Back to the status-woe!
I have lived in these parts, Portland, Oregon, for many years now, arriving as a young boy with my family in 1949 in an old “Nash” brand car from Bozeman Montana. I finished grade school in Portland and then attended Grant High school, graduating at the top of my class in 1954, during the innocent and prosperous 1950s.
I have watched local politics and our city council for decades and my conclusion is that the voters of Multnomah County, particularly now, continually vote against their own best interests.
I call it maintaining the status-woe.
Return with me now to yesteryear, clear back to 2006; back to when I ran for sheriff of Multnomah County against the then sheriff Bernie (Porno Pants) Guisto.
Bernie’s character and habits are generally well known - for anyone who has lived in Oregon very long. He was known to be morally - well, let’s say insufficient.
“Porno Pants,” was the nickname given to him by his own female staff, by his own admission, when he was the sheriff, because he continually wore jeans that were far too tight.
Being known as a serial adulterer and indulging in trips out of state with one of his girlfriends, while using a county car was just one of his many misdeeds.
Without name recognition or much money, in 2006, I decided to take Bernie on, for the good of law enforcement and public safety in Portland. Law enforcement was my profession, and Guisto was giving it a bad name. Fast forward to election day, 2006. Porno Pants did indeed benefit from the name familiarity he had achieved and was reelected sheriff of Multnomah County.
Though I lost, I did get over 35,000 votes.
Bernie finally resigned July 1, 2008, after a state police standards board recommended, he be stripped of his badge. There were multiple reasons for this, including using official vehicles for personal use, (his girlfriend’s entertainment) lying about a relationship he had with former Governor Neil Goldschmidt’s wife, Margaret, while he was assigned as the Governor’s protective service branch in the mid 1980s. Then there were allegations that he lied about his knowledge of Goldschmidt’s immoral and illegal sexual relationship with a minor, Elizabeth Dunham, which occurred in the 1970s.
In addition to his other crimes, and ethics violations, Giusto was believed to have managed the county budge poorly. When he was confronted about his poor performance, he was quoted as saying: “They're not my bosses; they're my bankers, I'm not gonna debate how I do spend my budget. That's why I'm independently elected." Then only days later, after he made that comment, he closed down the county’s restitution center, a program that had been created that year.
The county would have been better off had I been elected, but at least Porno Pants was out of a job. Looking back, I see that when Porno Pants was reelected as sheriff, that’s when I knew Portlanders don't know how to vote. They rely more on image and name familiarity than on what a person brings to the table and what their values and track record prove, or even what their aspirations are.
Chloe Eudaly: The next mistake made by Multnomah County voters was in electing Chloe Eudaly as a city commissioner, in 2017.
Chloe emerged from the dusty shelves of her small bookstore with the equivalent of an eighth-grade education. My wife Theresa brought this to my attention, and I was struck once again by Portland voters not being able to make good decisions about potential leaders.
Chloe attended 8 years of grammar school, where she was an average student, one year of high school before dropping out, and one year at Portland Community College after getting her GED, despite claiming on her official campaign website that she had completed a two-year transfer degree, when she had not.
During her time with City Council, she had the equivalent of an 8th grade education. I’m sorry but that is not good enough.
Some voters actually believed that Chloe was smart enough to run a city bureau with a large staff and millions of dollars in yearly budget money. It is the de facto equivalent of being the CEO of a large multimillion dollar corporation. She never had that kind of experience because her bookstore was nearly always operating on a shoestring budget.
Despite Chloe running a dusty little bookstore in the Albina district, which catered to skinheads and other racists, like the notorious Jim Goad, Chloe did not have the background to work in city hall, or communicate well with others in large groups, who were all generally better educated.
Chloe must have gone home at night crying and wondering what she had gotten herself into. She was a small-time activist with one cause - creating low-cost rent. She was also known to be anti-police, and irrationally hostile towards police. She wanted a whopping 50 million dollars cut from the police bureau budget.
