Simply not simple

While researching my post yesterday on the audit in the Police bureau that hasn’t happened two years after it was approved and funded, I came across this long but fascinating

Anyone who thinks that approving Measure 26-91 will automatically improve efficiency and the way the City of Portland operates would do well to read even part of this article. It shows how many, many factors affect operations and outcomes, in just one bureau.

Insofar as the City of Portland works, – sometimes well, sometimes not so well – it works because of many systems interacting, running in parallel, and diverging. The Neighborhood Associations, Portland Business Alliance, Alliance of Portland Neighborhood Business Associations, and hundreds of other community organizations and individuals, as well as the twenty-some city bureaus and 5000+ employees, have developed relationships within the form of government and civil service rules in the current Charter.

It’s all connected. And much more complicated than the proponents of Charter change, specifically 26-90 and 26-91, want you to believe.