For the people, not bureaus

Neighbors see something new, council members taking their side

Portland’s new city charter is already transformational by one measure: Westside neighborhood representatives are getting attention from their council members like never before.

“There’s a breath of fresh air blowing down Fourth Avenue right now,” said Roger Vrilakas, who is typically more jaded after 40 years of service on the Northwest District Association Planning Committee.

His neighborhood, in particular, is taking notice. All three of its District 4 council members have separately met with the committee in their first two months on the job, and their interest goes beyond mere attendance. The trio of first-time elected officials has largely adopted its constituents’ sense of struggling against recalcitrant bureaus.

For instance, council member Mitch Green criticized the city’s top-down handling of the Montgomery Park Area Plan, adopted by the former council last December—a plan futilely resisted by NWDA for six years.

If the old guard rushed to pass the plan before their terms expired, it suggests they suspected that new winds were coming. With good reason.

“I’m pretty disappointed with the Montgomery Park Area Plan process,” said Green, likening it to token input reaching the council only after the plan was “already fully baked.”

For the first time, someone in City Hall had spoken to NWDA’s dissatisfaction with the project, which involves rezoning industrial land and extending a Portland Streetcar line to Montgomery Park.

Green was not merely playing to the activists in the room. He made the point more vigorously at a council work session in January, at which he lashed into the plan’s financial underpinnings.

“I’m very concerned about the streetcar,” he said. “I wonder why we have a $178 million plan for broader housing and economic development that would probably happen without that streetcar.”

It’s a suspicion that cannot be proved, but government operatives had not even entertained such possibilities. And that was not the only problem.

“I view that as a streetcar-led development process and not a transportation solution. I want to take a second look at that,” Green said.

Green was leery of a project amounting to more than 90 percent of the city’s capital improvement budget without having an identified source of those funds.

He sounded a lot like Steve Pinger, the committee’s most stalwart skeptic of the Montgomery Park Area Plan, who has called it development subsidies masquerading as transportation improvement.

Broken trust

Council member Eric Zimmerman wasn’t as well-versed on the Montgomery Park plan, but he was similarly candid about other bureaus that have lost touch with their neighborhood constituents: the Portland Bureau of Transportation and Portland Parks & Recreation.

“I think parks has a ton of work to do with building trust within the community before we ask voters for a levy again,” Zimmerman told the NWDA Planning Committee. “I think they need to hear that, and they heard it loud and clear from me in a way that I don’t know has been communicated in the past.”

Nor is he a fan of PBOT’s reimagining of public rights of ways for pedestrian plazas and dining shelters. Some of the underused plazas were “really huge failures” by attracting “bad behavior,” situations he believes could have been avoided had the bureau “really incorporated” neighborhood input.

That failing is less likely now that there are “district-elected representatives holding the line.”

In the absence of authentic local community involvement, Zimmerman said, the city has been swayed by advocacy groups pushing for citywide approaches that miss the peculiarities of each locality.

“I don’t know that this is going to work in a district model,” he said.

Zimmerman also takes NWDA’s side on one of its pet peeves: the large amount in system development charges assessed on new construction that are not being directed to the local impact area.

“What have they done with SDCs they’ve collected?” Planning Committee Chair Greg Theisen asked. “From this neighborhood, I think it’s $18-plus million over the last 15 years, and we've seen pretty much none of it.”

NWDA has been waiting for the park in Slabtown promised 13 years ago that still is not under construction, a hangup blamed on funding entanglements.

Meanwhile, SDCs collected for park construction cannot be applied to runaway maintenance backlogs at existing parks.

“I am challenging the city to reevaluate how they interpret the use of SDCs,” Zimmerman said, “and I’m taking the tack that SDCs are supposed to only be used for increasing capacity. … When you take some of the parks in Portland that aren’t being used by everyday families because of bad behavior that’s going on there or because of nothing other than grass there, improvements to the area that bring people back is increasing capacity. … It’s been a pet project for me.”

Clark is not as outspoken on issues as her counterparts, but she has made a fast study of the local issues not always making the news. She is the one most often seen at neighborhood meetings and events. She speaks of the collegiality of the three District 4 council members and their willingness to compromise for common goals.

Other inner-Westside neighborhood groups are also getting to know their new representatives.

“We had Olivia Clark at our Jan. 28 meeting, we have scheduled Mayor Keith Wilson at our next meeting on Feb. 25 and we have Eric Zimmerman tentatively scheduled for April 22,” Downtown Neighborhood Association President LaJune Thorson said. “Yes, accessibility is very different now.”

All three District 4 council members support the mayor’s plan to end unsanctioned camping by the end of the year, a popular cause with neighborhood associations and community volunteers who have invested long hours cleaning up trash and calling in livability complaints to city bureaus.

Zimmerman drew applause at a District 4 City Club forum last month when he said voters are rejecting “the dogma around” shelter and social service providers, noting that some homeless people “are doing everything they can to avoid the shelters we are providing.”

Sharp contrast

The new connectivity contrasts sharply with the former council, which seemed to go out of its way to let Westside neighbors know they were at the end of the line. Former Commissioner Mingus Mapps allowed PBOT to unilaterally suspend meetings of the Northwest Parking Stakeholders Advisory Committee for six months while spurning all efforts by neighborhood representatives to talk to him about it.

Former Mayor Ted Wheeler assigned the Office of Neighborhood Involvement/Office of Community and Civic Life to successive commissioners who were openly hostile to neighborhood associations.

Neighborhood representatives are pleased with the attention from City Hall, though most remain in a wait-and-see pose.

“I don’t know,” said NWDA board member Jeremy Sacks, “but I would welcome any move by the city to listen to neighborhoods again.”

“It was great to see all three council members attend a Planning Committee meeting,” NWDA President Todd Zarnitz said, “though I don't think any of them asked for the neighborhood view.

“I am definitely optimistic that we might have a better system that prioritizes residents and homeowners over special interests and the city bureaucracy. Certainly, the council members seem to be more engaged with the community so far.

“The neighborhood associations are still in a terrible down cycle, however. We're sort of being placated at the moment.”

“All three district representatives seem bright, engaged, personable and anxious to use their positions to address city issues,” committee member Joni Johnson said. “I was also heartened by Eric’s comment that the three of them enjoy working together. That will certainly be beneficial to District 4 since the alternative of competing council members’ agendas within districts would further Balkanize the city.”

But the pivotal difference seems to be removing council members from an administrative role.

“Not being hooked in to the bureaus makes it easier for them to hear the neighborhood associations’ perspective,” Pinger said. “These commissioners have been impenetrable because their constituency has been the bureaus.

“The thing we experienced working with the commissioners over the last 10 years or so—and Montgomery Park is an example—they seem increasingly to represent their bureaus rather than represent the citizens.”

“I think you nailed it on the head there, Steve,” Zimmerman responded, “because that was the nature of the beast in the old system.

“All 12 of us have a feeling that there is an oversight role, and that’s huge change from … the bureau as the number one constituency.”

Vrilakas is ready to give it a try “to keep the momentum going.

“We really want to stay in contact with our representatives so we don’t have to get upset with them later.”