This week’s celebrity slap-down between city commissioner Randy Leonard and county chair Ted Wheeler may signal the beginning of the end of an era in Portland development. (Warning: wonkishness ahead.)

First, let’s talk about how urban renewal, a.k.a. Tax Increment Financing (TIF), is supposed to work (and has, in fact, worked in some cases in Portland).

• City leaders identify a part of the city that is “blighted” and draw a line around it. This is an Urban Renewal District (URD). Ideally (though state law is vague on this), “blighted” would mean that the property values within this area are stagnant of falling.
• The city identifies infrastructure projects that would spur private investment to improve the property values in the URD, and borrows money (through the issuance of municipal bonds) to pay for these projects. For the life of the URD, property tax on incremental increases in the value of properties is diverted from the usual recipients (city, county and school district general funds) to pay off the bonds. So, for example, if a property within the URD increases in value from $100,000 to $125,000 in the first year, all of the property tax on the additional $25K in value goes to pay off the bonds.
• When the bonds are retired, the URD can also retired, and the city, county and school district all receive higher revenue because of the increased value of the properties.

Now, that’s how things are supposed to work, but even in this best case there are plenty of critics. Minority communities have frequently been displaced, so urban renewal is broadly viewed as a tool of gentrification by those being “renewed” further to the fringes of society. But it gets even worse when the process is inverted as it was with the Major League Soccer deal.

Instead of identifying a blighted area, then determining infrastructure needs, city leaders identified a suposed need (renovation of a municipal stadium — whose recent renovation is still being paid off — to accommodate a private sports team investor), and then tried to create an urban renewal area to help fund it. Among other problems, the area around the stadium is distinctly not in danger of stagnant or falling property values. It is prime urban real estate, with a great deal of recent high-end commercial development.

This new urban renewal district (taken out of the deal by amendment before the deal was approved) would have directly deprived struggling county, school district and city general funds of millions of dollars over its life time.

It’s entirely disingenuous to claim the properties around PGE Park will not increase in value without another renovation to the stadium, and that we thusly wouldn’t be taking money from the county or schools.

Even Randy Leondard, while protesting that the debate has been uninformed, ultimately seemed to concede the point. Yes, we take the money, he seemed to say, but we’ve always been there for the county in times of need (“Good as we’ve been to you!”). And look at all we’ve build with it! It’s a very paternalistic attitude, and that was not lost on Ted Wheeler.

The reality, beneath the veneer of a bunch of euro-trash wannabe soccer fans rallying for a “major” league team, and urban renewal boosters’ insistence that building new stadiums for millionaires is the best kind of economic stimulus we can do, is that Merritt Paulson is in over his head with his baseball lease at PGE Park. His triple A Portland Beavers draw just over 25% of capacity. Paulson is paying not just current rent, but also back rent for the previous millionaire failure of a minor league sports team owner. That’s a gift to Portland’s civic leaders, who have egg on their face for that previous failure (not to mention the bonds they have yet to retire from the previous renovation).

Paulson’s lease is up in 2010, and if he takes his team to Tuscon, we’re stuck holding the bag on PGE Park’s last renovation with no tenant to pay for it.

Most of Portland’s glitzy development, including its tightly stretched bubble of a condo market, has been subsidized with urban renewal dollars. City leaders have taken advantage of vagaries in state law to use urban renewal as a piggy bank to subsidize Portland’s wealthiest land owners and create “iconic” projects for their own portfolios.

In the end, it’s about civic priorities. If we draw URDs around areas where property values are not stagnant, we directly impact city, county and school district general funds that pay for basic social services, schools, and infrastructure for the rest of the city. Maybe that’s what we truly want as a city. But let’s be clear about it when we do so.

A lot of this TIF mania can be traced to members of the old Neil Goldschmidt gang and the local commercial real estate mafia that has been their patrons. With our first publicly financed city commissioner (Amanda Fritz) leading the loyal opposition to this latest boondoggle, and with emboldened county chair Wheeler and school board co-chair Trudy Sargent at her back, maybe we’re seeing the beginning of the end of this kind of irresponsible finance scheme.

Well, a guy can dream, can’t he?

Portland City Council is approving the MLS deal today without $15 million in urban renewal funding, but not without some first-class fireworks between commissioner Randy Leonard and county chair Ted Wheeler. Dan Saltzman introduced the amendment removing the $15 million, then voted yes on the amended measure, along with Randy Leonard and Sam Adams. Amanda Fritz and Nick Fish voted no.