Ultimately, Chloe’s lack of education, her inability to work well with others in groups, her anti-black sentiment and anti-police stance cost her a second term.
She lost the race to Mingus Mapps.
Eudaly was reputed to be an associate of skinheads all during the 1980s and 1990s, even going so far as to send money to Jim Goad when he was serving a prison sentence for severely beating a young girl, Sky Ryan, he was having an affair with, behind his dying wife’s back.
Before Goad’s 1998 arrest, he was a featured author at Chloe’s dusty little bookstore on North Mississippi. Even when several young black men protested the reading, sitting in the front row, Chloe defended having Goad read there.
Being a street kid, and it’s known Chloe was a street kid, and being connected to the Skinhead subculture, probably affected her low opinion of the police bureau she wanted to gut.
In my opinion Chloe should have never been elected in the first place. The uneducated do not belong in city or county government. That may sound harsh, but it is also the truth. Chloe was resoundingly replaced by Mingus Mapps, who won with 56 percent of the vote - a graduate of Reed College who received his PhD from Cornell University.
JoAnn Hardesty: The next and possibly the most grievous mistake by the voters of Multnomah County, was in electing the notoriously dishonest drama queen, JoAnn Hardesty as a city council member. It made history, as she was the first Black woman to be on Portland city council, but ultimately, she was a huge disappointment to every Portlander.
JoAnn turned out to be a liar as well as a thief and later a deadbeat for not paying $16,000 thousand in credit card debt she incurred with two credit cards. She was finally sued by Bank of America, but claimed she couldn’t remember any of the notices having been mailed, something which any intelligent person knows cannot be the truth.
JoAnn was not supported by the Black community, because they knew her story. The Black grapevine is small in Portland, but word gets around. Her previous job was as the head of the NAACP chapter in Portland. During her time there, a local rumor circulated, which I’ve heard from two different Black friends of mine, that a local Safeway store donated $13,000 for the benefit of the Black community. JoAnn spent all the money on herself and became the only Black person to benefit from the Safeway donation. Safe to say by the time she ran for city commissioner, the Black community had been onto her for years.
Eventually even Loretta Smith, the former county commissioner, accused JoAnn of stealing money.
“To steal money from one of the most storied civil rights organizations is not just illegal, it’s unconscionable. Let’s call this what it is, JoAnn Hardesty embezzled money from the NAACP. Do the right thing JoAnn: return that money.”
JoAnn’s novelty as a precocious and opinionated anti-police critic, “The police should be abolished!” Black woman, resonated with the woke white voters who idolized her, and she was elected, beating Loretta Smith.
By the way, I heard her anti-police comment with my own ears at a Race Talk meeting, which was hosted by Donna Maxey - my wife Theresa was also present.
At that time the “defund the police” movement was loud in the ears of a lot of Americans and Hardesty was beating that drum in public and in city council meetings.
Unfortunately, she influenced Mayor Ted Wheeler who joined her in voting for less police, and less money for police. And they were successful in eliminating the very important Gun Violence Reduction Team. JoAnn claimed police were arresting too many Black people. Since the gangs in the North End were/are Black, JoAnn’s thinking was unreasonable, irrational and ill-informed.
As time wore on, JoAnn began losing favor with the electorate in her position as commissioner of the Fire Bureau, particularly when the summer “Antifa” rioters burned down the foundation that supported our iconic Thompson Elk statue. JoAnn refused to allow what she considered her Fire Bureau to put out the fires. She also accused Portland Police officers of starting the fires and then later apologized for her asinine accusation.
Then there were other discrepancies (lies) in her resume which began to surface.
JoAnn’s Wikipedia page says she graduated from Edmondson Westside High. She did not. It says she graduated from Community College of Baltimore with an associate degree in business. She did not. What she did do, I suspect, is dropout of high school and later join the US Navy - a tactic often used by social workers and probation officers with troubled youth to avoid legal problems. This happened a lot during the 1960s and early 1970s. To avoid jail time, kids in trouble joined the military. Even Oregon Public Broadcasting described JoAnn as “one of the city’s most vocal police critic.”
