Economic Development For All Portlanders

Randy Leonard

Inclass
I have always thought of myself as just a guy who grew up in a “challenged” Portland neighborhood, fortunate enough to avoid the destiny of many of my childhood friends. At least once on any given day I think to myself, “there but for the grace of God…”

The older I get, the more I realize that my experience growing up in the 60’s in inner NE Portland really cast my view of the world. Here are just a few of the lessons underpinning the decisions I make on the city council: Racism and classism do exist, even if on a sub-conscious level; people in power often use their power to further their own interest—and certainly not the interests of those who are on the lowest rung of the social ladder; and most importantly in my own life, education is the key to breaking the bonds of poverty, ignorance and helplessness.

Thus, when former Commissioner Erik Sten rolled out his idea to create a “satellite district” in the David Douglas School District to build a badly needed school to serve our city’s poorest families, I expressed only one regret.

I had not thought of it first.

The source of the funds to pay for the school would come from the wildly successful River District urban renewal area, the location of one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Portland, the Pearl District. We would pay for the school in outer SE Portland with a new concept in urban renewal, a satellite urban renewal district. The satellite district would be allowed to spend money just like any other urban renewal district except that, in this case, the source of revenue would derive from the Pearl District.

In a legal opinion issued earlier this year, Portland City Attorney Linda Meng opined that the satellite district concept did not violate any local or state laws.

The reaction by the various "instests" was, I suppose, inevitable.

Some of the Pearl District developers have screamed “outrageous.” One popular local, upper middle class blogger hyperventilated and the Oregonian editorial board, predictably, screamed “fiasco” all the while embracing the rationale of a group called “Friends of Urban Renewal,” a self appointed group of investors and developers in the Pearl. That groups primary argument is, unbelievably, that building schools "does nothing to improve the local economy."

With that kind of attitude, can we ever hope to approach more enlightened attitudes about the value of education in building a country’s competiveness and prosperity?

If there is any doubt about the idea of building a school for the overburdened schools in outer east Portland, my vote goes for those kids…not the wounded egos of the defenders of the status quo that have held sway for too long in Portland.

Finally, this is my first post in over a year. I felt that during my campaign for re-election I should avoid taking advantage of the wonderful platform BlueOregon offers.

It’s great to be back.

  • Steve Rawley (unverified)
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    Perhaps a better idea would be for the City of Portland to unify all the school districts operating within its boundaries, and force equity in the distribution of the public economic investment all of our children are entitled to.

    The board of PPS continues to prove it has no interest in changing the way it blatantly favors our wealthiest neighborhoods with its public investment.

    With a unified district, under the watch of an interested city council, we could share the wealth with the east side. We could also break the hold west-side elites have on our public schools, which has led to the increasingly segregated, two-tiered system we've been stuck with since Measure 5.

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    Welcome back.

    I'm glad to see you taking this forward & hope that as the new Council emerges you will find allies.

    There is a whole new Outer Southeast Portland that just didn't exist in the way it does now when I first came to Portland in the late 1970s, residential and commercial areas where I remember strawberry farms. And as Jenni Simonis has testified here frequently, that also extends into Gresham -- I have a strong impression that the relationship between the two cities demographically has changed dramatically.

    I am not sure how well the political and institutional structures of the city & county have adapted to these changes, doubtless some better than others (the newish library on SE 122nd is phenomenal, to cite a better one).

    But what seems most important about what you are advocating here is taking a "whole city" approach, fighting against economic cantonization. In particular, if Portland is going to pursue inner city development and renewal that has the consequence if not the intent of displacing lower income people or older former communities, out of whatever combination of economic necessity and choice, a fair share of the fruits of that development should be turned to strengthening the new communities of those who have borne the highest social costs of it, as well as others who are just part of the growth of the population but lack access to the intensive inner development.

    It seems like seeking that kind of equity probably requires close work among the city, the county, Metro, & Tri-Met. It also means re-examination of the structures of decision-making such that the folks in Outer East Portland have meaningful voices with actual power in decisions affecting them.

    A question about that might be whether it is time to shift away from at-large elections for those bodies still elected that way.

  • Urban Planning Overlord (unverified)
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    Who was the "upper middle class blogger" hyperventilating about it?

    As another "upper middle class blogger" who has sometimes taken umbrage at Councilman Leonard's populism (the "no tape" nonsense, for example), this is one issue that I completely agree with him about.

