Next Up at City Council, 7/25/07

Buried in this week’s Portland City Council Agenda:

912 Approve Council Minutes for January 5, 2005 through December 28, 2005 (Report)

Not the most important item, perhaps — but maybe in some ways, it is. It’s on the Consent Agenda, sponsored by Auditor Gary Blackmer. And no, I’m not kidding. The Council plans to approve an entire year’s minutes at once… for 2005. Not a typo. Two and a half years after some of the meetings in question. Remember this, the next time someone starts on the Council starts chuntering about Neighborhood Association volunteers not getting their minutes on the Internet in a timely fashion. And wait, it gets better: the following is the entire Report to Council:

July 17, 2007.

TO THE COUNCIL:

Minutes of the Portland City Council meetings for January 5, 2005 through December 28, 2005 have been completed and are on file with the Auditor’s Office. The minutes are available for review on request.
The City Auditor recommends approval and acceptance of these minutes.

Respectfully submitted,

Gary Blackmer
Auditor of the City of Portland

If I weren’t going to be out of town this Wednesday, I’d consider going to Council on Wednesday morning to pull this item from the Consent Agenda. And ask the Council members whether they have read all the minutes and can swear they are accurate, for instance in those January 2005 meetings. Good grief. When I started serving on the Planning Commission, there was a backlog in the minutes, and occasionally we’d be asked to approve sets from two years previously. I said that first I wasn’t on the Commission then, so I would have to abstain. And second, I sometimes don’t remember details from that long ago, and could we please start approving the previous meeting’s minutes at the following session? The rest of the Commission agreed, and I think eventually the Bureau of Planning brought in extra help to get the backlog caught up. And while 90% of the timely minutes sailed through with approval on our Consent Agenda, just occasionally they were amended to reflect more accurately the debate from the previous session. For an official government body, I think that’s important. They’re still “Summary Minutes” – it’s not like they’re the verbatim transcript – they don’t need to be extensive, with video archives should anyone need all the details. But having a summary reviewed and approved while the issues are fresh in everyone’s mind is important.

It’s helpful for Neighborhood Associations and other community committees to get their minutes done and approved regularly, too, of course. But there, getting the minutes written up usually depends on having a volunteer willing to do the task. And the issues often don’t involve, y’know, millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money.

Citizens should be able to click on the past Agenda items and read a summary of what happened, other than whether they passed or failed, within a few weeks of the Council hearings. Portland City Council members should be asked to approve the minutes of recent meetings on the Consent Agenda, at least monthly. At this point, perhaps the Auditor’s office should put the backlog from 2006 on hold, and start getting recent minutes approved and posted in a timely manner.

OK, back to the meat of this week’s Wednesday morning and afternoon meetings. The most significant items on the Agenda may be another $6.7m for affordable housing, and the three items up first – contracts totalling $1.6m for the citywide “Schools, Families, Housing Initiative”. A report in March summarizing and assessing the program by the Financial Planning Division, as part of preparation of the Budget, says,

“The Schools, Families, Housing Initiative is a community-based approach to building a family friendly city by supporting and leveraging existing policies and programs to support school success and stability. The initiative links the City of Portland’s ongoing housing, community development, transportation and planning with school facilities needs. The initiative’s goals are to increase enrollment in schools with excess capacity, to improve the financial base of schools with capacity limitations, and to make more efficient and effective use of tax dollars across local governments.

Most of the Schools, Families, Housing Initiative was funded during the FY 2006-07 Fall supplemental budget process with $1.6 million of one-time resources. In addition, there are a number of existing programs that support the initiative. The initiative focuses on these existing programs, policies and projects.”.. and adds just a few more. Details in that report, if you’re interested, although since that was a recommendation rather than the final adopted Budget, I guess we’ll have to watch items like the ones on Wednesday to find out which ones are funded.

For me, the most interesting items on next week’s Council Agenda are on Wednesday afternoon, with three Time Certain items:

921 TIME CERTAIN: 2:00 PM – Adopt Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear and Explosive Incident Annex to the Basic Emergency Operations Plan (Resolution introduced by Mayor Potter)

This is a plan we hope sits on a shelf. I’m glad to see it ready, even though terrorist attacks on Portland are not on the list of things that sometimes keep me awake at night. According to the Resolution, “The Portland urban area will host the Top Officials federal exercise in October 2007, and will test the federal, state, and local top officials’ response to a CBRNE Incident as outlined in this Annex”. Top Officials. Capital T, capital O. Pretty exciting, huh? The report outlines which agency is responsible for what in the event of one of these types of “Incident”. Kudos to Mayor Potter for getting it done. Now, I would like to see much more attention by the City and County on preparing for disasters more likely to happen, like the Big Quake or another flood.

Next up on Wednesday afternoon:

922 TIME CERTAIN: 2:30 PM – Wildfire Risk Reduction Project (Report introduced by Commissioner Adams)

The link on the Agenda is just a one-page transmittal letter from Dean Marriott, Director of the Bureau of Environmental Services — apparently the bureau coordinating the project. But Portland Parks & Recreation has a nice set of pages about the project, including Background, Project Management (they seem a little behind schedule), and information about fire reduction plans at one of the sites, Willamette Bluffs. The strategy is to eliminate invasive species like Scotch Broom and blackberries, which burn quickly and act as ladders spreading fire up the Bluffs, and replace them with native Oregon Oaks which are more fire resistant. I’m glad to see that sort of plan, rather than the “scrape off all vegetation and install asbestos” approach to fire risk management.

Finally on Wednesday afternoon:

*923 TIME CERTAIN: 3:00 PM – Extend the effective date of a Comprehensive Plan Map and Zoning Map Amendment previously approved by Ordinance Nos. 180713 and 180749 for property located at 5828 N. Van Houten Place at the request of the University of Portland and Triangle Park LLC (Ordinance introduced by Commissioner Leonard; LU 06-132925 CP ZC)

Ah yes, the good ol’ “Emergency Ordinance”, indicated by the asterisk. Needed to extend the effective date of a land use deal, for the second time. One of the unexpected benefits of doing this blog is its capacity to act as a data file – type in “University of Portland” in the search feature, and up pops Next Up at City Council from the end of January. Apparently another six months still wasn’t enough to do what they wanted/needed to do. I can’t give you any more information, as Adobe tells me the file linked to that item is broken and can’t be fixed. Maybe someone at one of our city’s newspapers will look up the original and share the story. If I see anything more about it, I’ll add a comment here. I wonder why it has to be an emergency ordinance, but at least that means it has to have “the unanimous vote of all members present and no less than four members” voting to approve it. Hopefully the land use staff in the Councilmen’s offices have reviewed the case, and know more about what the holdup is than I can tell you.