Blah blah blah… DISPOSAL??!!

Tomorrow’s City Council agenda for Wednesday morning ends with an innocent-sounding item, so bland I didn’t highlight it in Next Up at City Council.
431 Accept report from the Parks Bureau on Total Asset Management (Report).
Bureaus often submit reports to Council which are deadly dull and usually incomprehensible to anyone without insider knowledge, and this one sounded especially soporific. But a reader e-mailed me the link to it, and since I’m rather fond of parks and spend a fair amount of time trying to help get the right things done in/for them, I decided to browse through the Report.

The first 34 (of 82) pages is so crushingly boring, I nearly gave up. But then on Page 35, up pops the Asset Disposal Plan. For Portland Parks.

It begins: “Decisions to dispose of an asset require a thorough examination and economic appraisal. Like acquisition decisions, they must be taken within an integrated planning framework that takes into account the service delivery needs, bureau objectives, financial and budgetary constraints, and overall resource allocation objectives.”

Hello? What about public opinion, community volunteer considerations, long term public purpose?

I’d copy in more of the report here for you, but it’s set up to not allow copy-pasting. But this one is worth typing in:

“Asset disposal involves two separate and distinct elements:

* A detailed assessment of the assets identified as surplus

* An analysis of how to dispose of them, in full knowledge of prevailing market conditions and government priorities and direction.”

It seems to me they missed, “An open process with public hearings to ensure a super-majority of the Council is willing to sell the property.”

The report proposes that all proposed property disposals need to be reviewed by the Asset Management Steering Committee (never heard of it) and PPR’s Senior Managers “to determine their strategic value in terms of wider government policies and objectives, other agency requirements, community interest, environmental outcomes, and other areas of interest.”

Then half way down Page 36, it’s merrily on to Cultural Assets, having summed up selling park land in a page and a half. Tra-la-la! And then more prose seemingly lifted from a “How to Write a Total Assets Management Plan” textbook. If any member of the City Council can raise his right hand and swear he has read every word of this report tomorrow, I will be utterly astonished and impressed.

[Wow! Scrolling through the report, on Page 64 there appears to be a photo of my son Luke and his friend Clarke, playing tennis at Gabriel Park! That got my attention. What are the odds of that? Luke says it probably isn’t them, but still.] I digress.

This report appears to me to be Outcome-based Management taken to excess. And it has not been adequately reviewed by the community. It was not mentioned at the Citywide Parks Team or on the Team4PortlandParks list serve. Has the Parks Board seen and approved it? Shouldn’t there be more public review of whether to embark on such a staff-intensive inventory process, at a time when we know so much parks maintenance has been deferred? And can we talk, about whether and why we would ever want to sell park land? It’s little wonder some citizens have developed mistrust of Portland Parks & Recreation’s processes, when there is no discussion with interested citizens about reports like this.

Like they did with the hastily-introduced Report on Police shootings a few months ago, the Council should defer acceptance of this report until there has been adequate review by the community.