    There is a place where all the poorer people who are "gentrified" out of innter Portland are going - they just don't disappear into thin air. And an awful lot of them are moving to the David Douglas School District. Using redevelopment money to help that district build a needed school sounds A-OK with me.

  • Psymonetta Isnoful (unverified)
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    Using redevelopment money may be A-OK, but it is important to ensure that we're not just reallocating funding that was meant for other equally important projects in outer-east Portland. Commissioner Saltzman's proposal to simply sluff the controversy off and have the Lents Urban Renewal area foot the bill instead is doing exactly that. Even if more acreage is added to generate additional funding, the process would still siphon staff time and attention toward building a school, rather than doing the real economic development that could do more to solve school funding problems in the long run. Not to mention adding funding means adding yet another 30% for housing, and up to 20% to cover the cost of staff time, if that is indeed bugeted. 19 million suddenly turns into 28.5 million of projects that were never called for in the Urban Renewal Plan, created by the residents of Lents and Powellhurst Gilbert.

    New schools are nice, but not when they come in the form of a trade off. Most neighborhoods are never put in the position of choosing between a new school or more jobs and a grocery store. It's unfortunate that the discussion has even turned to dipping into resources, including staff time, meant for the Lents Town Center. Even though Commissioner Saltzman's proposal solves a problem of geography, the reallocation of funding is even more egregious when applied to Lents rather than the River District.

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    Perhaps a better idea would be for the City of Portland to unify all the school districts operating within its boundaries, and force equity in the distribution of the public economic investment all of our children are entitled to.

    This sounds like a great idea, until you realize that some districts go into other cities, like the Centennial and Reynolds Districts do. And I am pretty much 100% sure that people in Gresham, Fairview, Wood Village, Troutdale, etc. do not want anything to do with anything run by Portland.

    The problem is that people are fleeing inner Portland for many reasons, including gentrification, no housing they can afford, and wanting to leave the PPS district. They're going into outer east Portland, and the cities to the east. This floods David Douglas, Gresham Barlow, and Reynolds with students, many of which are low income.

    The complex where I live used to primarily be people without kids and college students (we're across the street from Mt. Hood Community College). Now this neighborhood is seeing a huge turnover, and it is families that are moving in - and in large numbers. We went from barely needing 3 kindergarten classes to having almost 4 full classes. Other areas of the school are seeing increases as well. I'm waiting to see if this trend will continue.

    While helping out the districts with funding will solve one problem, it doesn't do anything to solve the real problems - people, crime, and poverty are being pushed east. And unless we as a county do something to combat this problem, things are only going to get worse out here.

  • (Show?)

    Welcome back, Randy! And thanks for kicking things off with a great discussion....

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    Randy, there's no such thing as a "satellite" urban renewal district. That was just something that sounded good the night you and Erik got into the mushrooms.

    If you want to build a school for David Douglas, there are several tough legal issues for you, not the least of which is Measure 5. Maybe you could do it through Lents urban renewal, but even that smells slightly fishy from a legal standpoint. Certainly, if you try to do it through the Pearl urban renewal district, it's going down like a MetroFi antenna.

    Now that it's garbage time in your campaign, you can throw around another meaningless Pearl-bash here, but there are other people all over the city who see how all wet this is. Including the county and the Portland Public Schools.

  • Oh my (unverified)
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    Let's just poll the blogosphere to decide whether or not this is a good idea. Better yet, let's just poll lefty blogs and ask them if more "free money" for schools is a good idea.

    Never mind the fact the City Attorney opined that it's not legal. Together with a who's-who of PDC experts. Why let that stand in the way of populism?

    L'etat, c'est Randy!

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    I've not kept up with this, since there's enough going on out in my own city.

    Randy says: "In a legal opinion issued earlier this year, Portland City Attorney Linda Meng opined that the satellite district concept did not violate any local or state laws."

    oh my says: "Never mind the fact the City Attorney opined that it's not legal."

    So one says the City Attorney said it did not violate any laws, and the other claims she said it wasn't legal. Which is it?

  • John Mulvey (unverified)
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    Thanks for this post, Randy. I agree with you 100% and I hope you'll continue to find ways to bring better services and more responsive government to the disadvantaged areas of the eastside.

    I also hope you'll oppose the idea mentioned in the Oregonian of redrawing the Lents URA and funding the school project from those funds.

