City finds parking advisers too testy, shelves body
Meetings canceled for six or more months
The Portland Bureau of Transportation abruptly canceled meetings of the Northwest Parking Stakeholders Committee for at least six months while claiming the body is difficult to manage.
“I recognize that this news will potentially be upsetting and may come as a shock to some of you,” wrote Parking Operations Division Manager Erika Namioka Nebel in an Oct. 18 letter to committee members.
The president of the Northwest District Association had another word for the unilateral action.
“It’s bonkers,” said Todd Zarnitz, president of the Northwest District Association and a member of the committee.
The committee was created by a 2013 City Council ordinance authorizing paid parking in most of the Northwest District. The ordinance requires 51 percent of revenues derived in Parking District M be spent on transportation projects benefiting the district and for those expenditures to be guided by the stakeholders committee.
“This decision is clearly in violation of the revised SAC bylaws,” Zarnitz wrote Nebel.
“The body shall meet at least 12 times each calendar year, typically once a month, and as otherwise necessary to conduct its business,” the bylaws read.
“Please send us documentation that supports the legality of this move,” Zarnitz wrote.
PBOT has not responded to the request, and Zarnitz may call a special meeting of his board to plot a course of action.
Reasons offered for the shutdown had to do with an inability to gain the committee’s support for budgets and specific projects, as well as “significant time and emotional labor to manage” the body, according to Nebel.
“It’s both frustrating and disappointing that despite having an estimated $1 million in uncommitted funds, the SAC hasn’t been able to agree on or make significant progress toward delivering on that purpose,” she wrote.
As an example, she referred to the Northwest 21st and 23rd Intersection Enhancement Project.
That project first came before the committee in June, meeting resistance only in September when it was announced that up to 28 street trees made be removed.
Greg Theisen, who co-chairs the NWDA Planning Committee and serves on the SAC, faulted PBOT staff for withholding any mention of trees for so long.
“To have something dropped on advocates at the very end of the project is going to blow up in your face,” Theisen said.
Nebel also complained of the difficulty in obtaining committee approval.
“PBOT worked with the SAC since 2021 on potential streetscape improvements. After four scope modifications, 13 SAC meetings, eight subcommittee meetings, and over $150,000 of Northwest funds spent on planning for this initial phase alone (not including the cost of three of my staff and several other PBOT staff supporting this effort), the SAC was unable to make a recommendation about how to move forward.”
Some impasses owed to a higher quorum requirement imposed by PBOT. Under bylaws adopted by the committee, only a majority of those present was required for adoption, but a 2022 revision made by staff increased the requirement to seven votes regardless of attendance.
Motions supported 5-2 and 6-3 in September failed because they did not meet the quorum threshold of seven.
An email from a former SAC member noted that Nebel’s statement does “not appear to acknowledge the degree to which PBOT precipitated all of this with last year’s SAC bylaw revision, which displaced several SAC members with long, deep experience relative to the tasks of the SAC.”
In this person’s assessment of PBOT’s thinking: “If you will not apply a veneer of citizen endorsement/legitimization to what we want to do, we will shut you down and we will do it anyway.”
PBOT Commission Mingus Mapps is on board with PBOT’s handling of the matter.
“I support the bureau’s decision in taking a temporary pause on this advisory committee,” Mapps said. “Right now, my main focus and direction for PBOT is to tackle the financial crisis that the bureau is facing.”