A source at the City Council informed me that Potter wanted to help beautify the parks in the St. John's neighborhood, but that the City only had $3.75 earmarked for St. Johns improvements. According the City's bylaws, the rest of the money has to go to the Pearl District. It's in the bylaws, there's just nothing they can do...

Correct, grasshopper. It's like the aerial tram [rim shot]. Vera signed a contract. Now there's no choice but to pay and pay and pay for Condoland. There's no money left for anything else.

Except the Convention Center hotel [ba-da-boom].

Man, is that ever progress.
Does anyone on city council know there are many
streets in SE that are actually travelled and used by people on a daily basis that remain unpaved?
(By 'used,' I mean to get from home to work/school/grocery store etc and not just an occasional stop for overpriced art or wine and cheese.)
If ever secession from PDX and union with the sleepy burg of Milwakie looked appealing...

What I can't get over is that the city is committed, obligated and absolutely bound to continue on with the aerial tran [rim shot] despite any and all cost overruns, engineering boondoggles, etc. etc. When we install new systems for a client, we always have a "retreat path" in mind, just in case things don't work out as planned. Why can't the city leave itself an out on some of these projects, or at least write in the ability to delay them for a time.
I also understand that, since the cost of steel is driving this huge overrun, the plans could be re-drawn to utilize significantly less steel. But the architect wouldn't like it, or the artsy cutesy crowd. But any of this would require practicality and common sense. That's not the way we do things. We do things like lemmings.

I don't know why you're such a cynic, Jack. Why, just a couple weeks ago, my favorite Starbucks ran out of the 2%, and it was a bear and a half to make the three block walk drive to the other Starbucks. There was gravel and everything--it was not pretty. I needed to put another two coats of wax on the Range Rover just to deal with the scuffs.

I remember being in love several years ago and driving around in her 91 Civic hatchback looking for some place in Southeast to shack up. We were shocked to find unpaved roads when we were out in the 90s south of Powell. We began referring to the area as "moon buggy Southeast" and swore to avoid it at all costs. Ten years later, it still takes a moon buggy to navigate those same streets. It's a crime how the city has abandoned its residents east of 50th.

Say what you will about The Couv, at least up here you don't have to throw it in to 4WD to get to Wal Mart.

You don't have to travel out that far a couple blocks off Woodstock center all the connectors are dirt even though there are houses on each side.

Deep SW Portland has its fair share of moonscapes as well. Check out SW Alfred between 53rd and 55th, it's virtually impassable.

Since the city council can't figure it out people should be able to vote on whether or not to spend the $50 million realigning Burnside or use the $50 million fixing the neighborhood streets.

I predict the vote would be somewhere around 85% to 15% in favor of the neighborhood streets.

The same goes for many other boondoggles including the upcoming transit mall and CC hotel.

No way would they ever be built if it were up to the public at large.

The city council is hopelessly deluded in thinking that they are conducting the people's business.

The developers, big time General Contractors planners and high density/bike lobby have saturated the minds of Potter and company with
fantasies about public benefit generated by the boondoggles projects and investments.

Many of you refuse to make the connection between your electeds and the growing amount of reckless misappropriations.

And where is the school lobby while all this waste occurs?
They are front and center supporting a new tax or opposing M37.

But when big wasting of school dollars by way of Urbna Renewal and developers getting special treatment occurs they are no where to be found.

Why?

The unpaved moonscapes in Northeast start at around 40th and Fremont. There are lots of them north and east of there.

Speaking of how bad the O's web site is, I looked on it for info about the UofO and OSU football games last weekend - they showed game times in EASTERN TIME. How sad is that when they can't even make it local enough to show the right time zone for the people reading it?

One of the bigger ironies is that the City "reformed" the Local Improvement District process several years ago to help deal with the huge backlog of unimproved streets. Instead...we see the LID process being used almost exclusively for big-ticket projects like the Tram, Streetcars, and Mall Revitalization. And for all the bad streets in SE, NE and NW...nothing compares to the number in SW.

Just guessing here - it's probably illegal in Portland for residents to pave their street and pay for the project themselves?

What is wrong with these people?????
Tram? Just walk away from the nightmare before it gets any worse.

At first, with Potter in charge, I felt as if things were really changing for the better, and quickly. But now, somehow, it just feels like things are back to same old status quo- ridiculous, no, make that absurd projects that waste millions and millions of dollars that could be making Portland a better place to be for the regular people. You know, those people who actually pay their outrageous property taxes, who despite a lower than average income, are still expected to make up the slack for all of these bloated ticks feeding of the Portland pork/tax abatement system.
Colour me jaded.