The Navy taught JoAnn how to type and she became what was called a “Navy personnelmen,” responsible for maintaining crew’s records. After training she was stationed in the Philippines.
Subsequently, JoAnn was stationed on the destroyer tender, USS Gompers. Again, she lied saying she was on the ship for 5 years. This made me laugh. As a retired Navy man myself, I know that no one is assigned to one duty station for 5 years, not even aircraft carrier captains. She served for 13 months and was then sent to another ship, as is the pattern.
As JoAnn’s term wore on, her personal problems began to mount. Besides being sued for not paying $16,000 in credit card debt from two credit cards, she took the month of August 2021 off to go on a “vacation” but several people I know told me she had gone to the state of Washington, to attend four weeks of rehab.
JoAnn was criticized for being away from her duties for this supposed “month-long vacation” in August of 2021 because it coincides with peak fire season for the Oregon region. Her chief of staff, Karly Edwards, made the following statement, when explaining where JoAnn had suddenly disappeared to… “That means she will not be available for feedback, council or check-ins. We do not make exceptions for this." That is an oddly defensive thing to say, if someone is merely taking a month of vacation time. The time off was also the first occasion in over 20 years that a city Commissioner took a full month away from their position.
Why would that happen? Is rehab really that far-fetched when you consider someone like JoAnn?
What I heard is that her staff threatened to quit if she did not do something about her drinking and (rumored) drug use. JoAnn was not available for any of her duties during that month. Did she receive full pay for the month? But of course, she did! Her annual salary of $135,000 per year works out to about $10,000 a month.
She went to rehab on the taxpayers’ dime and still received $10,000 for that month of doing nothing. Is that what Portland wants in its leaders?
As time for reelection came around, Rene Gonzales, a Portland attorney and businessman took her on, and ran against her.
He won and JoAnn, thankfully, was history.
An interesting sidenote about JoAnn is that she married Skip Bowman. Skip Bowman is the son of a Portland police officer who was a friend of mine, Joe Bowman, and with whom I worked in the 1960s for PPB.
When JoAnn and Skip divorced, he moved as far away from Portland as geologically possible, while still remaining in the United States. Skip moved to the Florida Keys and married a white woman.
Another interesting sidenote about Ms. Abolish-The-Police Hardesty, is that JoAnn now lives on lawsuit money she received by suing the Portland police union when she was falsely accused of a traffic infraction. When the money runs out, I believe JoAnn will try to find another way to grift the city.
She is a well-known gambler and does not know how to manage her money.
Stevev Novick:
“I’m running because I think I can be useful.”
Spoken like a true politician. They want to convince you that they’re running for office for you, rather than their own empty wallet. Don’t fall for it. Nine times out of ten it is a con.
Sometimes I think the Multnomah County electorate enjoys the pain they inflict upon themselves by electing failed leaders. There must be something akin to masochism in how they vote for the most unqualified and incompetent “leaders.” Again, Chloe Eudaly comes to mind.
Steve is another one. He’s back, elected in 2024 to city council in the new form of Portland’s city government. When he announced he was running, I asked him via e-mail why he was running again. His statement to Portland for why he was running is just another example of typical grifting politicians.
In the email I sent him, I commented, “The janitor is useful. The guy who takes out the garbage is useful. Can you be a little more specific?”
Steve never responded back.
Now, that Steve is back sucking at the public taxpayer trough, we will see just how useful he is. My wife and I plan on keeping an eye on him.
I wonder why a Harvard educated attorney, (who by Harvard’s own statistics should or could be making $200,000 a year) is willing to work for the relatively paltry sum of only $135,000 per year, which the new commissioners will be paid.
According to my sources in the lawyer business, that $200,000 salary comes only with a 10-to-12-hour workday, working six days a week. Being a Portland city commissioner is a lot easier. You can sleep in, attend meetings via ZOOM, and basically take it easy.
