Parking meetings to resume
Explanations for six month beak cover the map
Was the city’s six-month shutdown of its parking advisory committee in the Northwest District a tempest in a teapot or an alarming breach in City Hall’s duty to citizens?
As meetings of the Northwest Parking Stakeholders Advisory Committee resume this month, there is no consensus on what happened or why. In fact, the Portland Bureau of Transportation’s reasons for shelving the committee were a contradiction from the start. Was the shutdown called because citizens were quarrelsome and hard to manage or because the bureau was short of funds to provide staffing?
The PBOT letter announcing the suspension last October cited both reasons, while simultaneously suspending two other parking advisory bodies having no behavioral issues. Was it just about the money?
That’s what a representative of Mingus Mapps, commissioner of PBOT, told the Northwest District Association last month. NWDA has four seats on the SAC, which was established by a 2013 City Council ordinance to advise the city on parking policies in the district.
“We wanted to ensure that the bureau was able to support the advisory committee to the best of its ability,” policy adviser Cynthia Castro said.
If it were merely about the money, would the staff support to resume meetings resolve the matter? Or did “the pause,” as PBOT officials call it, instill distrust that could carry over? Or is the fracture so deep that only city charter reform coming next year could mend the split?
NWDA board and SAC member Steve Pinger says the problem goes beyond funding, even if the final straw was a budget item. He said PBOT staff members had grown increasingly testy when their proposals met resistance, reaching their limit when the committee placed conditions on support for a spending resolution.
“For me, it was mainly from the financial consideration,” Castro replied. “That’s why I can say the resolution did not have a bearing on my decision.”
SAC members may have spurred the resumption of official monthly meetings by calling one on their own, which was attended by Erika Nebel, PBOT’s parking division manager.
Nebel wrote the Oct. 18 letter stating that working with the committee had grown “frustrating and disappointing” around issues such as “respect for fellow members and staff.”
She revealed a different attitude last month.
“My intention is not to scold the SAC,” she said at the rump session. “I do appreciate you guys letting me sit in and listen to what you have to say.
“It struck us, obviously, that if we want you guys to listen to us, it’s a two-way street and we need to listen to you too. That’s part of our intentions for the first meeting as well.”
Rebuilding the relationship may be more complicated.
Rick Michaelson, who chaired the SAC for its first 10 years until PBOT enacted bylaws limiting terms of service, said the bureau has increasingly controlled the agenda. For instance, an original parking district goal was to increase off-street parking capacity, a direction PBOT discouraged with a series of prerequisites that could not be satisfied.
“To have policy changes made without us having known until we read it in our reports: It doesn’t work,” Michaelson said.
No project divided the sides like PBOT’s proposal to remove up to 30 street trees along Northwest 21st and 23rd avenues to make room for wider sections of curbs near intersections. The SAC would not support the project, and neighbors tied yellow ribbons around the targeted trees, creating scenes for news coverage. PBOT backed down, announcing that virtually all of the trees could be saved after all.
To PBOT, it was an example of SAC obstructionism; to SAC members, it demonstrated that resistance saved the bureau from an ill-conceived project and benefited the community.
At an NWDA board meeting earlier last month attended by Castro, board member Richard Gronostajski said, “Any disagreement with PBOT was thought to be interfering rather than suggesting potential better ways for them to do things.”
Saving the street trees “is just one example of how important the parking SAC is,” Gronostajski said. “Having input from the neighborhood is a really important thing, but PBOT seems to … feel that they know better.”
Throughout the two meetings last month, PBOT staff heard the same message.
“There’s a difference between a stakeholder advisory committee and a stakeholder cheerleading committee,” said NWDA President and SAC member Todd Zarnitz, “and I think they wanted the latter.”
“If you’re on an advisory committee and you can never tell the [bureau] that they’re wrong, what’s the point?” Michaelson added.
For months, neighborhood representatives sought an explanation from Mapps, who was elected to the City Council in 2020 on a pro-neighborhood platform. They invited him or an aide to meetings without getting a response. Finally, Castro came to the March NWDA board meeting.
Castro downplayed the dispute and the commissioner’s role in it.
She spoke of maintaining a “good working relationship” with neighborhoods.
“We value the neighborhood association system quite a bit,” she said.
Meanwhile, the NW Examiner had also been trying to reach Mapps with a list of questions:
Why did he give his approval to the SAC shut down?
Why did this happen without contact with the affected neighborhood representatives or their associations?
Why has he failed to respond to so many efforts to reach him?
How can he know PBOT’s position is justified without hearing from the other side?
Has he changed his views on the importance of neighborhood and citizen input since he was elected?
Mapps finally agreed to an in-person interview in March, but offered no specifics. He is aware of PBOT’s reputation for unresponsiveness to citizens, but his attention during the meeting went in another direction--the bureau’s funding crisis and the inevitability of staff cuts.
Mapps revealed no specific knowledge of the SAC-PBOT breakdown or why he came down where he did.
“I have to make tough choices,” he said simply.
He apologized if his actions or those of PBOT had caused harm, which he said was not his intent. He reaffirmed his respect for neighborhood associations.
He had one complaint about news coverage of the issue. He felt it unfair to describe the cancellation period as indefinite when there was always intent to resume meetings.