Bob’s insightful and accurate comments remind me of the bumper sticker: “I can’t be overdrawn…I still have more checks. Years of financial mismanagement, deferred maintenance, and excessive spending on programs that failed to deliver results, now combine to drive even more residents and businesses out of the city.
Everyone take note - we need pragmatic strategic thinkers like this on city council. Not the people we currently have. It will be time to vote again soon enough.
Thank you, Bob, for continually rolling up your sleeves to provide us insight into the city council’s mismanagement of Portland. Their incompetence is ideologically driven and counter to the principles of effective leadership and fiduciary responsibility. Keep at it and hope you run again in the future
Truer words were never written. This incompetence is completely ideologically driven and is a consequence of living in a one party county in a one party state. Only in Portlandia, the governmental bodies are controlled either directly or indirectly by the extremist, virtue-signaling fringe of the majority party. They cater to the interests of the Homeless Industrial Complex, the radicalized PAT and public sector unions which need to keep their money rolling in. Meanwhile our infrastructure is crumbling and our streets are unsafe from crime and undeterred traffic scofflaws (think defunding and chronic underfunding of the police), and of course our parks are also facing the results of persistent can-kicking down the road. And of course Portland is a de facto Sanctuary City for drug addicts, the untreated mentally or anyone else who just doesn’t want to follow “rules”.
I’m unsure if we escape this death spiral under our present system of government.
This article - on the heels of a meaningless meeting regarding the upcoming low barrier city run shelter dropping onto our heads within weeks. (unless you count the campaigning by Wilson about what a savior he is...) AND a private run shelter mere blocks away that has NO city oversight, is also low barrier, and NO city official bothered to attend community meetings to discuss. (I guess the electeds only are concerned when it's a city project and to hell with everything else? Just pay your taxes and shut tf up?)
We are taxed within an inch of our lives; expected to do the dirty work of cleaning feces, picking up needles, etc. etc., and now are asked to "partner" with the Mayor (eye roll) and deal with low barrier shelters that will release upwards to 275 people onto the streets at 6am. WHAT TF ELSE??
The city/ county/ metro offer no oversight of private shelters - so left to thier own devices we, the tax paying citizens are left the burdens on the street. And, we are asked to "be partners" to the proposed city run (questionable) shelter that lands on our heads too.
Thanks, Bob. This seems like the start of a very fine policy piece. And for me it touches on a missing component in government that is held captive to mismanagement by a poorly educated bureaucracy.
I often ask myself, what would a for-profit entrepreneur do to fix city income and income collection problems? How would someone trained to find and reduce costs and increase earnings, attack a budget gap facing most municipalities?
At once, the idea of merely taxing oneself out of debt seems both comical and absurd. That isn't even in the vocabulary of a profitable business owner. But, I am not going to help this discussion by complaining about what is wrong. Instead, let me see if I can offer some ideas on what might be right.
It begins with operating profitably or, at least, on budget. And I am not going to address cost reduction here, because that's the first and easiest fix - a sixth grader can understand that one reduces expenditure to meet a balance between income and expense. Instead, I want to talk about city income. And, in particular lost income due to malfeasance and nonfeasance - a topic that has weighed on me for decades. You see, it's one thing to create new fees or increase existing fees and quite another to actually collect them. And, our "City that works," does not work to collect them. In fact, our city, which over many decades has enacted thousands of ordinances does, from department to department, ignore them, does not enforce them and does not cite offenders and follow up to collect on the fees such ordinances require.
And before fellow readers cringe, certain that they prefer to maintain their status as a protected scofflaws, I remind you that those same ordinances that you willfully are ignorant of, that you chose to break for convenience and which are largely unenforced, were all enacted to protect property, protect the rights of citizens and increase city livability. Okay, yes, it's a nuisance to live one's life abiding all laws (that's what an ordinance is.) But, it's also not that hard to adjust to doing what is right and lawful, for the betterment of community and government. But, we can't do this if the government sets the tone to ignore responsibility. And the City of Portland does. Now let me show you how.
And I will start with an easy one, super easy, in fact, because this is a department that has been practicing malfeasance for decades: Parking Enforcement and Operations. And I love this one in part because the City sees this as a big revenue division - so much so that parking fees went up 20% in July 2025 and time enforcement increased till 10p. Well, there you go, the easy fix - higher fees. Except, you know, that department and the ordinances that staff is supposed to enforce is a whole lot more than just parking fees for time. And yet, that is their central mandate - cite and fine all motorists that do not pay for metered parking or stay beyond their paid time limit.
But, anyone who takes even a quick peak at parking ordinances will find that there are all sorts of others to be enforced.
