Maria Lynn Lim's blog

I had the opportunity to staff Sam to the opening of the new state-of-the-art Peter O. Kohler Pavilion in OHSU yesterday, June 4, 2006.

Last summer, as local candidates for city hall were clamoring for precious votes, The Mercury hosted a series of three, townhall forums. For each, we asked the candidates to provide 5 specific promises for projects they would accomplish during their first year in office. Cleverly, it was called the "You Promised!" series.

At each forum, Sam Adams and Tom Potter dangled tasty promises in front of us—converting the city's fleet of cars to hybrids, more funding for the arts, more skateparks, less crime, and more sunshine.

But we weren't born yesterday: we know that politicians will say just about anything to score your vote, right? So, at the time, we also issued a promise: a year after the candidates gave their pledges, we would check back in to see if these elected officials kept their word.

Well, time's up! And as promised, here are Potter's and Adams' report cards.

WHAT ABOUT THE ARTS?

The results are mixed: for the most part, Adams has stayed true to his word. He has not yet fully achieved any of his promised 15 goals, but his staff has been giving the old college try to each and every one.

...Adams offered his own promises to jump-start the art-based economy in town. If you remember, Adams was locked in a tight race with Nick Fish for the council seat; in fact, most pundits believed Fish would beat out Adams. But even then, Adams refrained from trotting out flashy promises. Instead, most of his pledges were nuts-and-bolts issues—ways to find funding for art programs and new methods to support artists. Adams claimed he would secure $15 million in five years for arts funding and, interestingly, he also pledged to push for more affordable housing for artists.

Ultimately, a year later, Adams has fallen short of completing those ideas. But he has initiated programs that will eventually have big payoffs in years to come...

WANT MORE SPECIFICS?

ADAMS' PROMISES—AND DELIVERY

For the Arts:

$15 MILLION IN FIVE YEARS FOR ARTS FUNDING: Has identified $1 million and is looking for more.

NEW SOURCES OF ARTS FUNDING: Trying to increase work-place giving and currently establishing a "business check-off" program that would allow companies to donate a portion of business license fee refunds to the Regional Arts and Culture Council.

BUILD 100 NEW AFFORDABLE LIVE/WORK RENTAL SPACES: Presently working with private developers to identify pilot projects that will use public funding.

DEVELOP ARTS TO ATTRACT TOURISTS: ongoing: "We have much to do to grow the city as a tourism magnet," says Adams' staffer Jesse Beason.

For Parks and the "Green" Issues:

SPEED CLEANUP OF RIVER WATERSHED: Not yet. Meeting scheduled imminently to push this project.

FIGHT BALLOT MEASURE 37: Yes!

BUILD TWO SKATEPARKS: Dude, Adams' Chief of Staff, Tom Miller, works closely with Skaters for Portland Skateparks and has been exceptionally active in the planning process for the city's new network of skateparks.

PESTICIDE-FREE PARKS: Waiting for 3-year pilot program to run its course. Trying to determine how well a volunteer effort is working to manage the weeds.

COUNTRY'S FIRST PLANTINUM-LEVEL BICYCLE FRIENDLY COMMUNITY DESIGNATION: Portland was beat to the punch by Davis, California (silly hippies!), but Adams is increasing signage for bikes, regularly attending Bicycle Transportation Alliance meetings and is working with DMV to increase bike safety education.

For Community and Policing Issues:

STAFF UP LOCAL LAW ENFORCEMENT: Working on funding.

AUDIT CITY'S INDEPENDENT POLICE REVIEW BOARD: Has budgeted funding for the review; process is in progress.

CREATE "TOP 10" LIST OF COMMUNITY POLICING PROJECTS IN EACH NEIGHBORHOOD: Temporarily on hold.

EQUAL OUT LEVELS OF SERVICES BETWEEN NEIGHBORHOODS: No direct efforts on this yet.

ADAMS' GRADE FOR YEAR ONE: A-, Keep up the good work!

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POTTER' PROMISES—AND DELIVERY .....

Article for the Rocky Mountain News, September 17, 2005

PORTLAND, Ore. - This is a famously livable city, and its residents tend to be famously smug about the fact. Some of them recognize, though, that the city faces serious economic challenges.  I'm in Portland this weekend, attending the annual convention of the National Conference of Editorial Writers, and our first panel Thursday focused on those challenges, as well as the reasons that the city's political culture is not well-equipped to meet them.  The panelists were Ethan Stelzer, director of the School of Urban Studies and Planning at Portland State University, Tim Hibbitts, who runs an independent polling firm, and Sam Adams, who joined the city council in January. All three are obviously devoted to the city, and if I leave out all the good things they said about it, which I will, that's only because the good side of the story is well known and often told.