    The Lents URA has yet to experience the benefits of the URA program. There's a citywide consensus, I think, that the Lents area needs more support and more time to work. The current Lents expansion plan is great and should go through, but taking these additional funds from Lents would mean (yet again) shafting the needs of Lents and the Foster corridor.

    There's not a single good reason why, after all these decades of urban renewal, the City can't move funds from areas that are exceeding expectations to those that aren't. I'm glad you're fighting for this and I hope you'll get the community's support.

    John

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    I appreciate Randy's ongoing advocacy for the east side of town and I don't doubt that the current proposal is well-meaning.

    I do wonder about the claims of legality, however, and am concerned that this "satellite" idea turns the whole notion of Urban Renewal Areas on its head. I wonder further if the long-term consequences would be quite as positive as the currently proposed short-term ones might be.

    Maybe I'm too cynical, but if future city councils can just take urban renewal money and do whatever they want with it wherever they want to do it, I suspect that in the long-term that is not likely to primarily benefit the poorer areas of the city.

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    Here are some issues that the city attorney has identified. And there are probably more:

    http://bojack.org/images/mengsatellite.pdf

  • Steve (unverified)
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    OK< so does this mean you are against urban renewal districts? Because SoWa is gonna take a lot more money to fix that it will generate in 20 years.

    How about scrapping the whole idea and merely spending money where it is needed - INstead of playing big guys with taxpayre money while you tweak SIM CITY?

  • ws (unverified)
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    It's confusing how the expenditure of funds intended for the revitalization of one city district could find a justification for use in another, entirely different district on the other side of the city.

    Urban Planning Overlord says:

    "There is a place where all the poorer people who are "gentrified" out of innter Portland are going - they just don't disappear into thin air.".

    How exactly will the money be coming from "...the Pearl District;" , as Leanord says? Will these funds just be a diversion of leftover urban renewal funds from that district, or something else?

    I wonder why people have to be gentrified out of places like the Pearl in the first place. In that district, they knocked down older, lower level buildings and built new, taller buildings. Why couldn't they just have built the new buildings a little taller and provided some floors with replacement low income housing in them? This would have avoided displacing people and allowed a far more efficient concentration of amenities and services needed by a diverse, growing population.

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    They get pushed out of those areas because the people who are building the new apartments/condos/homes make them unaffordable for the people who lived there before the revitalization.

    They don't do these projects to make the place a better place to live for the low to moderate income people who already live there. They revitalize these communities to bring in new people who will pay a lot more to buy the condos and homes. Do you think the apartments that used to be there were worth paying a million bucks or more?

    Or they'll go and buy a house for considerably more than its worth. What happens to the occupants if they're renting from the people who just sold? They lose their place to live, and in its place goes a bunch of row houses.

    The people who used to live in these areas are always forced out because they can no longer afford to live in the revitalized area. Plus they've moved out months, or years, earlier when the eviction notices came announcing their complex/home was being torn down or remodeled into condos.

  • Miles (unverified)
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    I think the goal of helping David Douglas SD is worthy. But there are significant legal issues involved, and there is a strong possibility that the move will be legally challenged and overturned. The memo shows that the City Attorney said it might be legal, but she raised a number of serious concerns.

    On a larger level, why extend the River District urban renewal at all? If it has been wildly successful (and it has), why not let it expire so that the taxes start going into the general fund? Once there, the City would have much more flexibility to use them on an array of different projects. There is still the complicated issue of whether the city can spend its money on building schools, but I'd have to think that's an easier legal argument to make.

    So why extend the URA at all, Randy?

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    Essentialy, there is no incremental new private investment being made within the David Douglas School District sufficent to fund capital costs of new school construction within that district. The concept of urban renewal is to invest within each urban renewal district. Will the satellite district concept kill the goose that lays the golden egg?

  • joel dan walls (unverified)
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    I will be one hell of a lot more convinced of the sincerity of Randy Leonard's "whole city" approach, or whatever you want to call it, if he ever manages to divorce himself from Sam Adams' schemes and boondoggles, the Sauvie Island Bridge relocation proposal being only the most recent, obvious one. As things stand, the proposal to use the urban-renewal moneys to build a school in outer SE Portland just feels to me like a sop--a bone thrown to progressives and Leonard's alleged constituency in outer SE Portland--and a nice way to divert attention from the fact that Leonard has shed his workingman's persona in favor of playing with the big-money developers and schemers. And judging by some of the comments in this thread, Mr. Leonard has done a very nice job of suckering progressives.