How about overtime during sporting and concert events in and around Providence Park? I can tell you, in Goose Hollow, the streets are filled with attendees staying and parking far beyond the posted time limit and no one gets a ticket. Of course some attendees park unlawfully, trespassing on unmanned church parking lots. Oh, yes, and a few property owners operate temporary, but unlawful, event parking operations. (Why unlawful? The business is not recorded with the state as a dba, LLC or INC., they did not buy a city license to operate the parking business, they do not pay county business taxes assessed on their company assets, they are not carrying added liability insurance specific to operation of that parking lot business and in most cases they surely are not declaring that income to the state or the IRS or providing all the deductions and benefits to any employee working the lot on the owners behalf. Did anybody just count the number of legitimate fees to city, county and state not paid by the failure enforce this ordinance?)
By the way, this is also true for Lincoln high school students who park their vehicles on these same streets. They have no right to stay beyond the posted time limit, but they do. Most remaining unticketed. And some will have fake permits, acquired by their parents, using a friend, business or relative's local address, to purchase an annual parking pass - pretending to be a local resident. Hey morons, did it ever occur to you to check that false application against the registered location of the vehicle? Nope. Too easy. But, that's nonfeasance for you - they don't do their job. And, like the sports attendees, those same students park unlawfully in local unmanned private parking lots, church lots for one, to avoid ticketing altogether. And then, you could be checking to see if the church is properly licensed to operate a private parking lot to students and teachers and neighborhood business. Are they paying license fees and county taxes on that business?
But, I am being unfair, I have hardly touched on the largess of this nonfeasance. This same department has ordinances against parking in front of a driveway. (No. The homeowner has no permission to park there either. The apron, the sidewalk - it's all city owned - not privately owned.) Another ordinance forbids a car be parked in opposite direction to the flow of traffic (on it's side of the street), another prohibits parking beyond 6 inches from the curb, another requires wheels be turned to face the curb on slopes, another requires no vehicle over 6 feet in height (i.e. trucks and vans of all kinds) park at a corner. And there are other ordinances to protect against abandonment or unmoved vehicles that become a nuisance. And yet, none of these get regularly enforced. None of them. And why? Well the last time I spoke to the head of the department he said he had the authority to decide what was to be enforced and what was not. And he, like his predecessor, decided that time enforcement was the only really critical thing to enforce. Well, now you know. A department head, has decided to empower himself to thwart the ordinances passed by city council over the years and focus on a narrow portion of the law. And he has passed this practice of malfeasance down to his parking patrol staff - who simply does not write citations for a very large number of ordinances they are supposed to enforce. Do you see how that might reduce income? And I can assure you, a sharp eyed group of auditors, comparing ordinance to department, will find this malfeasance or nonfeasance in every department.
Who protects against garbage cans being left curb or street side after weekly pick-up? Who is empowered to cite and fine those repeat offenders who mar the quality of the neighborhood? Who enforces the street sign ordinance requiring every business sign pay annual permit fees for sign placement on city right of ways? Who's enforcing and citing businesses that spill out their sales or service onto the sidewalk obstructing ingress/egress or violating ADA compliance altogether? Well, sure, these ordinances, the scale of fines, they were all enacted with defined designated departments and personnel to carry out enforcement. Do you think it's being done? No. All of it resulting in lost revenue.
The list is endless. But the point is super clear - City malfeasance and nonfeasance, a persistent failure by departments in our city to enforce existing laws, to cite, fine and force collection of fines, is clearly a problem in effectively balancing our municipal budgets. An entrepreneur, seeing each City department as it's own profit center, would certainly insist that they operate in a manner that brings in revenue, as mandated by ordinance, in order to achieve a balance in income and expense.
It is truly horrifying to consider just how foolishly city departments are run. But, the Peter Principle is in full force. On the expense side, I could ask a similar question set of questions: like why do you own and operate properties that are providing neither daily housing of working employees or a return on investment? If you're going to allow employees work from home - a whole other argument I would have unrelated to income and expense - why do you maintain all that unused office space? Why not shut it down, why not sell it? And what about all the properties the city department owns that are empty or unused or could be consolidated in order to free up saleable properties? I remember representing a seriously interested buyer for the decaying Fire House Theater building on SW Montgomery. The head of the Park Department refused to consider selling it. And so it sits, languishing in further disrepair while his plans for it sit idle. In the intervening 6 years that and many more Park Bureau property sit and suffer as their operating budget continues to shrink. Instead, why not form a commission of private developers and real estate people and have them identify the City properties that are unused and saleable? Why not make money selling an unused asset?
There really should be a new ordinance instead. A simple one. "No department is allowed to raise taxes or fees to balance budgets until exhaustively proven that: 1) the citation and fee income they are required to enforce is being collected, 2) liquidation of all unused and non-performing assets is done and 3) expenses reduced to provide operation in a lean, effective manner." And they are given one year to enact all, before coming back, with hat in hand, to look for tax and increased fee solutions. Make that your next platform, Bob, and you have my vote.
