Not quite true

From this week’s Murmurs in Willamette Week:

“Lies, damn lies and statistics : In its voters’ pamphlet statements, “Citizens to Reform City Hall” claims the charter-review committee reached the recommendations Portlanders will vote on May 15 after “100 plus public meetings, 2,000 hours of testimony, and 15 months of work.” But Murmurs calculates that claim by the pro-charter-change group means each public meeting lasted nearly 20 hours and the committee averaged 33 hours of weekly testimony for 60 straight weeks . Spokesman Kyle Chisek confirms the oft-repeated numbers are inaccurate, saying, “The committee put in 2,000 volunteer hours including all meetings and outreach…they didn’t actually take 2,000 hours of testimony. That’s a slight nuance that was lost in the editing process. ”

“Citizens to Reform City Hall” spokesperson Kyle Chisek is a City Hall employee, on leave from the Mayor’s office. As suggested in my posts here yesterday, current staff giving the Mayor, City Commissioners, and citizens simple information about matters on the Council’s agenda would be a good start for reforms. And gosh, when Dave Lister and I were preparing our Voters Pamphlet statement, our editing was more along the lines of, “Are we absolutely sure we can back up this sentence?”. If we made any mistakes, it wasn’t because of a nuance in editing.

If the pro-change lobby is advocating for equating volunteer-hours-spent as the determining factor for how city policy is made…. consider Neighborhood Association volunteers. Two hour meetings, twelve a year, average number in attendance 19 (League of Women Voters Study, pdf), = 456 volunteer hours, just in the monthly meetings. Does that mean if five active Neighborhood Associations’ volunteers agree on a proposal, it should automatically become policy? Try telling “2000 hours = mandate” to neighbors (Planning Commissioners, even) who participated in the North Macadam Plan from 1996 to 2001, after which the City Council said, “Thanks for your time, we had already decided to do the tram five years ago”. Tell it to Linnton. Tell it to Jobs With Justice, to PTA volunteers.

Actually, tell it to the Charter Review Commission, whose proposal on changes needed in the Portland Development Commission (PDC) was summarily rejected without comment by a unanimous City Council. If “2000 hours = mandate” is the principle by which these measures are on the ballot, what about 26-92, on PDC?