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    I'm troubled by the initiative for the same reason Jenni is--it identifies one district as needy in terms of funding while many others are left out of the mix.

    By what process was David Douglas identified? Why not use the URA funds for other troubled schools in PPS? Other satellite districts in Multnomah County?

    The initiative avoids the core issue with URAs, not just those raised by "upper middle class bloggers", but by Jeff Cogen in his blog. URAs are extended far beyond their initial purpose and continue to draw property taxes away from the general fund and from the PPS.

    But what disturbs me more is the faux populism of this post. Randy attacks "upper middle class bloggers" and "Pearl district developers" just a few lines after he bemoans ongoing racism and classism.

    He claims to speak truth to power and the "wounded egos of the defenders of the status quo in Portland" even while he runs essentially unopposed as a white male for his second term on an all white male Council--a Council elected under a system where votes, money, and campaign visits, as the Oregonian recently demonstrated, all come from wealthy white inner Portland neighborhoods.

    If the Council is truly interested in helping the east side, they should support real reform, such as districting Portland City Council races, ending current URAs and refusing to create new new URAs, and targeting economic development and transportation programs to the east side and not to downtown.

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    Great point about not extending the Pearl URA, Miles, which connects to some of Paul Gronke's more substantive points.

  • Lennon (unverified)
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    From my reading of Linda Meng's February letter to Mayor Potter (as linked by Jack Bog above) it appears that there are two potential pitfalls awaiting an attempt to funnel some of the URA funding to David Douglas:

    First, the requirement that URA funds be applied to a "blighted" region. It could be difficult to justify development of a site already owned by the district which suffers no major issues (other than the lack of a school building already there, of course) as addressing "blight."

    Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, the funding could be challenged on a Constitutional basis under Measure 5. The risk Meng describes in such a scenario is that it could force the rest of PPS to lower their tax revenue in order to keep the entire region under Measure 5 limits.

    In general, I love the idea of being able to apply urban renewal funds to areas that are truly in need, as opposed to those who have already reaped the benefits of extensive public and private investment. If a legal n00b like me can grok this many potential attacks against the proposal, though, I'm not sure how likely it is to survive a serious court challenge.

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    I think the biggest problem is that we're looking for bubblegum to stick in the holes that are appearing in a dam - we may fix things for a short period, but things are going to get really bad before long.

    We have some major problems in this county, and we're not doing much to address them. We continue urban renewal districts when the best thing to do would be to end them and allow the tax dollars to go to the city, schools, and county where they can be used in the areas that need them most. We don't work together - we have a "me first" attitude. And in the meantime, east Portland and east county sink further and further into poverty and crime.

    If I can win a position on the Gresham City Council, one of the things I am going to call for is a workshop with the cities, the county, school districts, etc. We have to create a good working relationship between the entities in Multnomah County if we're ever going to solve problems like the bridges crossing the river, adequate police coverage for our unincorporated areas, equal education opportunities, etc.

  • Oh my (unverified)
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    Linda Meng's opinion states:

    However, if the intention is to add only the proposed school site, I have not been able to find anything in the definition of blight that would encompass a piece of bare land that is suitable for development except for the financial condition of its owner. {Meng's opinion later observes} Although there is no question the City can fund construction of parks and recreation facilities and community centers, there remains a question whether or not it can fund construction of school classrooms.

    It is absurd for Commissioner Leonard to suggest this concept "did not violate any local or state laws" as Linda Meng's opinion (as well as the opinion of outside "Legislative Counsel" hired for this purpose) identified several possible violations of law.

    Why would Commissioner Leonard choose to mislead the public on this topic? Why not acknowledge the proposal is fraught with legal risks, and then outline a strategy to remedy or mitigate the risks?

    One possible explanation is that Commissioner Leonard knows the proposal is likely to fail, and will use this "defeat" as reason to seek a quid pro quo whereby the David Douglas School District would sell property to the City of Portland at an above market price (the proceeds from which would help fund the new construction).

    Which begs the question: what does David Douglas School District own that Commissioner Leonard wants?

  • Steve (unverified)
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    "Why would Commissioner Leonard choose to mislead the public on this topic?"