Article from The Asian Reporter, August 16, 2005

"Nobody knows who I am, and it's so refreshing," said Portland City Commissioner Sam Adams as he took a break from his shift bussing tables at Pho Hung Restaurant on SE Powell Blvd. on Sunday, August 7.

In the past month, Adams has also worked as a groundskeeper, prep cook, laborer, fast food worker, cashier, retail sales person, and customer service representative.  Pho Hung stands out as "by far the most family oriented business," the City Commissioner continued.  "There are fathers-in-law, cousins, immediate family members here.  There's a sense of palpable ease."

Article from Brainstorm NW, by Dave Lister  August, 2005

In Portland, we honor cultural diversity.  All races and creeds exist together in a harmony unparalleled in most American cities.  Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and Caucasians participate equally in community activities and the political process, and there are special activities to celebrate them all.  Gays and lesbians find a tolerant home in Portland, and same sex households are a common in the city’s neighborhoods as more traditional families.  There is almost no discrimination, with one notable exception:

In Portland, we discriminate against business owners.

Back in the 1920s, when my uncle and his partner were trying to eke out a living by wholesaling tools and hardware to local merchants off the back of a Model-T truck, they were accosted by a police officer.  The officer asked to see their “peddler’s license”.  Because they didn’t have one, and didn’t know they needed one, they were restricted from doing business until they obtained one.  Over the years the “peddler’s license” evolved in the “business license.”  In most jurisdictions around the nation obtaining a business license involves making an application and paying a nominal annual fee.

Portland and Multnomah County have, over the years, departed from this traditional method of licensing businesses and have created a combined “Business Income Tax/Business License Fee” (BIT/BLF).  This system, which provides the city with about 15 percent of its general fund, punishes profit and wealth creation.  It also punishes entrepreneurship by capping a business owner’s “fair” salary and taxing them on the excess.  It is a system of wealth redistribution in the best Euro-Socialist tradition.

The BIT/BLF works like this:  The city and county get 3.65 percent of your net profit, and 3.65 percent of the owner’s compensation in excess of $57,500 per year.  In the tradition of the “peddler’s license,” you pay a minimum of $100 per year regardless of profit.  A start-up restaurant, latte stand or second hand boutique pays $100 per year.  Successful business consulting firms, law firms or insurance agencies can pay thousands.  This taxing structure has been a significant factor in the loss of 30,000 downtown jobs over the last five years, and it is the number one issue raised when the city and county are described as being “business unfriendly”.  And because your “peddler’s license” will cost you from $60 to $300 per year in Clackamas and Washington counties, firms that are not location dependent have left or are leaving.  The contrast between vacant commercial space in downtown Portland and the booming professional plazas in Beaverton, Tigard and Tualatin bears mute testimony.

Portland’s newly elected Commissioner, Sam Adams, vowed during his campaign to reform this tax.  As and openly gay man, perhaps Adams was more sensitive to discrimination than most.  Or perhaps, as a city hall insider for the last decade, he had studied the diminishing revenue line of the tax and saw the writing on the wall.  In any event, he chose to attack the BIT/BLF’s most discriminatory element:  The compensation cap.  Adams put forward to the Portland City Council a proposal to increase the cap to $125,000 annually.  The proposal was co-sponsored by Commissioner Dan Saltzman.  The largest turn out of suits and ties seen at a council hearing n recent memory showed up in support of the proposal.

Adams proposal was extremely modest.  It would have returned four million to the local economy over several years.  It was tied to future revenue increases.  It was revenue neutral.  It would have had no effect on the city’s operation budget.

Adams got spanked like the new puppy that piddled on the carpet.

“If we’re going to spend four million dollars to help small business,” he said, “I think we can do a better job ourselves through targeted program.”

The unstated philosophy, the one he shares with Mayor Tom Potter and Commissioner Randy Leonard, is that wealth redistribution is fair and good.  People that make money and create jobs have more than they deserve and they should pay more.  Never mind that the mayor, the city council, most top and mid-level city management, and police and fire officers pulling down overtime earn more than the business owner’s compensation cap.  Never mind that a sole proprietor making the same exact salary a s a city commissioner pays $1,100 per year taxes that the commissioner does not.  That’s not the point.  They hold firm to their philosophy: we’re going to discriminate, because we can.