I also speculate that the diminutive person, who Steve is, is not a strong image in the courtroom. Steve is 4 feet 9 inches tall. For perspective the average 5th grader is as tall as Steve. A man sitting at a courtroom table whose feet are dangling a foot off the floor, through no fault of his own, is nonetheless smirk worthy, but also difficult to take seriously.
I know Steve can’t help it, but it is what it is.
The reality is that Steve has no courtroom presence. I speak as a longtime police officer and police detective when I make this claim. I have been in courtrooms many hundreds of times, during my over 17 years working for PPB. I have watched the theater of courtroom proceedings with defense attorneys and prosecutors struggling and failing to make a positive, authoritative impression because of their physical shortcomings or lack of natural confidence.
I also find Steve’s hypocrisy tedious. He is the victim of the small man syndrome, also called Little Man Complex. When Steve took a selfie of himself several years ago wearing mirrored sunglasses, a black leather motorcycle jacket and his iron fist of justice, AKA his metal hook arm prosthesis, he became a caricature.
And he came across like a Cop Wannabe. Steve Novick will never in his life become a police officer or anything even close to it.
Again, his disability is not his fault, however, Steve came across in those photos, as juvenile and immature when he decided to don the costume of a Marlon Brando tough guy. Yet, this wannabe tough guy wants to gut the police budget and thinks we have too many policemen who carry guns. This according to his own statements.
What does that even mean? Police are required by law to carry guns. For valid reasons. Is he suggesting that Portland police officers not carry guns?
What exactly does Steve Novick know about police work? Perhaps he would like to meet with me for coffee one day, so we could compare notes. I could tell him what I know, from over 17 years working for PPB, and he could tell me… what could he tell me?
Steve wants more unarmed responders, affectionately called Portland Street Response, which is not a good idea. Steve says since crime is down in 2024, we need fewer policemen, even though PPB has fewer police officers than nearly all other departments in cities equal to our size.
Hey Steve, crime is down because we have more policemen and because Ted Wheeler started the sweeps of Fentanyl camps over two years go. When a politician, like Steve, comes up with such an uninformed opinion, as he has, in my book that makes him an idiot.
I spent 17 years as a dedicated police officer, a hired gun in the service of this city, my hometown of over 70 years, Portland, Oregon!
I’ve lived in Portland longer than most people I know - including my wife, Theresa. Steve’s statement that we need fewer police officers with guns is the uninformed opinion of someone who knows nothing about police science, police procedure or any aspect of rudimentary or advanced police training.
Steve Novick is someone who has never had to make a spur of the moment “shoot-or-don’t-shoot-decision.” He has no real concept of what police work is, the dangers of police work, or what is at stake for the officer, his family, or civilians caught in the crossfire.
Last time around, Steve, with his Harvard education was replaced by Chloe Eudaly with her 8th grade education! Certainly, some irony there, wouldn’t you say?
Steve was replaced because he became known as an arrogant, grumpy, tedious little man. My wife and I saw this firsthand at a city council meeting during Charlie Hales time as mayor, where we pleaded to the powers that be, not to demolish the old Lotus Hotel and historically significant Ancient Order of the United Workman Temple. Steve was arrogant and dismissive and made a deplorable impression on both my wife and me. I hope he’s learned from his mistakes, and that it will not serve him well to drip in hubris.
I chalk Steve up as a guy who sounds smart but has zero common sense because of a lack of practical experience in many of Lifes’ milestones that most of us take for granted.
Just how useful can Steve possibly be? I hope we find out, before he costs us too much money and wastes too much time.
If the electorate in Multnomah County conspired to destroy the city of Portland by simply bankrupting it, congratulations! They have nearly succeeded.
Our old city government with 1 mayor and 4 city commissioners had a payroll load of about five and a half million. The twelve new commissioners are paid $135,000 annually for a combined salary load of a whopping 18 million, not including healthcare benefits, dental, etc.
Our city auditor cautions that this salary load, plus the other programs the city pays for is sustainable only for the foreseeable future, and then only if there is no more loss of revenue for the city.
