Next Up at City Council, 10/10/07

I started writing this post at seven-thirty on Saturday morning, and I’d already been up for an hour. Sad. But perusing the upcoming items on the Portland City Council’s Agenda always perks me up. Having been involved in hundreds of them over the past 16 years, on a wide range of issues, I know every item on the agenda has taken hours of planning and work. Years, sometimes. So I hope to continue my Next Up at City Council series here over the next eight months, despite having just a few other things on my To Do list.

[I note viewing this site’s statisics that there was a nice surge on Thursday, without my posting another photograph of the Duck-Cougar Mascot Fight. To those just joining us, welcome! Every week, I post a preview of the items on the Portland City Council’s Agenda for the following Wednesday/Thursday that I find most important/interesting/ironic. The links take you to the Auditor’s site, where improvements implemented earlier this year allow you to read background material for some of the items. I want to make it easier for citizens to find and understand information about government actions and decision-making.]

Talking of years of work, let’s start by highlighting the citizens volunteering to serve on City Commissions:

1202 Appoint Benjamin Kaiser to the Design Commission for a partial term to expire August 14, 2011

1203 Reappoint Arthur DeMuro and appoint Brian Emerick to the Historic Landmarks Commission for terms to expire October 1, 2011

It’s an honor to be appointed to these Commissions, whose members for some matters are final decision-makers for the City of Portland. Some of their votes are appealable only to the State, not to the City Council. It’s also a lot of work, and many hours of unpaid volunteer time. Thank you for serving, gentlemen.

Then there are eight appointments of new Police Officers, being hired at rates above the base in the pay scale to reflect previous experience elsewhere. It’s good to see new officers being hired. If I weren’t tied up doing other stuff, I would research to find out the current vacancy rate and the methods being used to recruit good people. Anyone who would like to provide that information, either in the comments or as a Guest Post, is welcome to do so.

This one sounds like it might be interesting, in light of the problems with ignoring prescribed public process in recent street renamings in Portland:

*1221 Amend Intergovernmental Agreement with Oregon Department of Transportation to remove costs for Civil Rights services and make minor naming changes to the Oregon 213, NE Killingsworth to Flavel project (Ordinance; amend Contract No. 52597)

But it isn’t. It seems to be a minor contract amendment over simple wording mistakes. Like I said, every item on the Agenda represents hours of work – this one apparently mostly by lawyers. I wonder how much the picky wording changes cost the City.

Here’s one that does matter:

1224 Amend contract with Friends of Burnside Couch, Inc. for additional work for the Burnside Transportation and Urban Design project (Ordinance; amend Contract No. 35678)

The ordinance references current City regulations that allow a contract’s cost to rise up to 25% of the agreed price before the Council has to authorize the increases. A built-in, allowed inflation of twenty-five percent on all City contracts! As I mentioned in Next Up at City Council in July, that’s not how I run our family budget.

1235 Proclaim October 2007 as Archives Month in Portland (Proclamation)

Commissioner Randy Leonard defended the expenditure of nearly $10 million to move the City’s archives to Portland State University when I challenged it in a discussion here, also in July.

1243 Adopt the recommendations of the Report of the Work Group on Containers in the Right-of-Way and direct City bureaus to implement the recommendations (Resolution)

This is dumpsters on sidewalks, right? Again, something I’d like to know more about. It’s been a long process bringing this resolution forward. I hope some measure of consensus has been reached. Readers?

There’s no meeting on Thursday this week. The final item on the Agenda is:

WEDNESDAY, 2:00 PM, OCTOBER 10, 2007

1244 TIME CERTAIN: 2:00 PM – Improve land use regulations through the Regulatory Improvement Code Amendment Package 3 (Ordinance introduced by Mayor Potter; Second Reading 1108; amend Title 1 and Title 33)

There must be amendments requiring a hearing, as most times “Second Reading” items are simple Council votes not requiring a separate meeting. This package of amendments to the Zoning Code is relatively benign – the difficult and important items having been removed for more work, or not yet elevated to the list. There are many significant problems in land use affecting residential neighborhoods. Details about lot size, dividing land, and what gets built on new and existing lots greatly affect the livability of our city. I served for seven years on the Planning Commission, and was often frustrated when development-oriented members of both the Planning Commission and City Council didn’t seem to understand that we don’t have to sacrifice the character and functionality of our neighborhoods in order to allow infill to protect the Urban Growth Boundary. I hope the next Regulatory Improvement Code Amendment Package, #4, takes on the challenge of addressing important issues, rather than amendments almost as insignificant as typographical errors. Citizens concerned about development in neighborhoods can join the push back by attending the Citywide Land Use group meetings, 4th Mondays at 7 pm in the Development Services building at 1900 SW 4th.