Ah yes, Vera is back to check on her Oregon Ant Farm and all the bikes and trikes and trolleys trains and trams.

Does she have with her a revised plan? Only the Shadow knows! Or is that, Only those in the Shadows know?

Can she be deported to New York? - Please!

Vera, 'Here's yer sign.....'

History lesson

Back in the early '90s, when Vera was first mayor (I voted for Earl and Jake), I ran into her as I exited the drinking establishment next to Cinema 21 (I was in my early 20s then). I started complaining to her that she had wasted her years as Oregon house leader while the property tax limit initiatives kept appearing on the balllot year after year. She, of course, ignored the ramblimgs of a drunken, long-haired twenty-something, but that didn't stop me. My friends finally had to restrain me as I screamed that she had doomed our state to years of declining support for things such as basic public education.

Oh well, just a reminisence of years gone by. Fortunately my friends restrained me so I was not arrested.

Looking back more recently, I feel better about not voting for Sam Adams and I am more and more looking to vote against both Sten and Salzman. It feels more like the late 60s or early 70s when establishment ruled the city. It's time to get folks from the city involved in the city.

Enough for that rant.

But a good one it was.

Riding Francesconi out on a rail may have been just the beginning of the housecleaning.

Ah, if ony Vera had been so prescient during her own reign. It amazes me that we're not starting to pay for the folly of capping 405.

Sooooooo, wasn't this entire tram project something cooked up during her time as MAyor and with her explicit approval?? What irony.

Given her track record, one can only assume that Neil Goldschmidt called her from his Dundee vineyard recently and told her the transit mall re-do was a bad idea. Maybe the contractors have stopped "hiring" him and his friends as "consultants."

I'm guessing that she's covering her a*s. Probably is getting fed up of hearing about how HER tram up Broketown Mountain was so poorly "visioned" and she sees the same potential with the transit mall. So she pops up her head, spouts how it's now different that what she started, and (hopefully) insulates herself from the inevitable angst that's coming....

So the idiot from New York is reappearing to defend her bad leadership

Things are different now that she no longer controls the council. We have a chance to reverse some of her insanity, lets start with the tram then look at the transit mall. After that we can take back the city from her favored developers and put an end to eternal urban renewal districts.

Maybe we could even close down all UR districts except Lents, the only really needy one. (I know Interstate is in need of help, but she stole $30 million from that district to build her toy train, so there probably isn't much left.)

Be sure to see her legacy, Vera's Portland The City That Shrinks:

She will go down in history as the mayor that broke Portland while trying to turn Portland into Los Angeles while claiming to protect us from that
fate.

Thanks

JK

But... people are missing the point... the real point is, the transit mall is headed in the same direction as the tram only much worse... by the time this latest fiasco is finished, there won't be a merchant left downtown... and if this is allowed to go down the way they want right now, the bus-car-train mess on the mall will kill people

But... people are missing the point... ?

Intentionally so. IMHO

They don't want to face the reality that light rail is the drug addicted, pusher parents of the infantile meth Tram.
Used the exact same way to haphazardly force high density developement and steer tax dollars to private developers to accomplish it.

Uh, OK, just accept it then. Fortunately, there are people attempting to stop the madness... and downtown, they seem to have a shot at it.

We must stop this Transit Mall, period.
For every reason.

hilsy writes:
Back in the early '90s, when Vera was first mayor (I voted for Earl and Jake), I ran into her as I exited the drinking establishment next to Cinema 21 (I was in my early 20s then).

Oh well, just a reminisence of years gone by.

It feels more like the late 60s or early 70s when establishment ruled the city. It's time to get folks from the city involved in the city.
=============================

I am the only one who noticed that we have a thirty-something hilsy posting about "how it feels more like the late 60s or early 70s", which was either before hilsy was born (60s) or when hilsy was in diapers (early 70s)? (you do the math)

What did the diapers feel like back then? Were they cotton or disposables?

To Jim:

WOW. I had never read that Brainstorm article. I hope the rest of you got through it, because after watching the PDC/Portland City Council work session from Feb. 1, I get the sneaking suspicion we haven't learned anything...