PDOT and the planning bureau both in the press and to our CTLH neighborhood association initially stated about 3 years ago that the tram projected cost was about $8.5 million.
The $45M total now was even higher just a few weeks ago, but the parties involved have been trimming costs by re-engineering several aspects of the job to get the price down even to $45M. The public is getting a much different product than the design competition sold us. Besides the mid-tower being a much different animal , the lower tram terminal has been altered in several ways to cut costs.
No matter how one figures the costs, most of the cost comes from tawpayer's dollars But the story doesn't end there. The $45M cost is only the construction costs. The land costs, operation costs, depreciation costs, maintenance costs, financing costs, city staff costs, architectural and engineering costs, (life cycle costs) etc. are not figured into the total tram costs. PSU Professor Jerry Mildner and others about one year ago did a quick actual tram costs analysis based on $30M tram construction cost and all the other above mentioned costs which any prudent business or even city agency should use in determining "costs" of a project, and they came up with a life cycle cost of approximately $152M. This met that each trip on the tram would cost over $57 dollars per trip. Now with the construction cost being atleast and growing $45M, the trip cost is even much higher. Why is it that our public agencies, like PDC, PDOT, Planning, City Council, Metro, Auditors Office, even our media doesn't look at issues like this and do critical analysis? I think we know the answer. It doesn't pencil out. And that is what so many of our taxpayers do every day as they go about their daily lives: they discover something doesn't pencil out and make a decision.

Mac,

Yes. There is an informative post on this over at Adams's blog. It's not crazy as it seems at first blush. You really don't want a system where private owners start making public street improvements that then have to be maintained by the city (and any liability is inherited by the city).

What they need is a smoother system whereby property owners can contribute costs into the city coffers to get an improvement completed by the city. There is a system in place but all reports is that it is very slow moving.

I suspect this is not a Portland specific issue. What is specific to Portland is that we apparently have far more mileage of streets per capita than comparable cities (Frank Dufay may be able to confirm this--I don't recall where I read it).

Jack, I wonder why 40th is the cutting point. Is this something to do with city growth? 40th is precisely where the unpaved streets start down near Woodstock area.

Speaking of the aerial tran [rim shot]. I heard at a meeting this morning that the city will most certainly be paying penalties for missed deadlines on that project, if they haven't begun to already.

Another problem with the LID process in place is that the mayor or one of the council members can throw it if one of his or her extra special constituents doesn't want a project to go forward. In a good old boy system you can have the best possible laws and policies on the books and nothing much changes. That is where I think the real problem lies. Only the "somebodies" matter here. And some somebodies are incredible sleezebuckets imo. I wish the editorialists at the O could be as skeptical about somebodies as they are about outsiders and critics. Yesterdays editorial on Heywood Sanders gives PDC every benefit of the doubt when its history,it seems to me, warrants more skepticism. In fact, I would like the O to look at the nature of development interests hereabouts. Don't know if anyone has read Gerry Spence's book about his Oregon murder trial, "The Smoking Gun", but the murder victim is a developer who had a contentious relationship with the accused, because they had been fighting over some former tribal lands the developer wanted. There were accusations that the developer had poisoned animals. And I have seen that kind of thing in Clackamas County:a beautiful Arabian stallion belonging to farmers resisting development pressures. I have also seen non-existing meth labs in similar situations. Why does the O presume development is ALL GOOD? This is an outdated mindset imho.

Mac

I found the Portland Tribune article about people who tried to install speed bumps themselves without PDOT:

http://www.portlandtribune.com/archview.cgi?id=28777

The best quote:
"they didn’t want to pay the city’s price of $10,000 per homeowner, because they couldn’t afford it.
Instead, they found a contractor who did the job around Southeast 85th Avenue and Market Street for one-tenth of the city’s cost."

I suspect this is not a Portland specific issue. What is specific to Portland is that we apparently have far more mileage of streets per capita than comparable cities (Frank Dufay may be able to confirm this--

Southwest Portland developed on a rural model. Streets got built haphazardly, no sidewalks, no stormwater infrastructure. There are a lot of "bootleg streets" built under the table, but these cheap streets fall apart and, worse, don't deal with stormwater or erosion. A hillside abutting my wife's old SW house fell into one of her neighbors homes, destroying it...erosion from the bootleg street above.

PDOT claims --but the history doesn't support this-- that residents are responsible for building their own streets to code, which is enormously expensive, and why we see so little progress in dealing with the backlog, which is huge, and no doubt larger than most communities this size. SE has had a similar growth pattern, but hasn't the problems that SW's topography creates, and streets there haven't been quite as expensive. Primarily, though, we have to blame a mindset that expects residences to pay for improvements they can't afford (and many people don't want). Unimproved streets also mean less and slower traffic. I think the failure to have sidewalks, though, especially in relatively wealthy SW neighborhoods, is unconscionable.

"You really don't want a system where private owners start making public street improvements that then have to be maintained by the city (and any liability is inherited by the city)."

If the city isn't maintaining them now-- why would they magically bother maintaining them afterward? Its the usual city bs: We won't improve it, but you can't either.

Frank,
Why is 39th the cutpoint going east after which we see many more unpaved streets? Jack notices the same think in the NE that I notice in the SE.

Woostock will be an interesting area to monitor (I'm thinking of the area directly north of Lewis Elementary).

The houses in that area are rapidly increasing in value--what sold for $200k just two years ago is not nearly $300k. Eastmoreland is sort of slopping over 39th (how can't it! We have a $475k knockdown on our street, and I live just three houses in from 39th).

New and expensive houses are being plopped into the open lots and old houses are being renovated. I can think of one house at 41st and Carlton that will likely sell for $350k and faces out on a rutted dirt path.

Can't believe these roads will stay this way long.