Bob’s insightful and accurate comments remind me of the bumper sticker: “I can’t be overdrawn…I still have more checks. Years of financial mismanagement, deferred maintenance, and excessive spending on programs that failed to deliver results, now combine to drive even more residents and businesses out of the city.
Everyone take note - we need pragmatic strategic thinkers like this on city council. Not the people we currently have. It will be time to vote again soon enough.
Thank you, Bob, for continually rolling up your sleeves to provide us insight into the city council’s mismanagement of Portland. Their incompetence is ideologically driven and counter to the principles of effective leadership and fiduciary responsibility. Keep at it and hope you run again in the future
Truer words were never written. This incompetence is completely ideologically driven and is a consequence of living in a one party county in a one party state. Only in Portlandia, the governmental bodies are controlled either directly or indirectly by the extremist, virtue-signaling fringe of the majority party. They cater to the interests of the Homeless Industrial Complex, the radicalized PAT and public sector unions which need to keep their money rolling in. Meanwhile our infrastructure is crumbling and our streets are unsafe from crime and undeterred traffic scofflaws (think defunding and chronic underfunding of the police), and of course our parks are also facing the results of persistent can-kicking down the road. And of course Portland is a de facto Sanctuary City for drug addicts, the untreated mentally or anyone else who just doesn’t want to follow “rules”.
I’m unsure if we escape this death spiral under our present system of government.
This article - on the heels of a meaningless meeting regarding the upcoming low barrier city run shelter dropping onto our heads within weeks. (unless you count the campaigning by Wilson about what a savior he is...) AND a private run shelter mere blocks away that has NO city oversight, is also low barrier, and NO city official bothered to attend community meetings to discuss. (I guess the electeds only are concerned when it's a city project and to hell with everything else? Just pay your taxes and shut tf up?)
We are taxed within an inch of our lives; expected to do the dirty work of cleaning feces, picking up needles, etc. etc., and now are asked to "partner" with the Mayor (eye roll) and deal with low barrier shelters that will release upwards to 275 people onto the streets at 6am. WHAT TF ELSE??
The city/ county/ metro offer no oversight of private shelters - so left to thier own devices we, the tax paying citizens are left the burdens on the street. And, we are asked to "be partners" to the proposed city run (questionable) shelter that lands on our heads too.
Here's what tf else: I'm outta here.
Thanks, Bob. This seems like the start of a very fine policy piece. And for me it touches on a missing component in government that is held captive to mismanagement by a poorly educated bureaucracy.
I often ask myself, what would a for-profit entrepreneur do to fix city income and income collection problems? How would someone trained to find and reduce costs and increase earnings, attack a budget gap facing most municipalities?
At once, the idea of merely taxing oneself out of debt seems both comical and absurd. That isn't even in the vocabulary of a profitable business owner. But, I am not going to help this discussion by complaining about what is wrong. Instead, let me see if I can offer some ideas on what might be right.
It begins with operating profitably or, at least, on budget. And I am not going to address cost reduction here, because that's the first and easiest fix - a sixth grader can understand that one reduces expenditure to meet a balance between income and expense. Instead, I want to talk about city income. And, in particular lost income due to malfeasance and nonfeasance - a topic that has weighed on me for decades. You see, it's one thing to create new fees or increase existing fees and quite another to actually collect them. And, our "City that works," does not work to collect them. In fact, our city, which over many decades has enacted thousands of ordinances does, from department to department, ignore them, does not enforce them and does not cite offenders and follow up to collect on the fees such ordinances require.
And before fellow readers cringe, certain that they prefer to maintain their status as a protected scofflaws, I remind you that those same ordinances that you willfully are ignorant of, that you chose to break for convenience and which are largely unenforced, were all enacted to protect property, protect the rights of citizens and increase city livability. Okay, yes, it's a nuisance to live one's life abiding all laws (that's what an ordinance is.) But, it's also not that hard to adjust to doing what is right and lawful, for the betterment of community and government. But, we can't do this if the government sets the tone to ignore responsibility. And the City of Portland does. Now let me show you how.
And I will start with an easy one, super easy, in fact, because this is a department that has been practicing malfeasance for decades: Parking Enforcement and Operations. And I love this one in part because the City sees this as a big revenue division - so much so that parking fees went up 20% in July 2025 and time enforcement increased till 10p. Well, there you go, the easy fix - higher fees. Except, you know, that department and the ordinances that staff is supposed to enforce is a whole lot more than just parking fees for time. And yet, that is their central mandate - cite and fine all motorists that do not pay for metered parking or stay beyond their paid time limit.
But, anyone who takes even a quick peak at parking ordinances will find that there are all sorts of others to be enforced.
