Next Up at City Council, June 20 – 21, 2007

So good to have the new style Agenda for Portland City Council’s meetings, with links to information about the items. Some of the links are merely copies of the ordinance or resolution being considered, however, rather than giving much additional background data. The first Thursday afternoon item, for example, is 729 TIME CERTAIN: 3:00 PM- Designate five Heritage Trees and remove designation for three Heritage Trees in the City – the link is the Ordinance listing the addresses, rather than explaining why the three Heritage trees are being de-listed. So, for me it’s back to searching PortlandOnLine, where there is a nice summary of the City’s Heritage Tree program written by volunteer Phyllis Reynolds here, the code rules in 20.40.150 here, and precious little else I can find pertaining to the proposed changes in designations. Oh well – it’s a start. I hope the Council members are getting more information before the hearing than the text of the ordinance, though.

First up on Wednesday morning are two citizens testifying with concerns about “a military presence at the Rose Parade”. Immediately after, the big item on an otherwise short list for Council consideration: 724 TIME CERTAIN: 9:30 AM- Accept report and recommendations for the Portland Regulation of Lobbying Entities Code (Report introduced by Commissioner Adams). The Report is properly linked on the Agenda page, and is only 8 pages. It is the promised follow-up six months after the enactment of revisions to the lobbying registration rules in November 2006. A few minor changes are proposed, perhaps most notably to reduce the threshold for required reporting from sixteen hours per quarter to eight. I think the threshold should be five minutes, which is all the time it takes for a power-player to make a phone call to an elected official. Maybe even less.

There is no Consent Agenda on Wednesday, due to the absence of two members of the Council (four are required to pass items on a Consent list). And only four seemingly-straightforward contract-type items on the rest of the docket. Even with debate on the Lobbying Ordinance, the Council should be done before 11 a.m. this week, in contrast to last week when the morning session ran into the afternoon. On Thursday afternoon, there’s the Heritage Tree item referenced above, and a Measure 37 claim I’ll review in a separate post tomorrow.

This is amusing:

“Well, of course we hold evening meetings! Is it our fault if whenever we have one on the schedule, there’s nothing coming up that any citizen who works during the day wants to discuss?”