Who’s paying for what in South Waterfront

When researching for Weekend Update, I came across this Willamette Week article from September 2006, which in turn quotes the Portland Development Commission as its source for the following numbers for expenses and funding sources in South Waterfront:

PROJECTS:

Tram – $57 Million

Streets, infrastructure – $42 Million

Streetcar – $42 Million

Affordable housing – $26 Million

Parks – $19 Million

OHSU biotech development – $8.5 Million

SOURCES OF FUNDS:

Tax Increment Financing – $74 Million

Local improvement districts (mostly OHSU) – $40 Million

City of Portland – $23 Million

Federal government – $22 Million

Oregon Health & Science University – $9.5 Million

Developers – $7 Million

State/Regional – $1.5 Million

This is the kind of table that should be provided for many City projects, clearly showing how much stuff costs and how it is paid for…. without so many details that normal people roll their eyes and skip it.

I’ll try to take this information a step further. For each of the expenditures in South Waterfront, I will be posting a separate listing of what I’ve been able to find out, on the breakdown of who pays. I’ll be putting them up as individual posts, so I can update each in the main post based on additional input received. And so that the next citizen wanting to find out the answer to a question like “Who paid what for the tram?” may be able to find it a little more easily. Corrections welcome – either comment here, or e-mail me and I’ll post them for you.

The first post in this week-long series follows later today.