If the $15 million hole is not patched by September, the deal is off.

Just before I moved to Oregon from the broad American prairie, I was playing bass in a band called Totem Soul. We earned enough money playing in college bars to pay for three days in a professional recording studio (this was before the age of serious DIY recording, so it was a big deal), and recorded an LP’s worth of material.

Here’s Lear’s Shadow, by one of our three singer song-writers, Jay Harden:
[audio:Totem_Soul-Lears_Shadow-Shaking_Roots_at_the_Moon-track04.mp3]

Then we took the rest of our money, loaded all our gear into the back of my 1963 Chevy Stepvan (a.k.a. “the pig”), and headed west. The Chevy made it, but the band didn’t last. We worked a little in Eugene and Portland, then broke up a few months later, frustrated by the lack of venues for our peculiar sound and the intricacies of running a four-piece band with three frontmen. Our LP was never pressed, and the recordings sat in the can for nearly two decades before POD Web publishing made it generally available.

So, why the sappy nostalgia? Because I just figured out how to embed audio on my blog.

And after two decades in Oregon, it seems like an interesting time to look back. Portland looked a lot different in 1989. I was “creative class” when that meant a struggling musician could rent a room for $150 bucks in a big shared house in inner Southeast, bike commuting meant riding a one-speed to part-time, low-wage employment at a natural food store, and livability meant you could sleep in your van down by the Sunflower recycling yard when you were between houses.

The Pearl was a derelict rail yard (the title sequence of Drugstore Cowboy, released that year, was filmed there), MAX ran only from Gresham to downtown, and there was a temporary ice rink on Pioneer Court House Square between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Old town was awash in cheap heroin and prostitutes, and timber was still the dominant industry in Oregon. TriMet was still running buses built in the 70s, and the night club scene was dominated by white blues.

Northwest 23rd Ave. was already long gone by then, but Hawthorne was still lined with junk shops and dive bars, and the Bagdad Theater was a second-run house, with a porn screen in back. Who remembers the Ol’ Milwauke or the Tu-Be?

Okay, enough of that shit. Fast forward twenty years. It’s been quite a ride.

Sir! No Sir!, the suppressed story of the GI movement to end the war in Vietnam, is being screened this Saturday as a benefit for the Portland Central American Solidarity Committee’s anti-war delegation to Venezuela.

Details:

• Saturday February 28
• Doors open at 5:30pm
• Event begins at 6pm
• Limited seating – Tickets: sliding scale $5 to $10
• Musicians Union Hall, 325 NE 20th Ave., Portland, Ore.
• For tickets call: Dan Shea 503.661.1317, or e-mail djshea@hotmail.com

Fundraiser for PCASC’s anti-war delegation is an effort to cultivate ties of international solidarity between activists for peace and social justice in the US and Venezuela.

Proceeds from this event will go to help send IVAW (Iraq & Afghanistan Veterans Against the War) along with a PCASC delegation as observers to witness and to report back on the recent elections, supports and oppositions to the Government of Venezuela. An event is being arranged in Caracas to have a Winter Soldier hearing (eyewitness reports by IVAW) on US policies that have endangered the lives of our military men and women and innocent Iraqi civilians leading to war crimes and reasons why members of IVAW are refusing to redeploy, or to further participate in the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. IVAW is organizing active military soldiers to join them in building a GI resistance movement and to advocate for returning veterans rights, jobs, benefits and healing by working for peace and reintegration into our communities.

• www.ivaw-oregon.org
• www.ivaw.org

If you cannot attend or if the screening is sold-out but you want to help support this effort and would like to make a tax-deductible contribution you can write a check to Education WithOut Borders, earmark PCASC/IVAW 2009; mail to: EWOB, 19716 NE Flanders, Portland , OR 97230.

What else can you say when your new mayor is sidelined on the top two items on his 100 days plan: first education, and now economic development?

Even while many local politicos cower quietly in fear of retribution from a wounded and cornered Sam Adams (and his sycophants repeat the canard about prudes), the big dogs are openly snubbing him, citing the desire to avoid “distractions”.

Next on Adams’ 100 day plan (scrubbed from his Web site, but still in the Google cache as of this evening, which includes this creepy campaign video, where Adams talks about needing to keep his clothes on) is transportation. While not entirely sidelined on that, he’s certainly crippled.

