This is a real loss to Metro. We can only hope he is replaced with someone with a strong commitment to a Portland region with compact development served by a variety of transportation alternatives.

thanks guys. I am already hearing rumors about great applicants for my vacant seat so the council will likely have several good people to choose from. I will let them identify themselves and announce their interest when they are ready.

That's too bad, one less vote to throw away $150M on a convention center hotel. Mr Ashforth must be weeping now.

Kari

Brian's been a great Metro councilor, and he'll be missed. Hopefully, we'll get someone in there with a similarly strong vision for our region.

Bob T:

Would be more interesting to have someone with views opposing all the others. Metro is one of those councils that apparently is supposed to have all members in lock step for the land/people control agenda.

Bob Tiernan

"Metro is one of those councils that apparently is supposed to have all members in lock step for the land/people control agenda."

You mean like the TriMet Board, the Port Commission, the PDC and more?

You got it.

I suspect Newman will be leading the effort to further susbidize SoWa and OHSU and we'll soon be hearing the early rhetoric and campaign like pitches for more "Investment". Few people realize how badly unfunded and underfunded much of the SoWa plan is and how desperate OHSU is to generate to capital. Look for Newman to be involved in the effort to pay private bitoech to come to SoWa, and with OHSU to bring back their SoWa-OHSU Hotel plan, and helping OHSU to get into the parking garage, housing and other new missions.
Soon will be gone the $200 million Oregon Opportunity funds, and the OGI liquidation revenue while other millions drain OHSU budgets without any new revenue to replace any of it or service their mounting debt. SoWa is the grandest of schemes soon to be the mother of all public-private partnerships, heavily subsidized TOD failures making the Beaverton Round and Cascade Station look petty in comparison. But around here "sustainabily" means it will all just keep rolling along without Newman or anyone else facing any consequences form anything.

How long has Newman been working for Parsons Brinckerhoff, the consulting company that has a long history of rail construction?

Seems like a conflict of interest to me: Newman pushes light rail lines at Metro while working for a company that designs and builds them.

Kinda like Dick Cheney and Halliburton, except Cheney actually (allegedly) quit Halliburton. But I'm sure it is all OK because Newman is a good progressive.

Thanks JK

I am quite concerned about conflicts of interest involving elected officials, but Kari makes a good point. Oregonians are particularly cheap in paying our representatives. Either they are going to earn money elsewhere, or they are going to take direct bribes.

Our "free market" economy has produced extreme income polarization. Smart, hard-working people with advanced formal education expect to make lots of money. If these are the kind of people we want as elected officials, we need to figure out how to pay them. Alternatively, we can tax all income over $60,000 per year at 100%, and have good people ready to serve for that pay.

Kari:

Jim... I don't know anything about Brian's employment

Bob T:

Well you do now ! You guys should have known -- you're all capable of sniffing out such conflicts of interests and money-following sleazeball stuff when you want to. But like Jim said, if one has the right "vision", then who cares (and you don't see it).

Kari:

but once again, this is an outcome of having part-time elected officials.

Bob T:

Flapdoodle. Sleaze is sleaze. Next time, elect someone with a less-conflicting job on the side.

Bob Tiernan Sleazeball Watchdog

Kari, I'm certain you misspoke.

You meant to say, "I don't want to know anything about Brian's employment, or whether it involved any conflicts of interest. Therefore I don't know anything. Besides he a nice progressive."

I work part-time in the Portland office for PB which is a large (12K+ enployees) engineering and planning firm based in New York. The terms of my employment are that I not work on any Oregon or southwest Washington projects and I not participate in any local marketing. This was cleared with the Metro attorney. During the last two years, I have worked solely on projects in Miami, Washington DC, Austin, and Denver and I have not been involved in any projects west of Salt Lake City.

Furthermore, of the local transportation projects that I have been working on while on the Metro Council (Milwaukie light rail, Lake Oswego streetcar, I-205, etc), PB is not a consultant on any of them.

Is this one of those "is" things? "PB is not a consultant on any of them".

Does that mean they won't be consulting or engineering on any of them?

Brian Newman: I work part-time in the Portland office for PB which is a large (12K+ enployees) engineering and planning firm based in New York. The terms of my employment are that I not work on any Oregon or southwest Washington projects and I not participate in any local marketing. This was cleared with the Metro attorney. During the last two years, I have worked solely on projects in Miami, Washington DC, Austin, and Denver and I have not been involved in any projects west of Salt Lake City. JK: OK, I get it: I am Dick Cheney. I quit Haliburton, so what’s the problem?

Brian Newman: Furthermore, of the local transportation projects that I have been working on while on the Metro Council (Milwaukie light rail, Lake Oswego streetcar, I-205, etc), PB is not a consultant on any of them. JK: Can you guarantee that they won’t in the future? (PB was involved in the Westside & Airport toy trains.) Lacking such a guarantee, we are free to assume that you will get brownie points for your pushing a worthless mode of transportation on an unsuspecting public. Cost: about 4 times that of driving a car (road costs included) over three times that of bus when you include construction. And it kills people at about two and a half times the rate of cars. I’ve laid out the facts at: portlandfacts.com/Transit/Cost-Cars-Transit(2005).htm & portlandfacts.com/Transit/MAXSafetyChart.html

Brian, why don’t you just increase road capacity and save the region massive amounts of money? The two BILLION already wasted on rail probably would have been enough to double deck all of the space constrained freeways in the area and add lanes to the others.

Now you want to spend another couple billion. For what? A carrying capacity, according to Trimet’s fact sheet, equal to just over one lane of freeway. But Trimet neglected to adjust for the fact that most MAX riders would be in buses. After that adjustment, MAX relieves congestion about equal to 1/3 of one lane of freeway, for a cost of ONE BILLION DOLLARS on the West side.

Light rail just costs too much and does too little.

In fact, most of what the planners tell us is pure rubbish as you can see at portlandfacts.com

Too bad you are so blinded by your planning religion that you cannot see the truth about wasteful rail. I’ve laid out the facts at: portlandfacts.com/Transit/RailAttractsDrivers2.htm & portlandfacts.com/Transit/10LaneFreeway-2.htm

Hope to hear your response as to why rail is rational use of transportation funds, in light of its failure to relieve congestion and its excessive cost and death rate?

Thanks JK

Good work, Jim!

Newman's simply hooked into the New-Urbanist Industrial-Complex Gravy Train.

<h2>Bob Tiernan</h2>