How about overtime during sporting and concert events in and around Providence Park? I can tell you, in Goose Hollow, the streets are filled with attendees staying and parking far beyond the posted time limit and no one gets a ticket. Of course some attendees park unlawfully, trespassing on unmanned church parking lots. Oh, yes, and a few property owners operate temporary, but unlawful, event parking operations. (Why unlawful? The business is not recorded with the state as a dba, LLC or INC., they did not buy a city license to operate the parking business, they do not pay county business taxes assessed on their company assets, they are not carrying added liability insurance specific to operation of that parking lot business and in most cases they surely are not declaring that income to the state or the IRS or providing all the deductions and benefits to any employee working the lot on the owners behalf. Did anybody just count the number of legitimate fees to city, county and state not paid by the failure enforce this ordinance?)
By the way, this is also true for Lincoln high school students who park their vehicles on these same streets. They have no right to stay beyond the posted time limit, but they do. Most remaining unticketed. And some will have fake permits, acquired by their parents, using a friend, business or relative's local address, to purchase an annual parking pass - pretending to be a local resident. Hey morons, did it ever occur to you to check that false application against the registered location of the vehicle? Nope. Too easy. But, that's nonfeasance for you - they don't do their job. And, like the sports attendees, those same students park unlawfully in local unmanned private parking lots, church lots for one, to avoid ticketing altogether. And then, you could be checking to see if the church is properly licensed to operate a private parking lot to students and teachers and neighborhood business. Are they paying license fees and county taxes on that business?
But, I am being unfair, I have hardly touched on the largess of this nonfeasance. This same department has ordinances against parking in front of a driveway. (No. The homeowner has no permission to park there either. The apron, the sidewalk - it's all city owned - not privately owned.) Another ordinance forbids a car be parked in opposite direction to the flow of traffic (on it's side of the street), another prohibits parking beyond 6 inches from the curb, another requires wheels be turned to face the curb on slopes, another requires no vehicle over 6 feet in height (i.e. trucks and vans of all kinds) park at a corner. And there are other ordinances to protect against abandonment or unmoved vehicles that become a nuisance. And yet, none of these get regularly enforced. None of them. And why? Well the last time I spoke to the head of the department he said he had the authority to decide what was to be enforced and what was not. And he, like his predecessor, decided that time enforcement was the only really critical thing to enforce. Well, now you know. A department head, has decided to empower himself to thwart the ordinances passed by city council over the years and focus on a narrow portion of the law. And he has passed this practice of malfeasance down to his parking patrol staff - who simply does not write citations for a very large number of ordinances they are supposed to enforce. Do you see how that might reduce income? And I can assure you, a sharp eyed group of auditors, comparing ordinance to department, will find this malfeasance or nonfeasance in every department.
Who protects against garbage cans being left curb or street side after weekly pick-up? Who is empowered to cite and fine those repeat offenders who mar the quality of the neighborhood? Who enforces the street sign ordinance requiring every business sign pay annual permit fees for sign placement on city right of ways? Who's enforcing and citing businesses that spill out their sales or service onto the sidewalk obstructing ingress/egress or violating ADA compliance altogether? Well, sure, these ordinances, the scale of fines, they were all enacted with defined designated departments and personnel to carry out enforcement. Do you think it's being done? No. All of it resulting in lost revenue.
The list is endless. But the point is super clear - City malfeasance and nonfeasance, a persistent failure by departments in our city to enforce existing laws, to cite, fine and force collection of fines, is clearly a problem in effectively balancing our municipal budgets. An entrepreneur, seeing each City department as it's own profit center, would certainly insist that they operate in a manner that brings in revenue, as mandated by ordinance, in order to achieve a balance in income and expense.
It is truly horrifying to consider just how foolishly city departments are run. But, the Peter Principle is in full force. On the expense side, I could ask a similar question set of questions: like why do you own and operate properties that are providing neither daily housing of working employees or a return on investment? If you're going to allow employees work from home - a whole other argument I would have unrelated to income and expense - why do you maintain all that unused office space? Why not shut it down, why not sell it? And what about all the properties the city department owns that are empty or unused or could be consolidated in order to free up saleable properties? I remember representing a seriously interested buyer for the decaying Fire House Theater building on SW Montgomery. The head of the Park Department refused to consider selling it. And so it sits, languishing in further disrepair while his plans for it sit idle. In the intervening 6 years that and many more Park Bureau property sit and suffer as their operating budget continues to shrink. Instead, why not form a commission of private developers and real estate people and have them identify the City properties that are unused and saleable? Why not make money selling an unused asset?
There really should be a new ordinance instead. A simple one. "No department is allowed to raise taxes or fees to balance budgets until exhaustively proven that: 1) the citation and fee income they are required to enforce is being collected, 2) liquidation of all unused and non-performing assets is done and 3) expenses reduced to provide operation in a lean, effective manner." And they are given one year to enact all, before coming back, with hat in hand, to look for tax and increased fee solutions. Make that your next platform, Bob, and you have my vote.