Next Up at City Council, 5/23/07

Slow week – no Citizen Communications, and no Wednesday afternoon or Thursday meeting on next week’s Portland City Council Agenda.

There are three Time Certain items – two to raise fees for development permits and set water rates, the other 10:45 AM – Declare intent to initiate local improvement district formation proceedings to construct street improvements east of Mallory Avenue in the NE Winchell Street Local Improvement District. Local Improvement Districts (LIDs) are usually where the residents got tired of living on an unimproved or underimproved street, and will pay to fix it themselves.

On the Consent Agenda:

* More work/money on the VisionPDX project. The name of the second subcontractor made me laugh out loud when I read through the Agenda the first time.
561 Amend an Intergovernmental Agreement with Portland State University Survey Research Lab to extend contract and provide additional data collection and data analysis services to visionPDX (Ordinance; amend Contract No. 36764)
562 Amend contract with Decisions, Decisions to extend contract and authorize additional meeting facilitation and general consultation services for visionPDX (Ordinance; amend Contract No. 36982). Decisions, decisions, indeed.

* Three items from the Office of Management and Finance: *563 Authorize improvement bonds (Ordinance); *564 Authorize short term subordinate urban renewal and redevelopment bonds (Ordinance); *565 Authorize a borrowing of not more than $20,000,000 in anticipation of the Fire and Police Disability and Retirement Fund levy for FY 2007-2008 (Ordinance)

Why are these “emergency ordinances”, indicated by the asterisk? We are seeing things brought to Council as emergency ordinances repeatedly, that seem like they should be planned and known well in advance, rather than presented as emergencies. I may just be fired up enough to call someone at the City this coming week, to ask why.

* 577 Authorize $20, 000 payment to Friends of Trees to support the planting of 200 trees in low-canopy, low-income neighborhoods (Ordinance). This may sound a lot, at $100 per tree, if you’re picturing the little bare root trees on sale at Fred Meyer. If you’ve volunteered with Friends of Trees, you know from your improved cardiovascular health and muscle strength (aka exhaustion and aching body) that the trees they plant are huge. Even wholesale, they probably cost more than $100 each. So this item represents a subsidy on the nursery stock rather than administrative support for the non-profit program. It’s a good example of City support leveraging multiple times the dollar value paid, in benefits to the community both physically and socially.

* There are multiple items on the Agenda authorizing Intergovernmental Agreements (IGAs) with Multnomah County – for senior services, anti-gang projects, and Schools Uniting Neighborhoods (SUN) programs. I will be very interested to see the process and results of the proposed revisiting of City-County financial relationships.

The most interesting item I see on the Regular Agenda is 585 Authorize contract with Peck Smiley Ettlin Architects and provide for payment for architectural and engineering services to remodel Fire Station No. 1 (Ordinance). This is the station downtown on SW Naito, the one the Council decided not to move to Ankeny Square. So when I write, “most interesting”, by that I mean “not especially” (except to the people involved, of course). Please let note in the comments if I passed over something more important.