested in setting Portland on its path to a new charter?
I have to laugh at the idea that City Club would somehow have gotten it right if only they'd had the courage of their convictions.
City Club did exactly what it's always done. This *is* what their courage and convictions look like. Wasted resources, recommending "more engagement!" and unconstitutional crap that lefty Portland politicians already wanted, like ranked-choice voting.
You know who Portland should actually have listened to? The many, many grassroots initiatives over the decades that repeatedly tried to get Portland actual district-based representative government, and not some watered-down facsimile in which representation will be undercut by some votes being more-equal pigs than others, which is what ranked-choice is if we're honest.
City Club recommended against every single one of those. "No!" they warned, "We need more studies! More engagement!"
We need less City Club and less shit tied with a pretty bow.
One person, one vote. Actual districts representing the competing interests. Enough representatives that they'll have to argue. In other words, what every other formerly commission-governed city got when they ditched commission stupidity.
But Portland can't have nice things. It can only have bad ideas, made worse with every level of "stakeholder input!" and "engagement surveys!" that always seem to find ways that the bad ideas could be made stupider.
We're unwell.
Well said!
To my knowledge, you and Richard Cheverton are the first to comment publicly and in writing on the City Club of Portland's substantial behind-the-scenes role in shaping the city's future by essentially designing its form of government before the charter review commission was convened to rubber stamp the City Club's work. It's a pity our somnolent press didn't report this story back when opponents of the initiative might have used it to their advantage.
You're right: the City Club did call for "more engagement." And how! The following expression of White progressive guilt was included in the City Club's August, 2020, document titled: "New Government for Today's Portland Part II: Rethinking How We Vote":
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Significant and expansive community outreach efforts must be undertaken to ensure that the voices of historically marginalized communities are elevated in the final comprehensive package of reforms. Broad and thorough engagement is needed to understand the changes that would best meet the needs of those historically marginalized or shut out of the political process."
"We do not and cannot speak for all the communities of interest who would be impacted by reforms. [LOL] This kind of civic engagement requires focused resources, leadership and commitment. We call on the City of Portland, philanthropic institutions,[The Junior League? Trinity Episcopal Cathedral? The Oregon Community Foundation?] and supporters of civic engagement to prioritize this work in the coming years, and specifically during the 2021 Charter Review Commission process."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Given how grossly disproportional the "voices of historically marginalized communities" on the commission were in relation to their percentage of the city's population, the charter review process wildly exceeded the City Club's paternalistic expectations.
Congenital defects aren't the product of genetic inbreeding only. Political inbreeding can have the same result. Thanks to having substituted Crayola diversity and lived experience for diversity of viewpoint and actual subject matter expertise, the new city charter was born into the world with deficient checks and balances resulting from the city executive's lack of a veto power over the acts of the city council.
As far as the lefties who backed the reform were concerned, welcome engagement with charter reform became sinister coup-plotting once the grownups in city government noticed the huge gap in the city charter where proper governance should have been. "Veto? What veto? We don't need no stinkin' veto" is what the woke defenders of the new charter's integrity might have said had they understood what they were protesting. Yep, that's how bad ideas get made stupider.
Precisely! Political inbreeding and stifling of engagement is what we do best, and always with City Club's expert "help."
The sad thing is that Portland's need for ACTUAL representative government has been very well reported on. For decades. We even have input from an international expert on electoral integrity backed by a full PSU study, fully reported by lefty media. (Substack won't let me post the URL, but you can Google "Portland Mercury Odd Man Out" to read an example of how fully this issue has been reported even by the lefty press.)
Which data were widely publicized by the most recent representative-government initiatives prior to the current fake one.
To the extent that no candidate for Portland public office since has been able to run without endorsing district representation.
Which is why, once it knew that district representation would be endorsed by every candidate henceforth, City Club helped reshape the narrative on district representation, so that when we got it, it would not actually be what it claimed to be.
When I say they helped reshape it, I don't mean subtly or in spirit only. I mean they sent "stakeholders" to the meetings of the last serious initiative (Colleen Swenson's--I think it was called Portland Community Equality Act?), who on probing all turned out not to be the ordinary neighbors they claimed to be but working outright for or affiliated with City Club; railroaded the meetings with "ideas" about how the proposal could be improved by removing any characteristics that would make it truly reflective of representative government by any sane definition; and outnumbered the actual concerned citizens to the point that the initiative died because none of us serious volunteers were going to bust their ass campaigning for what it turned out to be once City Club took it over. Which was no doubt the point.
Ollie...thanks for pointing this out. The self-selected elite, aka the City Club, will come to regret the little monster they helped create. You hit it: ...the interplay between the city's traditional elite and woke activists in shaping city government..."
The phrase “all part of the plan” became popular during the Obama years when the leader openly touted his goal of “fundamental change” for America. We are sadly witnessing that change today. This outstanding article demonstrates that Portland’s new form of government is “all part of the plan” to fundamentally change the city. It will likely be catastrophic.
Another great analysis on politics and the chaos the new charter will bring. I look forward to news stories on fights, yelling matches and the like. You know it's gonna happen. Honestly, I hate politics. If ever I've written an essay on politics and/or tried to make a difference, writing on politics has been the biggest headache to me. Several years ago, I wrote a long exhausting essay on that awful Chloe Eudaly, who has a dusty Substack page here with her mediocre writing that no one cares about, I wonder if she uses IA to write her sleep inducing essays.
Yep, politics is a big headache to me. I hate that I even have to focus on it, Mikey Boy comes to mind. This was a really well written, and thorough article on what has happened and will likely happen in the future. It is going to be a freaking shit show with serious conflicts becoming a real possibility. LOL...
As usual Theresa, you made me laugh: "I wonder if she uses IA to write her sleep inducing essays."
Good times! 🤣
Thanks, Richard! Seems like Portland's new governance system is very unlikely to fix what ails the city. But then, it wasn't designed to do that.