With further revenue loss, city auditor Michael Jordan, says, “layoffs will be necessary.”
What happened to all the money coming into city coffers?
In 2021, 12,000 people left Portland, taking their earning power and paychecks with them. And disgruntled people continue to leave Portland, including many lifelong residents.
With the loss of population and increasing downtown office building vacancies, an estimated 1.1 billion in tax revenue went out the door. The 40 story US Bank building is now 70% vacant. That adds up to 28 vacant floors producing nothing but dust mites. To that add 30% more vacant office space in the downtown area, and you can understand why Portland is on the precipice.
Too many years of not listening to small business owners and upset citizens, sick of the crime and homeless drug addicts has resulted in these multiple crises.
In some ways, things are getting better. Less tents all through the city, less violent drug addicts, but in other ways Portland is on a precipice headed straight for disaster.
We have a new mayor, Keith Wilson, and people are still asking: “Who IS Keith Wilson?” Personally, I’ve never heard of him until someone told he was the new mayor. Apparently, he was born and raised in Portland, but I guarantee you, before he won the race for mayor, my wife, Theresa Griffin Kennedy, and myself were probably more well known than Keith Wilson.
Perhaps Wilson, with some cooperation from the 12 new commissioners can return Portland to the real Rose City that it used to be, and forever forget we were once called Calcutta on the Willamette.
But that will require common sense leadership, support of any and all law enforcement agencies in Multnomah County, and an understanding that without public safety, prosperity and livability will NOT return to Portland, Oregon.
The only thing Portland voters have done right, in recent years, was to kick Mike Schmidt to the curb, by voting for the tried-and-true-veteran of the DA’s office, the venerable Nathan Vasquez.
Schmidt will forever be remembered as the most incompetent and naive DA to ever serve in that position, in the history of the city of Portland.
At least Portland voters got that race right, because they voted for all the wrong people this last election cycle and time will show, we’re back to the Status woe.
Postscript: I doubt if Mike Schmidt will be able to find employment as a lawyer now, since his fall from grace, but I hear downtown Clean & Safe is hiring.
JoAnn turned out to be a liar as well as a thief and later a deadbeat for not paying $16,000 thousand in credit card debt she incurred with two credit cards. She was finally sued by the Bank of America, but claimed she couldn’t remember any of the bills he had been mailed, something which any intelligent person knows is not the truth.
Hardesty was not supported by the black community, because they knew about her. Her previous job was as the head of the NAACP chapter in Portland. During her time there, the local Safeway store donated $12,000 for the benefit of the black community. Hardesty spent all the money on herself and proudly became the only black person to benefit from the Safeway donation. Safe to say by the time she ran for city commissioner, the black community was already on to her.
Eventually even Loretta Smith, the former county commissioner, accused JoAnn of stealing money.
JoAnn’s novelty as a precocious and opinionated anti-police, “The police should be abolished!” black woman resonated with the white voters who idolized her, and she was elected.
By the way, I heard her anti-police comment with my own ears at a Race Talk meeting, (my wife Theresa was also present) which was hosted by Donna Maxey.
At that time the “defund the police” movement was loud in the ears of a lot of Americans and Hardesty was beating that drum in public and in council meetings.
Unfortunately, she influenced Mayor Ted Wheeler who joined her in voting for less police, and less money for police, and they were successful in eliminating the very important Gun Violence Reduction Team. Hardesty claimed police were arresting too many black people. Since all the gangs in the North End were black, JoAnn’s thinking was unreasonable and irrational.
As time wore on, JoAnn began losing favor with the electorate in her position as commissioner of the Fire Bureau particularly when the summer Antifa rioters burned down the foundation that supported our iconic Thompson Elk statue and she would not allow her fire bureau to put out the fires.
Then there were other discrepancies (lies) in her resume which began to surface.