I think that since we’ve decided to have a discriminatory tax policy we might as well expand it.  Let’s go after safe deposit box holders, or people that have more that one cat.  Maybe we should tax people who like mustard in their scrambled eggs, or guacamole.  Maybe people who attend air shows.  I think it makes as much sense as taxing people who create jobs.

But what the heck do I know?  I’m just an Eastside Guy.

Article from Daily Journal of Commerce, August 2, 2005

After about two years of mining work, the last of two original tunnel boring machines that dug a 14-foot diameter, three-and-a-half mile tunnel for Portland's nearly $300 million West Side Big Pipe project has reached the end of the line.

Workers dismantled the machine inside a 12-story-deep shaft at the corner of Clay Street and Naito Parkway in downtown Portland over the weekend, and crews hoisted out sections of the machine on Monday.

The fist section of the machine to be removed was its 16-foot-diameter cutterhead.

Watching the cutterhead rise from the depths of Portland's newest sewer tunnel, Linc Mann, a Bureau of Environmental Services spokesman, called its removal a "spectacular" event.

"That thing has done a lot of work," Mann said. "It's chewed through a lot of sand and gravel and rocks, which is a pretty incredible feat."

With the mining portion of the project now finished, Mann said, the tunnel is now essentially complete. But crews from the joint venture Impregilo/Healy, the general contractor for the project, still have about a year's worth of work and tests to complete before the tunnel will be ready for operation.

Giuseppe Quarta, the project director for the West Side Combined Sewer Overflow project with Impregilo/Healy, said that the project, which is ahead of schedule and on budget, has been a success.

"It has been a complete success," Quarta said. "Obviously, we're very pleased."

The West Side CSO project is designed to reduce the volume of untreated combined sewage overflows into the Willamette River that occur when heavy rainstorms inundate the sewage system, which mixes untreated sewage and stormwater.

Work includes construction of the pipeline on the west side of the Willamette River and a large pump station on the east side of the river on Swan Island.

The Swan Island pump station will eventually be the connecting point between the east and west side sections of the 20-year CSO project.

The east side section of the project, which will be constructed by the joint venture Kiewit/Bilfinger/Berger, is still in the planning stages and has not yet been constructed.

KBB won the right to construct the approximately $500 million east side section of the project after receiving more points than the joint venture of Impregilo/Healy/ Obayashi in a selection process and surviving a lengthy appeals process.

Impregilo/Healy's work on the project will end when the work on the west side section of the project is completed.

Before the city started implementing the project in 1991, combined sewer overflow amounted to six billion gallons. The city estimates that amount will be reduced by 94 percent when the project is completed in 2011.

Join Commissioner Sam in Welcoming Our Featured Artist for August

A Thousand Words Or Less

-oil paintings by Julianna Paradisi

Julianna Paradisi was born on Catalina Island in California.  She has lived in the Pacific Northwest since 1993.  While she has always been artistically inclined, she started painting in 2001.  She has also exhibited work in sculpture and collage. She is a registered nurse as well as an artist, and each of her vocations informs the other.  Julianna's paintings reflect her deep love of life with an acute awareness of its irony and complexity.

Artist Statement

Julianna's previous body of work, Greetings from Slabtown focused on the transformation of the Pearl District.  The images conceptualize abandonment, survival, and renewal.  These new paintings from A Thousand Words Or Less, while a departure, continue the theme as the images of old buildings morph into the organic forms of the seashells.  Shells are also old dwellings, abandoned homes. Her muse then turns to the organism itself, and now there are images of figure, the human. She would like to point out that in her visual vocabulary, skeletons, the fetal form of the nautilus shell, and figures that hold themselves close, are not about death.  For Julianna, they symbolize a pulling inward of self; a need for reflection and renewal.  The bones and shells are about paring down and getting to the heart of a matter.  Sometimes life is a just a little too real.  This group of paintings is like a collection of short stories with various characters in situations and how they might feel about that.

A picture is worth a thousand words....or less.

Article from the El Hispanic News

Portland, OR - Community members had the opportunity to learn about everything from how to open a bank account to how to qualify for a home loan last week at an event called "El Poder Del Si" (the Power of Yes).  Hacienda Community Development Corporation(CDC) and Washington Mutual held the homebuyer and banking fair June18 at the Balthazar Ortiz Community Center in Northeast Portland.

"The reason we do these kinds of events has a lot to do with our mission of assisting hard working families to improve their household's economy," said Pietro Ferrari, executive director of Hacienda CDC.  "This is what the Power of Yes is all about - empowering the residens with the information they need to function and succeed - the ability to say ' yes' to the opportunities to realize their full potential."

