"we just asked for -and received- a package of over $6 million from One-Time General Funds to address a host of projects, most of which are in East Portland, specifically on SE 82nd and SE 122nd"

OK, but somehow you are going to find $80M to fix a 1.5 mile stretch of Burnside (or $6M for every 0.1 miles or 55 ft of Burnside). I think you are missing the point. For areas you like, a la downtown Portland, there seems to be a limtless amount of money to throw at stuff like the transit mall, tram, SoWa development, PGE park, condo tax breaks, etc. The rest of town gets scraps.

My point being, every 5-10 years we have a new plan to re-develop downtown. Now we want to re-design the transit mall to make it an impassable (at least for cars) grid of transit rails. Yet most of the growth areas are outside of downtown, this is what I meant by priorities and getting distracted by big projects.