JoAnn’s Wikipedia page says she graduated from Edmondson Westside High. She did not. It says she graduated from Community College of Baltimore with an Associate degree in business. She did not. What she did do, I suspect, is dropout of highschool and later joined the US Navy - a tactic often used by social workers and probation officers with troubled youth to avoid legal problems. This happened a lot during the 1960s and early 1970s.
The Navy taught JoAnn how to type and she became a Navy personnelman, responsible for maintaining crew’s records. After training she was stationed in the Philippines.
Subsequently, JoAnn was stationed on the destroyer tender, USS Gompers. Again, she lied saying she was on the ship for five years. This made me laugh. As a retired Navy man myself, I know that no one is assigned to one duty station for five years, not even aircraft carrier captains. She served for 13 months and was then sent to another ship, as is the pattern.
As JoAnn’s term wore on, her personal problems began to mount. Besides being sued for not paying $16,000 in credit card debt from two credit cards, she took the month of August 2021 off to attend rehab. It was rumored that her staff threatened to quit if she did not do something about her drinking and (rumored) drug use. JoAnn was not available for any of her duties during that month. Did she receive full pay for the month? But of course she did! Her annual salary of $135,000 per year works out to about $10,000 a month.
She went to rehab on the taxpayers dime and still received $10,000 for that month.
As time for reelection came around, Rene Gonzales, a Portland attorney and businessman took her on, and ran against her.
He won and JoAnn, thankfully, was history.
An interesting side note about Ms. Abolish-The-Police Hardesty, is that she married Skip Bowman. Skip Bowman is the son of a Portland police officer who was a friend of mine, Joe Bowman and whom I worked with in the 1960s.
When they divorced, Skip moved as far away from Portland as geologically possible, while still remaining in the United States. Skip moved to the Florida Keys and married a white woman.
Hardesty now lives on lawsuit money she received by suing the Portland police union. When it runs out, I believe she will try to find another way to grift the city. She is a well known gambler and does not know how to manage money.
****
Stevev Novick:
“I’m running because I think I can be useful.”
Spoken like a true politician. They want to convince you that they’re running for office for you, rather than their own empty wallet. Don’t fall for it.
Sometimes I think the Multnomah County electorate enjoys the pain they inflict upon themselves by electing failed leaders. There must be something akin to mascholism in how they vote for the most unqualified and incompetent “leaders.”
Steve is another one. He’s back, elected in 2024 to city council in the new form of Portland’s city government. When he announced he was running, I asked him via e-mail why he was running again. His statement to Portland for why he was running is just another example of typical grifting politicians.
In the email I sent him, I commented, “The janitor is useful. The guy who takes out the garbage is useful. Can you be a little more specific?”
Steve never responded back.
Now, that Steve is back sucking at the public tax payer trough, we will see just how useful he is. My wife and I plan on keeping an eye on him.
I wonder why a Harvard educated attorney, (who by Harvard’s own statistics should or could be making $200,000 a year) is willing to work for the relatively paltry sum of only $135,000 per year, which the new commissioners will be paid.
According to my sources in the lawyer business, that $200,000 salary comes only with a 10-to-12-hour work day, six days a week. Being a commissioner is a lot easier. You can sleep in, attend meetings via ZOOM, and basically take it easy
I also speculate that the diminutive person, who Steve is, is not a strong image in the courtroom. Steve is 4 feet 9 inches tall. For perspective the average 5th grader is as tall as Steve. A man sitting at a courtroom table whose feet are dangling a foot off the floor, through no fault of his own, is nonetheless smirk worthy. I know he can’t help it, but it is what it is.
The reality is that Steve has no courtroom presence. I speak as a longtime police officer and police detective. I have been in courtrooms many hundreds of times, during my over 17 years with PPB and have watched the theater of courtroom proceedings, with defense attorneys and prosecutors struggling and failing to make a positive, authoritative impression because of their physical shortcomings or lack of confidence.
I also find Steve’s hypocrisy tedious. He is the victim of the small man syndrome, also called Little Man Complex. When Steve took a selfie of himself several years ago wearing mirrored sunglasses, a black leather motorcycle jacket and his iron fist of justice, AKA, his metal hook arm prosthesis, he became a caricature.