Randy Leonard is playing hardball on the I-5 bridge Michael Powell is whining that his pet project to get another streetcar line stopping at his business’s front door is “up in the air.”

The remaining items on the erstwhile 100 day plan are planning and sustainability, arts and culture and emergency management.

Sam still seems to have a great deal of unqualified support in the arts community, but otherwise, his credibility as a leader is looking increasingly like toast.

One education leader put it to me this way (paraphrasing): He wouldn’t be allowed to coach a little league team or lead a Boy Scout troop. Why should we let him be mayor?

News that the state of Oregon is considering reinstating the teaching license of an admitted serial child sex abuser is weird enough. But it gets weirder.

Roberta Weber, cited in the O as someone “who directed hard-of-hearing education and other special education programs in Portland for years”, defended the former teacher, Kimberly Horenstein: “Kim has a unique talent for working with this special population … and maintains clear and appropriate boundaries with staff and children. … I am fully aware of Kim’s … issues in her past, and can support, without reservation, that Kim should return to the field of education.”

But wait, here comes the really fun part.

Weber’s current job with Portland Public Schools: director of strategic partnerships” charged with building external relationships with “strategic community partners.”

Could that include our illustrious mayor Sam Adams and his well-regarded plan to increase high school graduation rates?

I just love how warm and tolerant Portland is… (unless you’re a child or other vulnerable member of society).

I’ve promised a post on Portland’s collective extended adolescence, but somebody beat me to it (don’t worry, I’ve still got a thing or to to add to the conversation). Adrienne calls it Peter Pan Syndrome (PPS). Here’s a mature 25-year-old’s take on some of the 40-something behavior she observes in Portland.

In transition

Sustainable, of course

First off, I friggin’ love Portland, so don’t give me that hater bullshit.

Now that I’ve got that out of the way, let’s cut to the chase: Portland is over-the-top passive aggressive.

It manifests in traffic, politics and inter-personal relationships. At the grocery store. At work. In lines. At concerts, sporting events, and the library.

Passive-aggressiveness rules so much, there is a taboo on directness. One cannot say “It creeps me out that the mayor was sucking face with a 17-year-old in a City Hall men’s room” without being labeled a prude. (In the words of Bob Dylan, “They smile to your face, but behind your back they hiss….”)

The People’s Republic of Portland (that’s not a put-down; that part I like) is a one-party state, as Willamette Week‘s Nigel Jaquiss said in his close-up on Newsweek’s Web site this week. “[P]ortland is a … go-along, get-along town where people don’t question the orthodoxy. They’re very comfortable having a real absence of critical debate of most issues.”

Nigel was talking (politely) about the reporters and editors at The Oregonian, which has thrice been scooped (twice by the Willamette Week) on stories about Oregon politicians with (ahem) self-control issues surrounding where they put their penises. (Oh, I’m sorry honey, am I being a prude again?)

That lack of critical coverage of our politics and government means that those with land and money can pretty much do what they want with our city, as long as they call it green.

Commercial real estate developers, the power behind the throne in Portland, have successfully co-opted environmentally-minded liberals in Portland and operate with impunity under the cover of many layers of indignity generated by their unwitting minions.

Example: you cannot be opposed to a streetcar project without being a tool of big oil (yeah, that’s me!), even if a primary goal of said streetcar project is to move not people but real estate.

If somebody says it’s “sustainable,” you damn well better not speak out against it, even if that sustainable condo block is driving gentrification and pushing black and brown folks further to the margins of our city and society.

We’ve got a real race problem in Portland, but you better not talk about it. It makes white liberals very uncomfortable to be confronted with their racism. Our neighborhoods are pretty segregated, but our schools are worse, like the Jim Crow south: separate and way unequal.

Are you a white person with some kind of “bikability” issue? The city’s got you covered! You got a problem with finding a place you can afford to live off your service-sector wages? Sorry, pal, Portland can’t help you unless you work “sustainable” into your pitch. Mental health problems? Hit the road, Jack.

Perhaps my biggest gripe is the disconnect between Portland!! and Portland; that is, between the hip and trendy little Pacific Northwest city as seen in the New York Times (Powell’s! Foodies! Coffee! Sustainable! Green! Did I mention Sustainable?) and the sometimes rough-around-the edges part of Portland I live in.

Next installment: Portland’s extended adolescence.