The free event included remarks from Portland City Commissioner Sam Adams, who told attendeess of his family's financial troubles during his childhood and his own less-than-perfect financial decisions as a young adult, which led to him declaring bankruptcy.

""I am no stranger to hard work, but with these obstacles, owning a house was not something I thought I would be able to do."  Adams said."

A financial gift from a family memver ultimately allowed Adams and his partner to make the downpayment on a a house, but Adams realizes everyone does not have the same opportunities."

""Hard-working families should be able to afford to own their home without relying on the luck QI was fortunate enought o have," Adam said.  " I feel so strongly about this because I learned first-hand that homeownership is the key ingredient in economic success.  On average a working family makes more money in the equity built up in their homes over a 10-year period than in the stock market.  In other words, owning a home is one of the most important investments in our future we can make.""

Subjects of classes and discussions included financial literacy and house hold budgeting techniques.  for more information visit haciendacdc.org

Article from The Asian Reporter, June 14, 2005

Artist Jim Han is featured during the month of June in an art exhibit at Portland's City Hall.  Han, who works as a Funeral Director at Omega Funeral and Cremation Services in addition to his artistic ventures, attributes his style to the influences of Francis Bacon, Lucien Freud, Vincent van Gogh, as well as old Warner Bros. cartoons, cotton candy, clowns, and divorce.

Mr. Han is a member of a group called Vision 360, a collective of artists working together in the Portland area.  He enjoys painting portraits of his friends, paying homage to his friendships while also using the facial expressions to construe his own personal emotions.

When asked about his current exhibition at City Hall, Jim said,"It feels good.  What a wonderful thing."

Jim's oil portraits of himself and his friends are on display through June 28 in Room 220 of City Hall (1121 SW 4th Ave., Portland).  Visitors are welcome from 8:00am to 5:00pm weekdays.  For more information, call the Office of City Commissioner Sam Adams at (503) 823-3008 or visit www.vision360artists.com/announcement.html.

The Business Journal of Portland, May 25, 2005 - Thortex Inc., a medical device manufacturer, will add 60 jobs when it expands its Northeast Portland facility. The expansion will bring the company's Portland employment count to 230 jobs. Thortex President David Walker made the announcement Wednesday with City Commissioner Sam Adams.

Article from BTA Publication, May 24, 2005

May is nationally recognized as Bike to Work Month and here in Portland, May 16-20 was Bike to Work Week. Helping wrap up local bike week events, Commissioner Sam Adams celebrated Lloyd District TMA's Bike to Work Day on Friday. Following his ride from his Kenton neighborhood home, Adams spoke to a crowd of fellow cyclists and bicycle-friendlies.

The Oregonian, May 24, 2005 - The quintessential moment of Sam Adams' first 100 business days in office came during a routine city budget work session. Adams was seeking money for one of his many projects, explaining to his colleagues on the Portland City Council that the initiative was good for small businesses, good for Portland as a whole -- and a promise he'd made during his 2004 campaign. Nancy Hamilton, the mayor's chief of staff, broke in with a question: Would it be possible for Adams to give the mayor and other commissioners a list of all of Adams' campaign promises, so that they know what's coming?...It is, after all, an awfully long list.

Article from The Portland Tribune, May 20, 2005

There’s been no water bureau scandal, no face-off with angry neighbors and no controversy over open reservoirs for Commissioner Sam Adams. Yet.  A hundred days into his term, the freshman councilman is still enjoying his honeymoon phase at City Hall, having prompted little if any criticism about his performance so far. But it hasn’t quite been a relaxing honeymoon. Adams has been busy — some say a little too busy — pushing through the endless array of pet projects he promised voters last year during his campaign to “shake up City Hall.”

Article from News4Neighbors, May 13, 2005

Councilman Sam Adams turned up at the Ecotrust building Thursday to help support the Think Local First campaign that's being run by the Sustainable Business Network of Portland. The Thursday "Meet and Greet" event was sponsored by World Cup Coffee and Hot Lips Pizza among others (Mmmmm Pizza)

Last Saturday, April 30, 2005, the Asian Reporter had its 7th Annual Asian Reporter Scholarship Banquet.  It was an event bridging different cultures and backgrounds to award scholarships to deserving young minority kids, recognize honored elders and celebrate organizations for their contributions to our community.  Mayor Potter and Portland City Commissioner Sam Adams were among the guests of honor.

Commissioner Adams gladly obliged to read the names of the Asian Reporter Scholarship Foundation Awards to 15 young minority students.  Commissioner Adams was also in attendance at the PACCO Tsunami Relief Dinner in January, and welcomed the Philippine Consul General to his office.