And he came across like a Cop Wannabe. Steven Novick will never in his life become a police officer or anything close to it.
Again, his disability is not his fault, however, Steve came across in those photos, as juvenile and immature when he decided to don the costume of a Marlon Brando tough guy. Yet, this wannabe tough guy wants to gut the police budget and thinks we have too many policemen who carry guns.
What does that even mean? Police are required by law to carry guns. For valid reasons. What exactly does Steve Novick know about police work? Perhaps he would like to meet with me, so we could compare notes. I could tell him what I know, from over 17 years with PPB, and he could tell me - what could he tell me?
Steve wants more unarmed responders, affectionately called Portland Street Response, which is not a good idea. Steve says since crime is down in 2024, we need fewer policemen, even though PPB has fewer police officers than nearly all other departments in cities of our size.
Hey Steve, crime is down because we have more policemen and because Ted Wheeler started the sweeps of Fentanyl camps two years go. When a politician, like Steve, comes up with such an uninformed opinion, as he has,in my book that makes him an idiot.
I spent 17 years as a cop, a hired gun in the service of this city, my hometown of over 70 years, Portland, Oregon. I’ve lived in Portland longer than most people I know. Steve’s statement that we need fewer police officers with guns is the uninformed opinion of someone who knows nothing about police science, police procedure or any aspect of police training.
Steve Novick is someone who has never had to make a shoot or don’t shoot decision and has no real concept of what police work is, or the dangers of police work.
Last time around, Steve, with his Harvard education was replaced by Chloe Eudaly with her 8th grade education. Certainly, some irony there. He was replaced because he became known as an arrogant little man. My wife and I saw this first hand at a city council meeting during Charlie Hales time as mayor, where we pleaded to the powers that be, not to demolish the old Lotus Hotel and the Ancient Order of the United Workman Temple.
Steve was arrogant and dismissive and made a deplorable impression on both my wife and myself. I hope he’s learned from his mistakes.
I chalk him up as a guy who sounds smart but has zero common sense. Just how useful can he possibly be? I hope we find out, before he costs us too much money and wastes too much time.
New city government
If the electorate in Multnomah County conspired to destroy the city of Portland by simply bankrupting it, congratulations. They have nearly succeeded.
Our old city government with one mayor and four city commissioners had a payroll load of about five and a half million. The twelve new commissioners are paid $135,000 annually for a combined salary load of a whopping 18 million, not including healthcare benefits, dental, etc.
Our city auditor cautions that this salary load, plus the other programs the city pays for is sustainable only for the foreseeable future, and then only if there is no more loss of revenue.
With further revenue loss, “layoffs will be necessary.”
What happened to all the money coming into city coffers?
In 2021 12,000 people left Portland taking their paychecks with them. And disgruntled people continue to leave Portland, including many lifelong residents.
With the loss of population and increasing downtown office building vacancies, an estimated 1.1 billion in tax revenue went out the door. The 40 story US Bank building is 70% vacant. That adds up to 28 vacant floors producing nothing but dust motes. To that add 30% more vacant office space and you can understand why Portland is on the precipice.
In some ways, things are getting better. Less tents all through the city, less violent drug addicts, but in other ways Portland is on a precipice for disaster.
We have a new mayor, Keith Wilson, and people are still asking “Who is Keith Wilson?” Personally, I’ve never heard of him until someone told he was the new mayor. Apparently, he was born and raised in Portland, but I guarantee you, before he won the race for mayor, my wife, Theresa Griffin Kennedy, and myself were probably more well known than Wilson.
Perhaps Wilson, with some cooperation from the twelve new commissioners can return Portland to the real Rose City it used to be, and forever forget we were once called Calcutta on the Willamette.
But that will require common sense leadership, support of any and all law enforcement agencies in Multnomah County, and an understanding that without public safety, prosperity and liveability will NOT return to Portland, Oregon!