    He's Randy Leonard and his ways are not the ways of mere mortals - or haven't you heard. His entire career has been huffing and puffing quite hard on behalf of the union so why should something like the law stop him - he's Randy!

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    Jenni,

    Are you involved with or in touch with the Coalition for a Livable Future? Do you know about their regional equity atlas? Do you know about the Regional Equity Summit they recently held? If not e-mail me at clowe187 (at) gmail (dot) com (a secondary e-mail address; I'll respond from my main one. They are & have been thinking along the lines you describe for a long time and could be a great source of resources and also networking. They bring together folks from NGOs, some private business entities, universities & colleges, staff from lots of different pubic agencies at municipal, county, metro and state levels, and odd individuals like myself (actually most are odd in more useful ways :->). East County is definitely on their radar, and the big changes in E. Portland and Gresham. Also Washington & Clackamas counties.

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    Chris, if I ever get time (??) I will post up a nice graphic from a talk given last year at Reed that compared the citizens per voting district in the top 50 cities in the United States.

    Portland is a HUGE outlier at 600,000 citizens per city council district.

    The visiting political scientist, Ken Mayer of University of Wisconsin, just couldn't make sense of Portland's election system. When Auditor Blackmer stated from the audience that he thought the amounts allocated under the VOE system were actually too large and he was hoping they'd be reduced, I could see Ken just about lost it.

    We already have districts that rival a typical congressional district, where 1,000,000 is usually spent on a race (and individual council members arguably have more power than the typical member of Congress), yet we expect candidates to survive on a paltry 150,000 and then we think this is somehow too much?

  • Terry Parker (unverified)
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    I too grew up in Portland and attended two out of three of the now closed lower grade schools in my neighborhood in NE Portland. The two primary grade schools were built in the mid-50’s. One is being used as offices and the other I believe a pre-school program. The heritage center piece school was built in several stages starting in 1911 and under went major renovations inside a few years back. I attended Madison High School which at that time had 2400 students, second in Portland only to Grant with 2800 students. Throughout my school years in Portland, class sizes averaged 35 students, some I have been told from a former school district employee were as high as 40. Back then the teachers were not the chronic complainers they are to day. They did their best, some better than others, to give us an education.

    I bring this all up because Portland Public Schools has been has been giving teachers a social break by lowering class sizes including luxury mini-classes instead keeping up with the maintenance of buildings thereby letting many of schools decay to the point of needing major renovations. Many of these buildings however are structurally sound, icons of neighborhoods and need to be preserved. That is where the rip comes in. The money for this proposed satellite district is coming from tax increment property taxes located within the Portland Public School District (PPS). The need for dollars in PPS for school infrastructure is just as great, if not greater than in David Douglas. Additionally, the property tax increment dollars the Portland Development Commission receives from urban renewal districts deprives PPS (if spent wisely) of much needed funding. Therefore, if a circle can be drawn on a map to fund a new school in the David Douglas in an non-blighted area, then circles on a map must also be drawn around all the schools in PPS needing repairs (blighted) or renovation (even more blighted). This is only fair to the taxpayers of PPS. Property owners within the PPS district should not have to pay extra taxes through a special levy to fix and repair schools while David Douglas receives a free new school with PPS deprived dollars. Moreover, maybe if David Douglas needs more space, they could use some of the now empty PPS buildings that aren’t yet falling apart.

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    Paul, hope you do get a chance with that graphic.

    I know there are various arguments, but having grown up around Boston when the school committee was still elected at large, leading to segregationist majorities led by Louise Day "You know where I stand" Hicks, which regularly closed schools when population shifts created racially mixed catchment zones, I have a second-nature shudder about at-large elections. Still remember my parents celebrating when Tom Atkins of the NAACP became the first black committee member elected either ever, or for some large number of decades.

    Anyway, it seems as if there is intensified geographic differentiation going on that means people with varied interests need an election system that allows them to be represented and negotiated.

    But I think would-be reformers need to separate that from either the "strong mayor" or "city manager" kinds of issues.

  • Mark Campbell (unverified)
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    "Now that it's garbage time in your campaign, you can throw around another meaningless Pearl-bash here, but there are other people all over the city who see how all wet this is. Including the county and the Portland Public Schools."

    <h2>Sorry to be late to the party with this post but actually, Jack, the county capitulated to this plan amendment. Read the fine print - there is $25 million allocated to Multnomah County for capital projects within the district.</h2>

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